Parenting Philosophy Toolbox, Part 8

(This is part 8 of a series. To see the the first part, click here.)

8. Be creative. This is often a challenge for parents. We spend so much time becoming "grown-ups" and giving up on childish pleasures. We work hard to get organized and maintain regular schedules. We emphasize intellectualism and crave reason.

Then we have children--and we are totally at a loss for how to deal with them! We wonder why they do things that make no sense. We simply get to a point, somewhere along the line, in which we can no longer sympathize with the joy of riding a merry-go-round. Seriously, I used to love those things, but since my son started enjoying them, I have discovered that my adoration of the merry-go-round has been replaced by discomfort when I feel the loss of control and head-spinning craziness that whirling about in circles induces. Kids LOVE that stuff. Adults...not so much.

In order to get in tune with how children experience the world, we have to go back and try to remember what it was like being young. With more and more people waiting longer to have children, this only becomes more challenging. The boring adult rut is tough to bust out of, but to truly relate to a child, we have to walk a mile in shoes that are way too small for us now. Which just looks ridiculous--yet that's actually part of what we need to do. We need to embrace a level of silly that helps us connect with our children.

I didn't know I had lost my touch. I had retained it for a long time, even up until about halfway through my 20s. But by the time my son Jackson became a toddler, something was very different in me, and I felt I had to relearn old ways of relating to children. Thankfully he has developed some small level of patience and understanding that sometimes Mommy and Daddy are a little dense about certain "obvious" concepts.

For example, when Jackson was 12 months old, he began behaving very strangely in relation to food. He would be quite clearly hungry, but lacking verbal skills, he simply could not articulate to us why it was that he was refusing to eat food that he obviously wanted to ingest. Out of desperation, we began to try to discover what would appease him. Andrew and I learned a LOT about toddlers from this sort of behavior. Why didn't Jackson eat his food? He was learning about lids. He wanted to take the lid off his baby food and put it back on. Between EVERY bite. EVERY time. For MONTHS.

Sure, we could have argued. We could have tried to tell him he was being ridiculous. But truly, had we forced him to get upset over something so trivial and easily accommodated as covering and uncovering his food between bites, who is the more ridiculous? He was asserting power in his largely powerless life. He was developing fine motor skills. He was learning about his environment. And more than that, he was eating without a fight.

Being creative with your interactions with your child can help in numerous ways. Say your child is hungry. You're on your way home to get food but have run out of food with you in the car. She's upset because she wants food and keeps asking for it, but no matter how much sense you try to use to reassure her that you understand she is hungry and that you are making strides toward acquiring sustenance, all she can focus on is the sensation in her belly. Crack the window. Talk about the wind. Sing a silly song. Point out words that she's been learning: "Look! Trees! Bicycle! Running! Ambulance! School bus!" The important part of this, of course, is that you first acknowledge the desires expressed by your child and reassure her that you are actively working to resolve the sensations in her belly--then you can try a distractionary technique.

Kid won't eat something you call broccoli? Call it a little tree. Want your child to learn about road safety as a pedestrian? Teach him about the Road Fairy/Ferry who has to be with him to help make sure there aren't any cars coming. He asks for a banana and refuses to eat it? Get him into a silly place and call it the Banana Zone.

It's okay for kids to splash in puddles once in a while. It's okay for them to treat curbs as balance beams. It's okay for them to do silly things and for you to join them. But remember: if you do it once, they will expect you to do it again. And again. And again. Begging may be involved. Whining as well, if you do not bend sufficiently to allow the game to happen again. So whatever you allow, whatever silliness or creative game you decide to play, consider whether or not it's one you'd be willing to do with any sort of regularity. If it's any kind of success, your child will want to repeat the fun time with Mommy and/or Daddy.

Also if your child has some issues that need resolving, be they significant (traumatic event) or minor (afraid of monsters under the bed), you may want to consider flipping through a copy of Dr. Lawrence Cohen's book Playful Parenting. I acknowledge that his writing could be better organized than it is, but for those looking for some ideas on where to start, it's a place to go. Dr. Cohen is a child psychologist who uses play as a form of therapy to help children recover from incidents ranging from violent behaviors to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to a fear of riding on swings. He describes play as many researchers today do, which is the main form of learning for children, particularly through about age 7. Play is how they study the world around them, how they make sense of what they perceive, and therefore play is the most critical aspect of childhood as well as the most educational.

The main thing for you as a parent is that you connect with your child. So you have to get down on the child's level. Get on the floor and roll around. Pretend to be a train or an elephant. Make silly noises and encourage your child to copy them or make up his own for you to repeat. Discuss ridiculous hypothetical situations with your older child (e.g. What would happen if you launched a water balloon into space? Whose house would it land on?). Life can be fun if we allow it to be so. Be creative, and enjoy more of life as a parent.

Parenting Philosophy Toolbox, Part 7

(This is part 7 of a series. To see the the first part, click here.)

7. Raise the child(ren) you have. Every child is unique, so parent to that child, and trust your instincts. Some children are petite and perpetually "too small"; some are too tall and heavy before they can take full advantage of playthings designed for kids in their age group. Some develop social skills faster; others focus on expanding physical development first. Some children follow growth charts precisely, and others continually yo-yo above and below the expected growth curve projections.

Some children are rambunctious and excited about life. Others are more sedate and prefer calmer activities. Some have great propensities for focusing attention while their peers are incapable of focusing seemingly at all. Some children have developmental abnormalities that prevent them from following the normal growth schemes they might otherwise have managed.

