My letting go isn't spontaneous. The screen time letting go is a gradual thing. Some days I am still not OK with it. But I let it be. I let myself be uncomfortable with that. It goes. And comes. I get irritated still, it's a continuous slow letting go, not a knife edge of being or doing or feeling. An acknowledgement that some decisions about what others do are not even mine to start with. Getting your head around that is a biggie.
Some days I get this feeling that it's all a big illusion. That it isn't so much the things we spend our days *doing* but the way we *are* as we do them. Is it for me to mind what another human chooses to do? My position as someone older and having more life knowledge isn't rational reason enough to be a decision maker of someone else. I might be wrong. Allowing for the possibility (even if you are *sure* you are right), the possibility that you just might be wrong, makes it harder to get someone else to do something, to insist you are right. Offer suggestions for alternatives, give advice, criticism, theories, but *then* accept with grace another's' choice. The decision they make for themselves. I see my kids hear my suggestions more as orders than suggestions sometimes. I have to point out to them with specific word usage that allows them to decide. Like, 'in that position I would do X or Y' or, 'I think for me, I wouldn't choose to eat that, it gives me a headache, one time it make Granny sick to eat that'. Then let them weight it up. Give the info as you know it, and step back. 'Throwing sand can sometimes get in eyes and make them sore, I can see a good place over there with no people around and lots of space to throw'. Don't guilt them. Don't create feelings of guilt or frustration or anxiety. Why do we do that? I hate people tripping me like that! Like OK, have that chocolate bar, you'll be sorry when your teeth all drop out and you get fat and spotty! I'd be feeling trapped and negative. I want that good chocolate taste, OK, not the fat or bad teeth..... can I help make healthy chocolate treats instead? Would that help the person wanting chocolate? Info, help, advice. Not orders, or guilt. Let them be. Let it be. As it is.
Can our influence be a light rather than a force? To be the trusted person they come to wanting advice as a teen, not the person they hide their cigarettes from. Paradoxically, can we act without concern of long term outcome? Are our children products? Is our parenting a method we use to shape children to be a certain way, to have specific characteristics or traits? How would it feel to know that the people around you were responding and talking and doing things with you with an outcome of who they wanted you to be (or way in which they wanted you to act) in mind? Pretty horrific actually. Get rid of it. Be an advocate. In the moment. If they give you something to hold cos' they don't want to share it, don't give it to the next child that asks to 'teach' your child to share. You are teaching them you can't be trusted. That their preferences are not important. Do we want our children to grow up to be adults who think their preferences have no (or lesser) importance - that they must be subservient to others in positions of more authority? I think it's what happens when we play the authoritarian. We teach not what we think we do, but something else. Something that can't be untaught so well.
Yes. I have been reading Without Boundaries. It's pretty good :)
We saw this Christmas Turkey and thought it a true-blue Star Wars Extra.
8 comments:
Thanks for the book recommendation - no luck finding it in my library so I'll just have to add it to my wish list...
Loved your post, I love that you say exactly what is in your head, at least that is what it seems.
Bee
I love your posts, they always seem to hit a chord with something that's going on in my life. Currently, your post is pertinent because I'm struggling a bit with my little DS. He's a kind lad, but does get so excitable and boisterous and I've been panicking and apologising for him and getting the response back that "he's fine, let him be, he's no bother, you worry too much" and it takes a lot, for me, to stand back and trust that he won't mow the smaller children down when he's hurtling round the place. He's so different from the others and from my experience of being a child, but you're right, who am I to say that he should change and be something he's not, if he's not harming anyone else. Lordy, we learn so much through being a parent don't we, learn things about ourselves that we might not want to learn!! Sending lots of love to you and your family. Very frosty here, I'm weighing up the value of sheepskin slippers for the children this morning! xxxxxx
I love your blog. It really gets me thinking and inspires me to keep working on things.
