What do you really want for your children? Week 3

I am blogging a book about parenting with Krista at The Silent K and a group of other interested and interesting bloggers. This is the third week.

So tell me what you want what you really really want
I’ll tell you what I want what I really really want
I wanna (uh) I wanna (uh) I wanna (uh) I wanna really really really wanna zigazig ha.

That’s not really relevant but it was playing in my head. And now it’s playing in yours.

Krista of the Silent K has suggested that we blog about Chapter 2 for two weeks in a row, to give other readers and bloggers a chance to catch up. I’m glad because I have a lot to write about.

I want my children to value themselves.

This is the heading of the second chapter. It’s not really arguable. Of course I do. I value them. I want the world to value them. And I want them to perceive themselves as valuable. How they will get there is more mysterious.

It is true that the labels we earn in our families stick to us. I was the emotionally unstable one, the sensitive one, the shy one, the reader, the hider, the asthmatic. Then one day (long after I left home) I sat up and said, wait a minute — I’m actually pretty level-headed! And not that quiet (at least not when there’s a chance to dance). I don’t have to carry on being the resident loony. And so I changed how I picture myself.

Thing is, I was sensitive, prone to tears, shy, a reader, asthmatic. I liked to hide. I was moody, socially awkward and geeky. The labels I had weren’t wrong. They were just limiting and kept me being something long after I had outgrown it.

I don’t think it’s wrong to see your children for who they are, even while trying not to label them. The point is to remember to keep watching them and see how they change. And some labels are productive — I was also the theatrical child, the dancer, the thinker, the dreamer. These are labels too, but they made me feel proud.

See, I disagree with Dyer that we should praise children for being what we want them to become. It is no good telling a child who is struggling with math that they’re a “mathematical whiz just waiting to happen.” That child is going to seriously doubt your grip on reality. We all have strengths and weaknesses and it is no shame to acknowledge where we need work. It is not self-denigrating to say “I find math tough but I’m going to stick with it. I’m good at sticking with it.” Self-worth does not come from thinking you’re the tops but rather to accept (and here Dyer has it right) that you, whatever you are, whatever your talents and failings, are okay just the way you are.

That makes me think of Mr. Rogers.

You are my friend
You are special
You are my friend
You’re special to me

So yes, we need to praise our children. We need not to call them names, not put them down, not hold them back. But we also need to see them clearly. They are (and again, I sort of disagree with Dyer here) in some ways proto-adults. Their brains are still developing and will be developing for some time to come — the prefrontal cortex doesn’t finish up until your late teens early twenties and that’s the bit responsible for self-control. So while we should definitely treat children with the respect we’d offer any other human, we do, as their adults, have a job and if that means we have to sometimes say — do it because I said so — that’s okay, dammit. There’s no bloody time to explain that you have to get back on the sidewalk dear, because a big bus is coming and Keanu Reeves is driving and looking panicked which is, oh my sainted aunt, not a good sign. You come here right now! Because I’m your mother and I SAID SO. And maybe I’ll explain later why it’s not a good idea to try and joke with crazy drunks on the street and maybe I won’t. Just come here and be quiet because I said so.

This bit of latitude is what we earn by having to cook their supper and wash their clothes and mop up their mucus and wipe their bottoms and stay patient when they are whining to be allowed just one more go Mummy. Waaaah. Come here. Because I said so.

Similar Posts:

• Why does Daniel look so happy?
• Boxes
• School days, daze, haze, craze, maze – oh whatever.