My whole life i had really only one set of role models and that was my parents. Now I had a fantastic relationship with both my parents and being an only child, growing up in a very sheltered environment I wouldn’t say that my parents weren’t fair, however, there were expectations.
It wasn’t until I was in high school when I realized my views were so different then other kids around me. Since the environment I grew up in and my parents parenting was quite different I had my own experiences who helped form the person I was and was becoming. However, I did not know how to handle being different because I really wanted to be accepted by these kids all around me. I did not have much experience with kids my own age and I was boarding out for school.
As I grew older I carried this passive aggressive behaviour with me. When I was within a certain environment I just flourished. When I was in an environment that was unknown, I lost all confidence as I was so worried about failure. I also found myself people pleasing and becoming this co dependent person I started to dislike.
Self AWARENESS
After my son was born my life changed. As I am sure many of you parents out there know. We have know idea what to do, yet I realized that some people are just natural mothers. I was going through some anxiety challenges, probably post partum but I was tired and sad and so I found myself asking questions and getting information. I realized that I was not helping my boys by being an unhappy mom and it was beginning to become harder and harder to fake.
My journey to self awareness began when I realized how lost I felt. When my son was going through his own challenges as young boy, I will not elaborate because it is his story to tell, however through this process, I also was getting help for myself and learned so many ways to think differently. A huge self awareness process started.
COMMUNICATION
I think many of us know that behaviour is communication. Sometimes it is controlled and sometimes it is not, either way it is still communication. Boy I have worked with people that know instinctively how to be with kids and what to take seriously and what to let go of. I would give a time out to one of my boys and he would sit there totally upset and i would try that with my other son and he would not only NOT sit in the timeout, he would after an hour tell me that I was the one who needed a time out and this is when he was 3 or 4 years of age.
After my divorce, what i tried to do was have shared parenting. When I realized it was about me giving information but I was parenting alone, I had to start doing things that worked within my environment. During some tough moments in my single parenting life, when my kid was not conforming to the rules, or the athletic child, or the academic child, I was blaming myself and thought I was not doing the “proper” parenting.
I remember when someone said hey what is normal anyway?
Define Normal?
So lets break this down a bit. I think proper parenting depends on the intent. Is there a better way to parent? probably, however, all our kids are different and therefore how we parent one child may not work for the other.
I have a 3 stage rule.
If you need help then I will help first time
you get one do over of help
third time I am asking you to “try to figure it out”.
I have a belief that I trust you until i have a reason not to. I also feel strongly that there needs to be balance and when one part of your life is not balanced with the other then there is going to be many bumps.
So, I try to tell my boys all the time lets work on balancing.
yet
I know how hard it is if you do not have the ability to “pay attention”.
PAY ATTENTION (selfawareness)
When I started becoming more acute about my surroundings I started to notice details. Everyone notices very different things. What is important to me, may not be as important to the other person and therefore they would not notice my reactions and have any compassion for my feelings. This is very true in parenting styles. We parent how we were parented until it just isn’t working anymore.
However a person needs to be able to recognize that how they are parenting is not working
OBLIVIOUS or Just Different
This does not make them oblivious rather they are paying attention to something completely different.
When I am communicating with my boys I try to own my shortcomings, talk about things I remember as a teen and ask their opinions as a teenager. i try and put things into perspective without coming across manipulative, and remember when I had the negative feelings as a young person and how I do not want to be the reason for those negative feelings in my children. I am not ignorant, and know that my boys will go through periods where they hate me and hate their life. I just want them to be able to talk to me about those feelings. And I also will not pretend that I know everything. I have said to them just because I am 50 and seem like an adult, doesn’t mean I have it all together and always know what to do.
I do though, have some insight on what it means to figure it out.
So TRUST your INStiNCTS
I want my children to have self awareness and and compassion. One child might develop it faster than the other. That’s ok. I want them to be aware that when they are stuck it is not a feeling they can ignore.
Now i recently had someone point out that because i was acting frustrated doing something for one of my boys, i should just let my boy do it. Therefore then I would not be frustrated.
I was frustrated and yet it was more about how simple the task was and why was it being such a pain in the ass. This person said why don’t you just let your son do it? I was like oh, ya I guess I could do that, however I was trying to figure it out even for myself.
So by not getting my child to do it, Was I taking on the frustration? I mean my boy was not bothered that I was frustrated because I was taking it on for him and it was not going as smoothly as I had hoped.
ENABLING or HELPING?
My immediate thought was I didn’t want to give up because I was now mad that I couldn’t do it. I knew that I would be asked and didn’t think it to be a big deal. I was a bit put off as I thought just because I was frustrated I didn’t want to pass the buck. Id rather work through my frustration then be calmer for my boy when he has to figure it out.
On the other hand, its true, I was getting frustrated with the task, and it was something my boy wanted. If he wants it bad enough he will figure it out. I found it interesting how this triggered in me the question “Was I enabling my child. Not building resilience?” I only had those thoughts because of the other persons response to my “I do not mind doing it”. So in the end I decided to be ok with my desision. and didn’t care about the opinion.
How to trust your gut!
HAVE SELF AWRENESS
REALIZE YOUR INTENT
LISTEN TO OTHERS AND KNOW IT IS JUST AN OPINION (that may be a different situation for you)
REMEMBER YOU WERE YOUNG ONCE TOO
YOU ARE NOT PERFECT AND DO NOT HAVE TO BE BECAUSE YOU ARE AN ADULT
THOSE FEELINGS COME FROM THOUGHTS AND UNDERSTNADING YOUR OWN WILL HELP YOU WITH DISCUSSING WITH YOUR CHILD/TEEN
I took a bit of time to really listen and think about my feelings and in the end and try and understand the thoughts I had and why the feelings were negative. I trust my gut. I know my child. I had offered to help, and so I have nothing to feel bad about. Just because I was frustrated and didn’t pass it off to my boy, doesn’t mean that he couldn’t figure it out, and I will just trust my gut and know that I am not enabling just because I was helping him even if it made me frustrated too. The triggered feeling was about my own past. How I took it as a criticism of my parenting. Like it was not ok to feel frustrated and its my own fault because I took on the task and found myself feeling defensive. Feeling defensive comes from thinking I was doing the wrong thing instead of thinking I was just frustrated and doing the wrong thing really had nothing to do with this whole thing at all.
We all do the best we can with what we have been given and it isn’t until we start opening ourselves to new ideas, that will we grow. If something is not working then that is the very thing we need to spend time on to find the balance.
In the meantime, stay real, stay positive and never give up!