My Little C (16 months) is currently at a stage where he is exploring things and doesn't want to stop. Usually I let him explore. Sometimes though, after letting him open the cupboard door and look at the washing machine, I find that actually I would rather he didn't press the buttons and change the cycle. Or after he's had a look in the freezer for a while I decide it's now time to shut the door and stop all that cold from coming out. So I impose my will, ask him to close the door, then tell him to close the door, then move him away from the door and close it myself - followed of course by him screaming and throwing himself on the floor.
Where is the line between imposing our will to create boundaries and teach about living in society, and imposing our will to assert our dominance over a little person?
I made him a t-shirt with the words "Free Range" on the front and I really do aim to live up to it!
smilymel - I hear you. I think something like the washing machine thing - I actually get my dd to programme it, she knows exactly what to do, then I say, stop, no more buttons, it needs to wash the clothes now. It took a while and yeah there are times when I walk to the kitchen and the machine is paused or times when I have thought the cycle finished, only to open the door and have water flood out (seriously, it actually lets you do that, thank god my dd can't actually open the door:) ). I see from my bigger kids that it's just *time*. They won't always want to open the freezer door, I mean, it's COLD! And surely anyone would get bored after after about 5-10 mins? Esp, if you can distract (or 'offer') away with something better. Is it a door opening thing they like? Maybe create some situation where they have a lot of that, or is it the cold thing? Maybe let him away at the sink with ice cubes and cups and tubs and a jug of water. Of is it just the actual freezer with coldness and doors? If so then for me, I'd just distract if it was going on so long things were melting - but I can't imagine that happening - it'd take ages fro stuff to actually melt!
Sometimes there seems this worry that if someone does something and you let them see it's ok, even if you feel uncomfortable with it and know it's the sort of thing conventional parenting would say 'no' to straight off, you worry they might do it forever and not be nice 'acceptable' people. Like saying 'ok, you don't need to share that toy, it's ok'. Will they forever more be selfish monsters who never learn to share? Will they forever walk away leaving the freezer door open? Probably not :)
Does taking care of ones' own wants and needs have to be mutually exclusive from altruistic behaviour too? Are the two compatible?
Can someone do what is right feeling for themselves, see it is ok and see how it's good to make others feel that way too? Are they then free to?
All these things are questions I ask myself: all the time :)
I think - mainly it's get the relationship right between you, have that feeling good and the rest - the 'behaviour' and 'characteristics' and 'education' it all just fits in secondarily.... some where along the line :) It is what I am trying.
I often fail. It's very very true. I shout at my kids and regret it. I coerce them and regret it. I self sacrifice and regret it. But I try, and I think it's the intention that counts.
Pippa - My older ds who is 9 is very 'bouncy' always banging into stuff and people and he told me recently that he sometimes feels he can't control his body, like it's too big or has grown too big for him to remember where it is! I think that happens, I remember clumsy stages from my own childhood and being scolded. My ds just wants to play computer games or lego and I think gawd, what on *earth* are they learning? But how do I actually know? If they were in front of a maths book would they actually remember the content the next day if they were still yearning for the lego that whole time? It's all hard sometimes :)
Claire xoxo
Thanks Claire, it's definitely a learning curve for both me and him. Sometimes I need to let go of the "convention" that the freezer door should be closed and he shouldn't play with the freezer (I think it's just the novelty - if I let him explore it a couple of times, open the drawers and take everything out and then put it back in, then he'd soon be bored of it!) and just let him be while he's doing no harm. The washing machine he helps me load and unload, but so far he's still pressing any and all buttons and following no directions, so we're not ready for him to programme yet. Hey ho... I'll try explaining that it needs to get on and wash the clothes!
Distraction usually works too. My main fall-down at the moment is when I'm too tired to think from his point of view or to think creatively (5 1/2 months pregnant and not sleeping well). If I'm less tired we fall out a lot less, so I know it's me and not him.
I figure as long as my intentions are good and I keep examining what I am doing, then I won't stray too far.
Thanks for the blogging, I love to read your posts.
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