Viewpoint

As a parent I want my children to grow up to be happy and confident adults, don't we all?  Is that an easy goal to achieve?  How we talk to and react to what our children do is the basis of our relationship, most often we choose the path that we know, the one given to us by our own parents.  We are most likely to be using parenting patterns that we have not given any thought as to whether they make sense or how we learnt them, following a script that we have not written.

The way many kids are treated suggests a lack of respect for their needs and preferences - in fact, a lack of respect for children, period.  A lot of parents act as though they believe that kids don't deserve respect in the way adults do.*

Our attitude as a society towards children is poor, how many times have you been seen that look, you know the one I mean, given to the parent of a child who is in the throes of shouting or screaming in a public place.  If as a society we do not hold children in great esteem it is easier for parents to treat their children disrespectfully.  If we treat our children with respect, speak to them respectfully and they feel respected they will in turn respect others.  When I speak to my children I try to remember to use the same language as I would wish to have spoken to me.  In the heat of the moment I sometimes forget, if we screw up it is good to admit it and apologise, for me this demonstrates to my children how apologising works, that I can and do make mistakes and that I have taken ownership of them without losing face or feeling inadequate.

The look that I refered to earlier comes from a desire for children to behave in a certain way, good children are the ones that are sitting quietly and behaving as adults expect them to.  When the child has no awareness of these rules of engagement, is it acceptable to punish their behaviour if it does not meet these standards.  Are these rules justified and more importantly are they in our children's best interests.  Of course I am not for one moment suggesting that running around in a busy cafe is a be encouraged, however if we as parents do not demand obedience all the time we are likely to listened to, when we do ask, if a situation demands that of us.  It is important that we allow our children to make their own decision about what is appropriate in a given situation, we learn to become good decision makers not by following the directions of others but by being allowed to make our own decisions.  We should allow our children to make those decisions that might make us gulp and not to simply say no even when it make no sense or because we are unwilling to give control.

We might say it's our job to be "in control" in the sense of creating a healthy and safe environment, offering guidance, and setting limits - but it's not our job to be controlling.*

If we are controlling our children's behaviour are we doing so with the best intentions.  If a child behaves inappropriately do you think it calls for consequences or, more appropriately, an opportunity for teaching, a working with response as opposed to doing to.  A punishment approach is one of power over your children, of making them suffer, how is that going to help a child to know what is appropriate.  If we find so much of what our children do and/or say unacceptable and we tell them so, often, then surely this will lead them to feel that they at unacceptable as a person, people do not get better at dealing with unhappiness because they were deliberately made unhappy when they were younger.  Too much criticism and disapproval is soul destroying and is likely to stop any attempts to try anything.

When we make children obey by force, threats or punishments, we make them feel helpless. They can't stand feeling helpless, so they provoke another confrontation to prove they still have power.  And where do they learn to use that power?  From us.*

To treat and speak to our children as we would wish to be treated and spoken to requires us to step outside our own viewpoint and to consider how the world looks to them.  If you tend to dismiss people with whom you disagree are you not leaping to make incorrect assumptions.  When we learn  more this can help us to build a picture below the surface rather than just looking at the behaviour as a snapshot, but our mind has to be open to the information and receive it without judgement.

* Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn

We have been mainly.......

doing lots of different things this week, days out at home and catching up with friends.

On Monday we headed off into the local town early.  We needed to be back for lunch as some friends were joining us.  We found some great books in the library including one by Oliver Jeffers called Stuck, whereby a little boy throws stuff into a tree to free a stuck kite.  A bit of a modern day tale really, throwing stuff at a problem in an attempt to sort it out without really thinking it through, hmm I can think of many people I worked with in my past life who were like that.  It is a really funny book we have had this one and many others by this author from the library and we love them.  We made it back for lunch and our friends arrived just before us and used the key I left out to let themselves in.  We ate lunch together and the children had a lovely play together whilst the adults sat and chatted, a perfect afternoon.  It was lovely that the girls once again played together rather than alongside each other, I know it can take time when they are little but they seem to have really hit it off and my youngest was sorry when her little friend had to leave and go home.  She has been asking all week when we are going to see them again.

On Tuesday we headed off for our regular play date, we gave a lift to another family who we had not seen for weeks it was great to catch up in the car on the way.  Unfortunately our day was not all a good one as it usually is.  Last time we had been to their house, before we went away, there had been some different children there.  They had changed the dynamics amongst the children to a point that my eldest was uncomfortable with.  They were there again but this time my eldest became really distressed at one point and kept asking to go home.   I was happy to, if that is what he wanted but it meant taking the family we had given a lift to too.  It took ages to locate their child and by then the children who were causing his distress had gone home anyway.  One of these children had also accused him of hitting her.  I tried to establish the facts but was unable to, the child making the accusation kept telling me wildly different things that happened so I was unsure what had happened.  I was later informed of another accusation by the same child that had been completely made up.  I was very saddened by the whole situation.  For my own child who was left confused and bewildered by what had happened, but visibly relaxed when he realised they had gone home so he decided to stay, and sad because if a child had been heard making up an accusation what are they feeling to be saying such things.  Talking to my eldest about it later he told me that he did not understand the game they were playing or what they were asking him to do and he felt like they were making fun of him.

