 |
| Image credit: Photo by Laura Burlton on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons |
When my daughter was about a year old -- not yet able to talk or to walk across a room without plopping on her bottom -- I was out grocery shopping with her. By the end of the (too long) trip, she was squirming in the child seat in the front of the cart as I tried to pay for the groceries. The clerk looked at her and said, "You need to tell your child sit still." When my son, sat still for several hours straight at a wedding, reading books at around age two, guests at the wedding remarked, "Now you are raising that boy right. It's good to see such wonderful parents." When my son started a longer school day with a new special ed teacher and was sliding out of his seat at school and lying on the floor, the principal said, "You need to tell him he can't do that and get him to stop." When my daughter started school, the teacher said, "It's wonderful that you've taught her to be so polite and well behaved."
The message I've gotten all my life about parenting is that my children's behavior is my responsibility: that I will receive the accolades when they are "good," and that it is my job as a parent to change them when their behavior is "bad." Codependent parenting -- focusing on controlling and changing others to fit what makes you comfortable -- is (according to the way I hear the world) something to be applauded. However, I've found as I work on my own codependency and recovery that I'm not the best person I can be when I'm focusing on how to change someone else, including my own children. So, it's a constant and conscious struggle for me to help my children learn to live in the world without being either too controlling or too detached.
A few weeks ago, my daughter had a stomach flu. After her symptoms stopped, she continued to be whiny and clingy for several days, and was tired and fussy at the end of a long first day back to school. Of course, I came down with her stomach flu shortly after she did, and was feeling cranky and exhausted at the end of it myself. As I worked to fix dinner, she began crying and requesting that I pick up the doll that was right next to her hand and give it to her. Yep. I was supposed to stop making dinner, walk out of the kitchen and into the living room, pick up the doll that was two inches from her hand and give it to her. She was "too tired" to do it herself. When I said no, she (in spite of not having enough strength to pick up the doll sitting next to her), ran into the kitchen and started pulling on my clothes and wailing for me to do what she asked, NOW.
So, my mind went to its usual critical place, "I'm a bad parent because I have not taught my daughter not to do things like this yet. If I were better at parenting and discipline, my five-year-old would be acting perfectly, and not (God!) like a whiny, cranky, tired five-year-old." Then I stopped for a minute and thought, "Ok, forget the past. If I'm going to be a better parent, I need to figure out what I want to teach her here. What am I trying to teach her?"
Then I answered myself (because, yes, I do have whole conversations with myself in my mind, and sometimes even out loud), "I need her to learn that she can't grab people and pull on them. I need to teach her that it is not ok to yell at people. I need to get her to understand that when I say no, I mean no. We've been over and over this, and I'm as consistent with appropriate disciplinary techniques as I can be, but she never, ever seems to change!"
Then my inner recovery voice tsk tsked me, "You're focusing on her and how to change her. You know you can't change people."
"But that's my job and responsibility as a parent: to teach her right from wrong, to help her learn to respect other people, to get her to stop acting like this. I don't get it. I'm supposed to change her, but I'm not supposed to change her."
"Focus on you."
"Focus on me. Focus on me. What do I want her to learn? Focus on me... Um... I want her to learn from how I handle the situation!"
"Good, so..."
"I want her to learn that she can say no. I want her to learn that it's ok for her to have boundaries and it's ok for her to do what she needs to do to take care of herself. I want her to learn that she doesn't have to tolerate people hitting her or yelling at her, even if she loves them. So, to teach her that, I need to take care of myself and enforce my boundaries regardless of what she chooses to do right now."
"And?"
"I have to let go of the outcome. I am loving her and guiding her as best I can. If I don't know how to teach her something right now, I don't know. I'm working on it, and if I never figure it out, I still tried the best I could. Likewise, if she can't figure out what I want her to learn yet, it's not the end of the world. There are plenty of opportunities in life for learning and there are plenty of people she can learn from. And if she never learns, she was doing the best she could. We're both human and imperfect. I have to let go of the fear that every tantrum she has means I've screwed her up for life and she'll grow up repeating our family's same dysfunctional patterns and pain. She may or she may not, but we're all doing the best we can to break that cycle. Wow."
"Yeah, wow. And yay!"
Since that day, dealing with my kids hasn't been perfect (and I don't expect it to ever be), but it's helped me, both in my recovery and my parenting, to focus on what I need to show them in the way I handle situations rather than how I can change them by the way I handle situations. Now, if I could just let go of my anxiety about being told that I'm doing it wrong and that old familiar codependent parenting is a good thing, I'd be all set...
This post was originally published at The Second Road.
1 comments: