06/02/2023
An interesting take on parenting and maybe one that avoids the usual judgemental pitfalls? There's something that sounds right about it, but also something that's kind of clawing at my brain. What do people think?
We did this, and my kids turned out….
Parenting is rife with claims of causation. ‘We didn’t allow our kids screens, and so they love reading books and do really well at school’. ‘We took them camping from birth, and so they love going on long walks and climbing mountains’. Even ‘We’ve been gentle parents since birth and so it’s never occurred to them to hit other people’.
All said, no doubt, in innocence. These parents really do believe that they’ve created these behaviours and attitudes in their children, by their parenting practices.
And so they are seemingly deaf to the judgemental flip side of these statements. Usually unspoken but there nonetheless. ‘Maybe your child hits because you weren’t gentle enough’, ‘Maybe your child hates school because you bought her an iPad’ or ‘Maybe your child won’t leave the house because you haven’t insisted on enough camping’. Sometimes they say cheerily ‘We just don’t give them the option!’ as if you told your kids that one option in life was to be unhappy at school, or not to enjoy walks in nature.
Some parents get kids who fall in with their expectations, and so they can happily go through life, thinking that it was all down to them. They showed the children what they expected, and the children complied.
Then there are other parents whose children defy their expectations. Who make it clear right from early on that parenting is something which children allow - or don’t allow - their parents to do to them. Who show their parents that children make parents as much as parents make children.
These children sometimes turn their parents’ lives upside down. All the assumptions they had are swept aside. It turns out that the neatly planned out life with the children happily skipping to the local school will not be happening, and instead you’re on a different path, one which you have to chart for yourself. The road maps don’t apply. Annoyingly, others will frequently ask you why you didn’t just stick to the original blueprint and take life easy. To which you can only sigh and wonder if they really want to know.
Parenting isn’t something you do to children. It’s something you do with children. It happens in the relationship and the children have as big a part to play as the adults. The parents who are lucky enough to have children who show them this find it out, and they discover that it’s time to question everything.
And that’s when the magic starts. When a child arrives who challenges everything their parents had thought to be true - and the parents step up to the challenge.
Photo Juliane Lieberman, under Unsplash.
