Simply Mother

So I made use of a little hyperbole in that last post, and I don’t want it to reflect badly on Jane — she isn’t really oppositional to anything and everything. Well, the “anything” part is true because it doesn’t really matter if it’s something she would normally want to do or not — if she’s in mode:resist (or more likely, if she’s feeling resistance or hesitation from me), she will probably be uncooperative. I have a feeling at these moments even if I said, “Hey, let’s go have some ice cream,” she would be oppositional.

But it’s definitely not all the time. In fact, today was really, really smooth with all kinds of things like, “Hey Mom, I’ll put my shoes in the shoe closet,” and “Don’t worry Mom, I’ll keep Mary happy while you’re making dinner.” And, “Mom, it’s your turn to brush my teeth.”

I’m not sure what the difference is — when she’s able to do that kind of stuff so easily, and when it takes a bit of finesse to get through even the most basic requests — but I think it really does have to do with this connection thing. When she’s feeling connected, and respected, she is a delight and it’s smooth sailing.

And if I notice a little bit of resistance and make some kind of a move to show her I care about her needs (like when I acted like her turning on the light switch before the prayer was Very Important Business, and gave her a minute to do it), usually her resistance melts right away and she’s back on board again, becoming more flexible and yielding to my needs and requests.

Also, I wanted to make clear that I don’t think there has to be opposition for kids to feel safe and comfortable. I guess there does have to be the possibility of them opposing, if they’re going to have a real choice, but I didn’t mean to imply that if you’re not having constant opposition from your three-year-old, that she just doesn’t feel safe enough to do it!

Actually, the opposite could be true: having constant opposition could be a sign the child feels really uncomfortable and insecure, and they’re trying to get you to be firm and confident and not so wishy-washy. I think that was the case for me for a while with Sariah a couple years ago.

I was so afraid of being controlling and undermining her autonomy that I wouldn’t take a real stand about things. I wasn’t sure in my own mind. I mean, I was sure I wanted her to, say, brush her teeth, but I wasn’t sure I was supposed to be the one to decide about out that — or more accurately, I wanted her to feel like it was her decision.

But because I was so hesitant about it, she interpreted that as my being unsure of what I wanted her to do, so she resisted — following my “energy” instead of my words, if that makes sense.

Maybe that’s going on for Jane a little bit here, but for the most part, I’m pretty confident about my role as a mother these days — I’m not constantly questioning everything — and Jane is a lot more easy going. Yes, there’s often the initial resistance, but we get passed it much more quickly and smoothly this time around, I think, because I’m not so focused on whether something’s going to get done or who is supposed to decide about it, and instead the focus is on trying to find joy in the moment — knowing that somehow we will work it out so we all get our needs met.

 — 

Wow, trying to explain about your parenting style is kind of tricky. I feel like I could go on forever and ever and you would all come away with different ideas of what I mean.

I think it’s because there are a lot of apparent contradictions in all the gentle/respectful parenting literature that it gets confusing, and I’m just muddling the waters trying to fit my experience into a compilation of all the different theories.

This is getting way off topic, but I remember getting so confused when I would read stuff by people like Naomi Aldort or Scott Noelle because they were telling me both:

“Let the child be free; respect her choices; let her express herself,”

and,

“Of course don’t let her be hurtful; You’re the adult, children want their parents to be in charge; Be responsible for your child’s health and safety.”

It took me a long time to work out how those two sides can both be practiced without being contradictory — what if my child’s “choice” is to be hurtful?? — and, in fact, for a while there I just completely abandoned all the books and theories and decided to just figure it out however we could. But the style we’ve worked into does, amazingly, incorporate both of these — and now all the writings of the above mentioned authors make much more sense to me!

But I’m probably still confusing to everybody else, especially when I write when I should be sleeping, so I’ll stop blundering through this post now and go to bed.

Filed in: child development • family • parenting | December 15, 2009