Recently, I was chatting with a friend who described moments of her life with young children as “short circuiting.” As a remarkable therapist and general wonderful solver of adult problems, she expressed great frustration with not really knowing how to apply the same logic or skills when her little ones started — ahem — “behaving” in a particular way. She told me that she has read and read and read, but in each new situation, she starts to react in a way that she thinks is right only for it to feel wrong.
“I just need to trust my instincts,” she said. “But that doesn’t work either.”
I honestly believe that we all feel like this from time to time – sometimes more, sometimes less – on any given day. I certainly do. For me, the struggle is having had “lots of experience with children” as a Montessori teacher and lifetime babysitter and nanny before that. I actually thought that because of those training wheels that parenting would be a cakewalk. Ha!
(Take a minute to laugh at my expense. Go ahead.)
But if, after those moments of short circuiting a la “nothing is working!!!!!! What the hell am I supposed to be doing with these children??” I can manage to turn my rational brain back on, I often reflect on what I would have done had I been in the same situation as a teacher with children other than my own. Sometimes you gotta kick at the dark until it bleeds daylight.
And that daylight is usually quite simple: we do not negotiate with toddlers. Or anyone under the age of six, for that matter. At the end of the day, somebody has to be the parent, even if this means that the kids are crying or tantrummy or sulking or even — gasp — unhappy with the outcome.
My experience as a parent living in a community of other wonderful, loving, grounded, and like-minded parents of young children is that we are erring en masse to appease our children. It’s like we are trying to minimize the blast radius of our kids’ reactions, but in so doing, we are making matters worse and prolonging our collective misery. The reality is that we are (mostly) rational, grown-up thinkers. We can value democracy in our families, but it is still up to us to guide the ship.
Again, it’s up to us to be the parent.
The marvelous Barbara Coloroso describes parenting styles in three ways depicting how we do this: the jellyfish (laissez faire, little consistency), the brick wall (my way or the highway… or else), and the backbone (firm and supportive, while maintaining flexibility). Spoiler alert: you want to aim for backbone parenting.
As a backbone parent, you set out clear limits and boundaries that work for your family, and you enforce those with kindness and consistency. When something feels like it isn’t working, you re-evaluate your family’s needs and may adjust those limits accordingly. You offer a choice in things that are age appropriate for your children to choose from (the white shirt or the blue one? An apple or an orange for your snack?”) and make the tougher decisions on your own (hint: school attendance is not up to your four-year-old). Backbone parents show their kids to do right for its’ own sake (rather than for the reward or discipline that could follow), and always follow through. The loveliest well-rounded children I’ve met in my life came from families with at least one backbone parent.
So how we do stop the insanity of letting our kids run the ship? Embrace your inner pirate and just jump on board. Go ahead and take the wheel. Stop asking permission from your kids. Trust that you are going to do what is right for your family at the time.
Use natural consequences to your advantage and as valuable teaching tools for your children. Then stop engaging: we over-talk at our kids so much. Just make the decision and follow through. (You better believe they heard you the first time, but being the master manipulators that they are, they just want to test and test and test and see if they can annoy persuade you into changing your mind. And they learn quickly what does and does not work.)
And know that there are umpteen thousands of people, just like you, going through the same ups and downs, all figuring it out as we go. If it’s perhaps a particularly tough time, look into having that backbone booked into an hour-long massage.
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