Parenting with Respect

I’ve been reading the book Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason lately. It’s really got me thinking about the way I live my life. As parents, we all do our best to be the best possible parents we can be. We take the advice we come across and make of it what we can. It’s been an interesting journey for me. It really made me think.

When it comes to kids, I’ve kind of been missing the mark on what I intend to do. I get so frustrated sometimes. It’s far easier to think of my kids as being willful or bratty at times than to look beneath all of that to find out what the real problem is. In the moment when my daughter is wailing like a banshee, my middle son pooped in his underwear for the fifth time that week, and my littlest is throwing a fit over every little thing anyone does in his presence, it’s challenging to step back and look at the underlying problems. It’s so much easier to punish them and send them off to their rooms. They’re being bad and they really need to stop before Mommy blows a gasket. Can you blame me? Hasn’t everyone hit that wall? It’s the point where you’re so frustrated, wound up, and irritable that it seems like nothing you can do will ever stop the fighting, bickering, and general chaos. It’s that point where it’s so much easier to just do something to make them regret ever acting that way and be done with it.

This is kind of how it’s been. I’ve had to get used to constant bouts of “willful behavior” every time my oldest two’s father enters the scene. It started with his deployments to Iraq, but things got no better after he got back. There’s just something about his presence that completely undid much of my hard work. It was frustrating, and eventually lead me to turn from being the parent I wanted to be.


While he was gone on his first deployment I’d picked up Unconditional Parenting and How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. I’d gone through them and started to work on some of the strategies proposed. It didn’t take long before my “willful”, stubborn, and outright challenging daughter started to show a very different face. She was fun to be around. We enjoyed having talks (even though I have to admit I didn’t spend near as much time with her as I probably should have). We were really able to connect. With all the other stresses in my life, I couldn’t manage to do much with her for more than an hour or two during the day, but I was making steady efforts to up my game and involve her in my life as much as I could, as long as I could tolerate before the constant questions started to drive me into madness. With very little support and a baby in the house, giving her the attention she needed was daunting, but I did the best I could. By the time my husband got back those two hours of time spent with a curious four-year-old didn’t seem quite so much like torture. She was actually listening to what I had to say, and the more we actually engaged each other in conversation, the better things started to be.

Unfortunately, that all changed when Daddy came home. He wasn’t at all supportive of the idea of parenting with unconditional love. When the kids were bad they need to be punished, and severely. He took almost a “scared straight” approach to parenting. He’d always encouraged me to use things like, “Your Daddy is going to be very upset with you if you don’t stop (insert name of bad behavior).” I was supposed to threaten them with Daddy’s love, even though he wasn’t there. It might have been different if they both got more love and affection from him while he was there, but he was very distant and lived by the mentality that children were to be seen and not heard. It very much appeared as though children were an inconvenience to his life at best. It was frustrating and the power struggles between my daughter and her father drove me insane. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with her when he wasn’t around because all the positive strategies I was trying to use went right out the window when he walked in the door. I was being too soft on the kids, so he said, and they needed stronger discipline. I was far too permissive. They needed to do exactly as they were told at all times, end of story.

In the time that he and I have been separated, we’ve been through a lot of trying situations. It seems like no one I’ve surrounded myself with understands the concepts of what I’m going for. I keep hearing, “You can’t let them get away with that!” and “Your kids walk all over you!” In a lot of these cases, an honest look at the situation makes me wonder what’s so wrong with it. When my kids get up in the morning I’m often met with my daughter waking me up to ask for breakfast. I’m honestly at the point where I’m ready to tell her to stop asking me and just go make it if she’s hungry. I try to get up when they do, but I’ll admit it’s not easy. Some days I just want to lounge in bed and listen to them go about their morning routine without being involved. The door to my room is always open, so I can hear if there’s trouble, and if they need me they can just come right in. That’s kind of my way of allowing myself the freedom to enjoy my slow start in the mornings, because I know how I tend to be. They come and ask a million questions. They want to play with their toys in the living room where all the people are. They like eating what they want off their plate, and while I don’t enjoy wasting food, I don’t believe in forcing kids to eat something they just don’t like.  I don't see what's so wrong with all of this.  In some cases, like not letting them shower for hours, it's understandable.  Water is expensive and we're in the middle of a drought, so I don't really want to be spending a small fortune on the water bill.  That money would do better to go to something for the kids or the house.  Aside from that, if they're hungry, shouldn't they eat?  If they've got a question, shouldn't they ask it?  If they want to learn, shouldn't they have every resource that's available to them?  Most of all, what's so wrong with just wanting to spend time with and play around the people that they love?  Isn't that a healthy behavior?

