Friday, November 26, 2010Radical Parenting #2Here's another radical idea. I'm convinced that this one notion is the single most insidious cause of bad parenting and fractured relationships between parents and children.Ready? Your children are not you. You can play Mr. Potato Head games all day long and figure out if they have his ears and her irritability, or whether that funny wheezing laugh came form old Aunt Martha, and all that is really fun and all, but it actually doesn't address the fundamental fact that these children of ours are separate people. The new word here is "separate." First, children are people. And secondly, they are separate. Separate. People. This is not mitosis. Your little amoeba self does not suddenly and spontaneously split off into another little amoeba and then there are two of you. Your children may have aspects that remind you of you and other aspects that remind you of their other parent. But they are not you and you are not them. Their choice in plaids does not reflect your style acumen. Their F in geometry was not done solely to remind you of your own humiliations in Middle School. If they like friends that you wouldn't choose... guess what? It's not up to you. They are not your friends, and it's not your choice. Sorry. But they are separate people. You cannot project your needs, wants, fears, aspirations, dreams, desires, phobias, neuroses, joys, challenges, and successes onto these people. They are not your projection screens. If you hate the water, it's not your place to keep them from sailing. You can teach them to swim -- that's permissible. But you can't keep them from sailing because you don't like the water. Their opinions about you don't matter either. They don't get to project their shit onto you any more than you get to project your shit onto them. Seriously. If they think you're a big bad meanie, OK then. They can do that. It doesn't mean it's so. And if they love you to pieces it doesn't mean you're perfect either. Everyone gets to still take responsibility for their own being and doing. They do. You do. Separate people. I saw two examples of this recently, both during our recent slogs through highly traveled airport terminals. In the first terminal, Spencer was accosted by a woman traveling with three young kids. She had all the stuff. The big puffy airline travel seat, the big fat assed stroller with bags and attachments sprouting out all over the place, the kids with their backpacks and the pouch on her front for the littlest marsupial. She was, maybe, in her late 30's/early 40's and she was traveling with three kids. Three kids AND about $3500 worth of additional equipment. She enlisted Spencer into helping her. She asked him to take her picture. She asked him to take one of the big airline seats up through the aisle of the plane to get her situated. (Not like he didn't have his own backpack, duffle bag, and my own overflow stuff to deal with.) All this was fine, except for one thing she told him that stuck in my craw. "Hey," she said to him. "You know, not many people could do what I'm doing here." And, I'm like... what? You mean, this is all about you? The whole point of this whole parade is so you can show the world that you can do it? I mean, it's not the most egregious comment in the world. There are certainly far worse things that she could've said or done that would've bugged me a whole lot more. But... there was ego involved. She was engaged in taking care of her kids and it wasn't about, you know, simply taking care of her kids. It was all about her. And then there was this kid on the way back. Little girl, maybe two years old. First time I saw her I was immediately taken by her unique fashion sense. She had on a bright green and gray striped jumpsuit and bright red galoshes, that had fake shoestrings printed on them. She was standing in the middle of the aisle stating something factual to her mom who was about twelve feet away. She looked sure of herself, sure of her world, and easy in her place within it. I watched them in the terminal and they ended up sitting in front of us. The kid occasionally got cranky, and cried a couple of times. She was a very little kid, after all. But what got to me what the way her mother handled her. She talked to her, throughout, like a very caring person would talk to someone she really liked and respected. She was not condescending, she did not lay down the law, she did not threaten or cajole or plead or punish. When the little girl cried on the plane her mom said, "Wait, stop. I need to understand what you need." And immediately the kid stopped. The mom said "point to what you want, OK?" And the kid did something and then it was all OK again. At the end of the flight I heard the little girl ask her mom if it "was all better." And her mom said "yes, this flight was much better. Thank you." They'd had the conversation, they course corrected and -- what struck me as so neat -- the kid had incorporated into herself the desire to be better. It wasn't because of fear, or desire for a new treat, or because she had been punished into submission. They'd had the conversation, and she wanted to know if the new plan had gone well. Neat. I would love to know what happens to that child as she grows up. I know both she and her mom felt very lucky to be paired with each other. And I felt lucky to be able to watch them for awhile. Separate people. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 9:00 AM  
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