The next two days we spent at home.  I was still really tired after my busy couple of weeks and hoped for some quiet time at home to recharge.  For reasons that I still cannot fathom they were a horrible couple of days.  The children could not seem to get on or settle to anything, I was really tired and craving peace and my husband was away.  It was beautiful weather but I did not want to be outside.  On Thursday afternoon knowing that I would be at home again the next day if I did not plan otherwise I decided that we would go out for the day on Friday.  I thought through a few possibilities and presented them to my eldest for him to choose.  It made that afternoon and evening a lot more bearable.

So on Friday we headed out for a long day out to this place which you can read about here.  In retrospect, hindsight is a wonderful thing, it was too far for the day.  If we visit again I will stay in the area and visit other places too.

Over the weekend I was meant to assessing a D of E Expedition on my own and leaving the children with my husband.  In the end he was delayed returning to this country so I ended up, at very short notice, taking them with me on the Saturday when I had a day to remember or forget depending on your perspective!  Sunday I was alone and gladly so as I was really busy.  It was great to do some walking on my own again and enjoy some rare peace and quiet waiting for the groups to arrive.  I have not walked up or down hill so fast in ages.  I am looking forward to a calmer week.....

Dependency

At the start of our life we are totally dependent on adults to look after us. We need milk, preferably from mama, to nourish and sustain us and we need contact and warmth to keep us safe and secure. We continue this dependency for many years although the level diminishes the older we get. As adults we continue to need and want people around us our friends and families to maintain those feelings of safety and security though contact. The dependency of our children is an intense relationship, one which in some cultures around the world is still shared. In our now fractured society it is, usually, the mother who bears this responsibility for most, if not all, of the time. She no longer has a network of extended family, her own parents or in laws, aunties, uncles or cousins or other unrelated members of her community to help with the child care and looking after the home. This intensity requires the care giver to be an emotionally strong person, to be able to carry on with little sleep or rest, to put her needs last at all times. If we have not received this level of care and attention ourselves we also, therefore, have not had the opportunity to learn these skills.

In most families, when a child is around the age of two, conflict can set in. At this age the child is starting to find their place in the world, they are exploring and testing all the time. We can be conditioned by our own upbringing and therefore experience to try to restrain this, to fight it, to bring the child in line with your own beliefs. What we should really be doing is providing them with a safe and secure haven from which to go out and learn and come back to. Sadly, in most families this is the start of a journey of conflict which continues until the child leaves the family home many years later and the cycle is then repeated.

A child who is not given the level of care and contact they need does not feel safe and secure. They learn to be independent for the wrong reasons, as they cannot depend on the adults around them to meet their needs. They become unable to trust, they become compliant or aggressive to gain attention for the care and contact that they long for and are not recieving.

Bringing up a child is an intense relationship, which changes over time. If you are trying to do this as a small family unit, mother, father and child(ren) the insensity is even greater. We no longer live in extended families in my society and in most across the world, so we need to find a replacement. Many find this in friendships forged over a common bond of parenthood. This in itself is a maze to be navigated, finding parents with the same views on parenting as yourself. As we no longer live within a community for life with several generations together, each generation becoming parents has lost this vital support network and goes it alone.

Being alone in an intense dependent relationship with your child(ren) is not a good place to be but is where most of us find ourselves. According to this interesting article we have evolved as co-operative breeders. So if you are having a bad day with your child(ren), be gentle with yourself.

Conflict

I wonder how many times you have heard parents or adults say to children be nice, play nicely or be good. I also wonder how many of these folks have thought about what they are actually saying to the child. What do we actually mean when we say be nice, play nicely or be good. How can a child and further more a very young child know what being nice, playing nicely or being good actually means in practice.

Words like this are often said to a child when they are in conflict with another child(ren). To my mind it is far more useful and relevant to a child's development and growth to talk to them about what is going on and use words that will help the child to learn for themselves how to resolve conflict. We can find out what has happened, we need to gain both sides of the story, even if we were a witness this is important as we can never know how another person experiences a situation. We can then use expressions such as what could you do next, what can you do to resolve this and let the children sort it out for themselves rather than taking over and doing it for them.

I have found that the less I interfere in conflict between my children, the quicker they are now resolving this for themselves. If they come and ask for help or they clearly are not resolving things for themselves I do offer advice, but I don't take over and resolve the situation for them.

In my working life I found conflict with colleagues the hardest aspect of work to deal with probably, I now realise, because I did not build a skill set to deal with this as a child. The world we live in is, sadly, full of conflict it is important then that we give our children the opportunity to build and develop these skills when they are young.

To go back to what I mentioned at the beginning about the meaning of the phrases so often used, be nice, play nicely and be good. I would interpret them to mean if you do this, I (as the adult saying it) will think that you are good and love you for it, don't obey me and I will think worse of you and withhold my love or punish you. Not only is a child bewildered about what is being said to them, but doubly so by your reaction when they do not obey your commands.