Looking at how most children are raised I'm starting to realize that our culture is heavily based on "no" and exiling children.  As child-friendly as America claims to be, I keep hearing reports daily about how restaurants want to ban children, airlines are banning children from first class, and grocery stores are talking about restricting the hours children can be present.  This doesn't tell me our culture is child-oriented or even child-friendly.  It tells me that our children are a hassle and an inconvenience.  I can't count the number of times I've heard parents tell their children, "Just go to your room and play!"  The same goes for telling them things like, "Stop hovering!"  My personal favorite is, "Stop bugging me!"  Inquisitive children are told to stop asking so many questions.  Children are sent away so adults can hold conversations without a million interruptions.  When they're disobedient they're punished, even if it is as gentle as "time-out".  More often than I see loving affection, consideration, and joy from parents who are out with their kids, it's often chastising, criticisms, and threats.  It's sickening!  What's most sickening of all is I've noticed I've done it too.

What kills me most about this is it seems to go against everything we want for our kids.  We want them to grow up to be respectful, creative, innovative adults that are truly capable of accomplishing what they want in life, but all too often they're not getting what they need out of the way they're raised.  Let's face it, if you were a kid in time-out your thoughts are likely not going to be, "Maybe I shouldn't do that next time."  No, it's more often something akin to, "My mom's so mean!  This is so unfair!"  Another common thought, one of my personal favorites when I was a child, "How can I do that next time without getting caught?  The way I see it, that was my only real mistake."  That doesn't show me that my actions are wrong, that I'm hurting other people, or that whatever I did doesn't serve my own greatest good.  Instead I was often taught the important lesson of being crafty and outwitting my parents.  Is that really the kind of lesson I want to teach my kids?

Earlier on this blog I was reviewing the book Setting Limits with Your Strong-Willed Child : Eliminating Conflict by Establishing Clear, Firm, and Respectful Boundaries.  While it did have a lot of good advice on stopping conflict, and fast, it seemed to miss the point of raising children.  The choices suggested to be offered weren't real choices.  ("You can turn the television off now or I can turn it off for you.")  It failed to address the fact that children act this way for a reason.  They're not testing you to see where their limits are when they do things they shouldn't.  Instead they're acting out for a reason.  Perhaps the little girl in their example of blowing bubbles in her cup wasn't just doing it to see what her parents would do.  Perhaps there was something going on in the family's life and she suddenly felt she wasn't getting the attention she needs.  Maybe there's a new baby in the house and she feels a little neglected.  What about the possibility that she doesn't understand how annoying her activity is and thinks she's just "doing science" as we've started putting it in our house.  Maybe she just wanted to watch the interesting reaction and helping her to understand why she shouldn't be doing that sort of thing will help her "make the right choice" next time.  Many of the examples of limit setting are respectful on the outside, but will still set your family up for additional conflict over time.  It doesn't teach children that their parents are there for them.  It doesn't teach children that they can come to their parents with anything without having to risk "being in trouble".  Instead it teaches them that their parents are the boss.  "What I say goes or I'll punch you in the nose," as my parents used to jokingly say.  Is that really what we're going for here?

I can only hope that when my kids are older I've been able to foster enough of a respectful, caring environment with my kids that they are comfortable talking to me, even if I'm not going to like what they have to say.  I hope that we can have open communication and a good understanding of why I put my foot down on the things I do.  I hope I can raise my kids to make the right decisions for themselves, not because it's what I want them to do.  Most importantly, I don't want my kids to be surrounded by a world of no only to go haywire when they finally do get that one yes.  Most importantly, I want them to know that they're loved for who they are, no matter how bad they mess up and how much I may disagree with the way they do things.  I just wish other parents could see it the same way.