A few of my Twitter followers asked that I elucidate on “ten lists” I’d turned out recently. Here goes with the fifth installment of my first list: “Things That Make Parenting Easier”, based off my ten-plus years being a devoted and hard-working parent. I hope you find it helpful. That is the only point of this post. To help those who could use it.
This is item #5. You can find item #1 here, #2 here, #3 here, and #4 here.
Each post will have a picture from my life, my day, when I wrote the post. A picture from this afternoon: my children cleaning up the play/bedroom upstairs. Within about ten minutes the beds were tidied, linens in the laundry, Legos put away, floors vacuumed, and costumes and stuffed animals bundled away. The kids also vacuumed the large bedroom and my sewing room. No threats, bribes, or coercion were employed.
I’m going to get down to brass tacks and say it: there are very few emergencies in public that require us to step in forcefully with our children. Full stop. And yet, we do it anyway. For many of us, it becomes a way of life. It isn’t the handful of times they run into the road at age two, when most people could easily understand a deeply-frightened parent grabbing a child and striking the child’s bottom. No. It becomes our way of life. We grab their arms or yell at them or perhaps, even more sinister, we impart consequences, many not necessarily violent, and build a world so fearful for them they are petrified to make mistakes in public. We do whatever we can to coerce them to behave well.
I have so much empathy and sadness for how this starts for so many. Maybe it starts at age six months when the infant cries in a restaurant and we capitulate to the glares of those who think children do not belong in public spaces; resentful, embarrassed, overwhelmed, and full of congested shame we flee the restaurant. We skip our meal, we women (usually) who sleep little and don’t eat enough and are overwhelmed and often ill-supported; we make sure no one is inconvenienced by our young child. And there it starts.
Sooner or later comes the day we are too tired and too overwhelmed and we don’t leave the restaurant and our kid cries and we think, “Fuck it.” Perhaps we hate our child. Perhaps we hate the world. We feel the disapproval of strangers or father-in-law or whomever but we cannot bring ourselves to march out that door and abandon our rights; nor can we cope with our current reality. Sadly, our parenting skills decline. Sadly, our child – sensing she is not welcome in the cafe and she is somehow disappointing her mother or even incurring her mother’s wrath – is left frightened and defenseless and without an advocate. This becomes a way of life; feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, resentful. It becomes a problem we cannot name but we feel it’s effects.
Our children suffer the most. Not the stranger in the coffee shop or the father-in-law. Not even us, although we suffer a great deal. But:
our children suffer the most.
And they learn how to parent their own children; and they learn how to manage those who need help. That is, they learn to MANAGE them. Or to try. They cannot tolerate the pain and suffering of others; they cannot tolerate their own pain and suffering.
If there’s anything I could take back, it’s the time and time again I parented in a reactionary fashion (I sometimes call this “reptilian parenting”), caring more for my reputation and for my kids’ “good behavior” than parenting according to a long view of what parenting is really about. And that is, briefly, this: as my children’s parent it is my job to keep them safe – and for a time, to keep others safe from them – and to nurture them and to be their advocate and helper.
It is not my job to make sure others approve of their very existence and/or my parenting or any particular episode of my life.
I have little patience for those who call the practitioners of punitive parenting “monsters” or some such, who loudly call spanking “child abuse” on internet forums. Certainly hitting someone smaller and less empowered than us is abuse, full stop. But someone being called a “child abuser”, her ears will close up. You have effectively tapped the shame she’s been feeling. She will stop listening. She will hate you. She will feel more lost and alone.
It is very unlikely she will stop hitting her child. She will not know where to seek help.
There are many who believe punishment is the right way of things; but these people are not monsters. They merely believe in a strategy I myself do not support, but they have come by these beliefs through intense indoctrination. Even so, there are few parents and carers who don’t feel pangs of conscience when they punish their children. Calling these parents or carers names, shaming them, will effect little change, no matter how briefly exhilarating it is to rehearse righteous anger.
When you call them names you are demonstrating YOUR inability to tolerate other people’s suffering.
In any case, so many out there vilify and call parents names that I can relinquish this right. It’s being taken care of by other parties.
It is never my intention to shame parents or carers who read here. I have not always been skilled at being careful, and I have my own biases and prejudices I may not be aware of. But hopefully I am better today than in previous writings.
I have a few closing remarks.
If you yell at your kid, give them a “time out”, count to three (repeatedly or once), hit them, scream at them, pinch their arm, cold-bloodedly smile while planning to later remove their most precious precious thing EVER when you get home, employ “natural and logical consequences” – in short, PUNISH them, do something to them to elicit emotional pain – and EVERY parent/carer has done this –
– if you do any of these things:
DON’T PANIC. I’ve done them all (well, except maybe the “count to three” thing). I don’t do them anymore. If you want to stop, it’s possible. It’s a beautiful way of life, and it works. My children’s character, empathy, strength, loving nature, self-control, and care for other human beings is testament to a better way. I write here to help people who want to learn how to parent non-punitively; or rather, those who want to unlearn mainstream schema of punish, mold, “correct”, coerce.
It’s possible and I’m happy to help any who want it.
Hey Kelly, just read your series so far. Thanks. I love the subject and the way you write about it. It reminds me of my own change in looking at people. Since i’ve gained 25 kilograms because of the prednisone I need to stay alive i realized i was afraid of the judgemend of others, for being sloppy, uneducated etc. Because of being obese. I realized i judged people based on their looks and size, and stopped doing it.
I would love to know more. I’m one of those moms who won’t take her kids out in public because I don’t want the pressure on them or on me for them to be ‘angels’. I know they won’t be because they are kids, so I just don’t take them out of the house. I do take them to restaurants of cultures where they value children and think its cute that they are running around. Anyway- I’d like to know more about non-coercive parenting.
@Josh
Your story about the weight gain reminds me of many times in my life I held judgment against others. This caused me lots of anger and anxiety and served to keep my fears intact. Then when the day came it was ME who was in that position, I suffered a lot. And in all of this, at least for me, judgment of others and feeling “better than” or “less than” is just a way to be self-absorbed. I was in my own world of being self-obsessed. So yeah… I willingly relinquish judgment today. I try to keep an open mind instead of being cynical. I am happier and healthier for it.
I hope you are learning to be kind to yourself. I know your medical issues are major. I enjoy reading your blog.
I’m glad you like this series so far.
@Jessica
It’s time to take those kids out, for lots of reasons! For one, you and the kids aren’t living a full life when you hide away. Second, you are helping serve our cultural narrative that kids don’t belong in public and should be segregated. But also, when those kids are mamas or papas (should they end up parenting) and need your help knowing how to be a parent to little ones, if you don’t learn now you will have nothing to teach them – or you will teach them incorrectly!
I write a lot about non-coercive/non-punitive parenting. If you find those pieces interesting, go ahead and read them. But I’m also happy to read emails and write back. A lot of people have specific difficulties and I’d love to listen and, if I have some experience in the area, give suggestions. My email is kelly AT hogaboom DOT org.