This article originally appeared on Medium.com. It has been republished here with the author’s permission.
If you’re a parent, you’ve undoubtedly been exasperated trying to convince your child to do something that they do not want to do. And, depending on their temperament (among other things), you may have a harder or easier time of it.
If you’re brutally honest, it usually isn’t about things that are truly urgent, life and death situations. After all, if there’s a fire alarm, you wouldn’t try to convince them to leave the building. You’d just get them out with no ifs, and or buts about it!
Same thing if they were about to step into the path of a moving vehicle. No need to stop and try to convince, preach, teach or plead. Just grab a hold and pull them back.
In times of urgent need, to ensure safety, you just take charge and deal with the emotional upsets afterwards. That’s kinda like setting a “hard limit”. You’re saying in your actions, “I won’t let you do something that puts you or others in harm.”
And, I’m not even talking about less urgent, but still important things — things like the rules that are agreed upon in your home because they’re based on your family’s most important values.
Things like, “We don’t hit others”. Or, “We don’t take things that don’t belong to other people without asking.” Because those undermine how we demonstrate our respect for one another.
Rules aren’t things that warrant convincing. Those things are to be clearly and respectfully stated. (This assumes, of course, that we’re all clear about our family’s values and the related rules, but that’s perhaps for another article…)
No. I’m talking about things that are neither urgent nor important.
Despite this, ironically enough, these same things can seem very significant in those unguarded moments when we choose to take up their cause. Those moments when you’re really wishing they’d just do things your way because you’d prefer it that way.
The peril of ‘what if’?
So what moments am I thinking about?
How about those times when they’re probably not starving, but you insist they finish what’s on their plate. Why? Well, what if they’re hungry later?
And when it is cold out, they’re not likely going to freeze to death. Yet you definitely want them to wear that extra sweater and pack a pair of gloves. Why? Well, what if it gets colder during the day?
And what about when they’re probably not going to be besties with that little girl in their class, but you really want them to set up a playdate. Why? Well, what if they don’t meet any other little girls who also happen to live in the neighborhood?
You know the drill.
If I gave you 5 minutes, you could probably come up with a lengthy list of scenarios, possibly from just the last week, of all your “what ifs”.
And they all come from one place: anxiety.
And, no. It’s not your child’s anxiety!
It’s yours!
In these situations, you notice your child making choices that may eliminate some of their options. Or leave them more vulnerable. Or lead them down a path that may result in you having yet another heartache or problem to address. So you try to get ahead of it.
You try to convince them to do something the way you want them to do it so that you can feel less anxious about it. After all, given your many more years of lived experience, you really do know better and have a better chance of predicting how things will turn out.
And that’s true. You do know better. That’s not in question.
Your probability calculations are likely well honed on all matters that might impact your child.
But, the fact remains that your outcome is still not guaranteed. You can’t be completely, 100% sure that things will work out ‘right’ if they just did things your way.
Besides, what we all know but sometimes wish we could just ignore is, unless children make their own choices, and with them, their own mistakes, they won’t learn to do any better.
As much as we would like for our children to learn from our mistakes, they can’t. They only truly learn from their own. Just like we had to.
News flash! You’re not responsible for everything that happens!
That’s right! Parents are not responsible for protecting their children from every discomfort and potential distress.
Should you protect them from immediate harm and peril and provide access to food, shelter and your loving presence ? Yes! Absolutely!
From all the little struggles that just come with being alive? No! Definitely not.
It’s like Dory tell’s Marlin, Nemo’s father in Finding Nemo, “Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him.”
Parents are responsible for helping their children work through the problems and discomforts they encounter in life. Not avoid them.
Eventually, they’ll be able to work through them on their own or they’ll ask for help from you or others who care, like their own friends, spouse, colleagues, or therapists.
So why is it so hard to let go of the need to control?
Remember how Finding Nemo began? There was that idyllic scene on the reef followed by that horrid attack that killed Nemo’s mother?
I know my daughter screamed and sobbed in those moments following the attack. And it wasn’t even her mother! (I am writing this article, after all!)
Somehow, we could all relate.
We all know that feeling.
We’ve all lived it in some way.
And we’ve all learned lessons through it.
Those times when we wish we could have turned the clock back and done something — anything — differently.
Those moments when regret seeps in and we are left with nothing but the conviction that, if we have learned anything from this experience, there won’t be a next time. Not if we have anything to say about it.
And when we decide “never again”, that’s not just for us. It applies to our kids too.
We take on the task of banishing all of life’s pain, disappointments, problems, challenges and loss. And we do it every day in a hundred little ways. Whenever we try to insist on things being done our way.
So, that’s what’s happening to us. But, why is it bad for our kids?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but here’s something obvious: you don’t want your child to listen to and do what every adult tells them to do. Suffice it to say, that makes them vulnerable to, among other things, being abused. I don’t think I need to paint a more detailed picture here.
What you do want is for your children to be able to learn to think, plan, problem solve and cope with the outcomes of their choices.
Not alone — you’re still going to have to support them as they learn to understand and work through their feelings about the things that happen in life — but with you. This is really what parenting is all about.
Parenting without trying to control, cajole, convince, preach, teach and nag is about:
- noticing what’s happening in their lives in the moment,
- trying to understand it from their perspective,
- helping them make sense of what’s happened,
- working through their feelings about it, if that’s needed,
- helping them arrive at solutions to their problems — including allowing them to ask you for help, and then
- reiterating a clear values-based limit or expectation when that is also needed.
So your not-so-hungry child may just need you to say, “So it looks like you’re not feeling too hungry right now. If you’re done, great. Put your leftovers in the fridge — you can eat them if you’re hungry later.”
Your cold-tolerant teen may just need, “You may want to check the weather forecast before you head out.” And if they come home later that day complaining about the cold…you can agree with them. They will have learned better than you could have taught them.
And if your child complains about there being no one to play with in the neighbourhood, you can say, “It’s tough when kids get bussed to schools from everywhere across the city. Is there anything that might help you get to know some of the kids in the neighbourhood?”
Ironically, you’ll probably end up with your kids seeming quite cooperative in the end. Just not to your plan or schedule.
Instead, they’ll be engaging with you in understanding their circumstances and solving their problems on a daily basis. And you’ll be at their side as their trusted guide.
In this way, they learn to engage with others respectfully.
Without trying to do what others want just to avoid conflict (something that would place them at risk with people who have ill intentions).
Without arguing their point to try to have things their way.
Without diminishing their own autonomy and self-respect.
And isn’t that what we really want for our children?
Featured Image Credit: Jordan Whitt (Unsplash)
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