There are very few things that we can unequivocally state apply to all children other than that they are young. Even siblings, even so-called "identical" siblings, can be radically different from one another in temperament, personal preferences, physical talents, and viewpoints on the world. One child may be mild-mannered and inclined to follow the directions provided by a parent or other caregiver; another child may be wild and rebellious, prefer to lead rather than follow, and prone to violence when a parent or caregiver does not bend accordingly to the child's mandates. These two disparate children may be reared in the same home, by the same parents, and yet demonstrate wildly different characters.

Often, however, what you will find is that each child has a blending of personalities within him, sparring at any given moment for which shall be expressed. Is today the day he will be complacent? Or is today the day to tantrum like a wild beast when mommy leaves him at daycare? Will he cheerfully agree to consume what is offered for lunch? Or will he demand something other than what was prepared for him and refuse to eat unless his "request" is satisfied.

So, when I say that you need to parent to the child you have, I don't mean even just the child you prefer to have when she is well-behaved--I mean the child you have in the moment. We've already covered that children are in constant flux, ever-changing. Once you can accept that she is a developing individual, you can then focus on the individual she is being and your role in parenting her.

Tune into your child. Is he standing on the table wanting you to yell at him to get down? (Yes, this is a game my son occasionally initiates.) Consider what he would be feeling in order to ask you to "get him in trouble." Typically, children want our attention. They want to know that we recognize things that are important to them. They want our validation, our love, and our play. When we (for example) do not take enough time to focus on him, the child will often try to enforce his need for attention by getting it any way he can. Cue the toddler standing on the table shouting happily, "Get down!" He knows he will get into trouble for it (thus parroting our usual admonishment for the action) and may even understand that it's because Mommy and Daddy fear he will fall and become injured. What he wants may be to demonstrate his prowess in table-standing; but what it also shows, when I have the presence of mind to recognize it with Jackson, is that he is feeling neglected. Sure, I can be feeding him, providing toys for him, but if I'm not engaged, if he does not feel that he has my full attention and eye contact, we get games like "Get down!"

Being in the same room is not enough. Children need to feel special. They need to know that when they need some emotional fuel, they can fill up at the parental station. Dr. Harvey Karp refers to this as Feeding the Meter. Dr. Lawrence Cohen calls it Filling the Cup. Either way, it amounts to the same thing: your child needs a piece of you to feel whole. When interpersonal connections are continually denied to her, eventually she will turn elsewhere to try to refuel her emotional lows--and it may be a path you'd prefer she doesn't follow.

One thing you need to recognize is that your child is effectively the same as a child born 200 or 2,000 or perhaps even 10,000 years ago. So just because you, as an adult, understand certain realities of the world, you cannot expect your child to instantaneously grasp all the developments of technology and societal interaction that have come into play throughout the entire history of humanity. You need to recognize that you are raising a savage.

Dr. Harvey Karp talks in his book, The Happiest Toddler on the Block (which I highly recommend), about how toddlers are effectively primitive people. When you watch your child with the idea in mind that you are raising a caveman or cavewoman, suddenly many things that were puzzling or aggravating before can become easier to comprehend. Why does your young child act so feral? Well, because...she is! It takes a long time to civilize a human being. I believe it is for this reason that we do not grant people rights as adults, who are theoretically capable of making informed and rational decisions, until a certain age is achieved. We have a lot of mistake-making and learning to do before we can comprehend the rules in place in the world around us.

So, when you feel like your child is pushing you, testing your limits, that's exactly what he's doing. And it's his job to do it. It's your job as a parent to let him know what those limits are.

It's also your job to recognize that your child is an individual, not a statistical normal distribution of data points. Maybe you see your daughter speaking a little later than her friends. Maybe your son takes seemingly forever to potty train. Maybe your older child struggles to learn spelling and how to sit still in school. These are developmental milestones that cannot be forced and that every child (excepting those with specific developmental disorders) will learn in time.

The phrase, "Why can't you be more like _____?" comes to your lips. And there it should be swallowed, choked back, and maybe a glass of water drunk to dilute it in your stomach. Do not allow yourself or your partner to constantly compare your child to other children. Growing up is not a competition, though sometimes (particularly in the first 3 years) it can seem like it in our culture that obsesses over intellect and ability. After all, your child needs to grow and develop as an individual before intellect and ability have any usefulness in life--so treat her as the individual she is and cherish her for it.

Therefore, if your child needs nap time at noon and his friends nap at 2, then give him his nap at noon. If he wants to eat his banana in the specially designated Banana Zone, then let him, and enjoy his assertiveness and willingness to engage you in a game of his own making--as well as a chance for him to still feel powerful despite eating healthy food. Do not concern yourself with the opinions of others when you know best how to treat your child. If he's too young to hold still for an hour while you go out to eat, then let him have some time to roam so that when the meal is there, he can use his calmness reserves to eat before dashing off on some new adventure. Do not allow the (perceived or imagined) negative judgments by others to stop you from doing right by your child.

I'm giving you permission to be the parent your child needs you to be. I grant you permission to let loose with laughter. I absolve you of any indignity that rolling around on the floor with your child may provide you. If your hair is not perfectly coiffed, if your clothes are often covered in baby spit up or fresh smears of snot or cheese stains, if you wear comfy house clothes to the grocery store, you are not a lesser person. You're a parent with your priorities in order. And being a parent, you are making what we all hope to be a valuable contribution to the future, so any efforts you make on behalf of your children, we all appreciate.

Raise the children that you have. Take care of yourself, but remember what's most important: family. Your child's happiness is more important than the smirk the bagger boy gets on his face because he saw you yesterday in the same outfit. Whose smile deserves more attention? Your daughter who wears her princess costume to the grocery store with you; that's who.