The hardest thing in parenting to learn is that you cannot control your child.
Okay, let me rephrase that. The hardest think in parenting to accept is that you cannot control your child.
I mean, yes, of course you can - if the punishment is grave enough or the reward is appealing enough. In which case, it's not just your child, but likely any human.
But at what price?
What price are you willing to pay for control? And is it worth it?
When we are controlled as children, we tend to grow up and allow others to still control us. We are more apt to be followers instead of leaders. We either possess a meek and submissive attitude and our relationship with our parents remain on good terms, or we turn tail and have a less-than relationship because we no longer agree to be controlled and submissive.
It's really super easy to say, "Oh, that's not true for me!" And maybe not. Maybe not. But for the majority of us, we will realize, if we really take a look, that it is true. And I get it. No one wants to investigate that deep, because realizing and accepting that the people who love us are also the same people who hurt us through controlling methods (spanking, grounding, threats, rewards, etc.) isn't always easy to accept. I get that.
And sure, we can change. We all have the ability to change. But as that old adage goes, "It's not easy to teach an old dog new tricks." Same goes for adults.
It's extremely difficult to break the mold of how we were raised. Oh, so freaking difficult.
But once you do, once your kids get better, a cycle has been broken. And it's a truly beautiful thing.
There are times I really want to make my kids do something. Oh, how much easier that would be. To get them to sit still and be quiet while out to eat with a simple threat; to force a tired preschooler into his gymnastics class with an easy bribe; to stop an epic meltdown in Target dead in it's tracks through fear of a trip to the bathroom or through delight by buying 12029347023974 My Little Ponies. I won't lie, it totally crosses my mind.
But I don't do it.
I can't do it. Not now. Not when I know better.
Because at the end of the day, it's not my job to control them.
Only to model for them the discipline I hope they grow to have.
The closest thing I came to a bribe came with Miss H's desire to buy the American Girl doll Josefina.
She had over half the money for it all ready simply from Easter and birthday money that she'd never spent. She sold a few of her toys and was not quite $20 short. While discussing ideas of how she could earn the rest of that money I proposed that for each night she slept in her own bed all night long, she could earn $1.
My hope was, that if she did this, when it was all said and done, she'd be sleeping in her own bed all night with no fuss.
Ha!
I called it an "option." She didn't have to earn the money this way. I veered on the edge of using the word "incentive." But let's just call a spade a spade. It was a bribe. I was bribing her to sleep in her own bed for 3 weeks and then she'd get the doll. Because lets' be honest, it could have been $20 or $200 she needed, she was totally not aware of the money at the time. She just knew she had to do A, B, and C and the doll would be hers.
Well, she went through with sleeping in her own bed, got the doll, and BAM! Just like that, she was back in our bed. She'd just done what was needed to get what she wanted. And then she was over it.
And it makes sense. She's human. That's what we do. When others are controlling us, we do the bare minimum to avoid punishment or to receive the reward. And that's typically it. And if we go above and beyond it's often in hopes of something more. More rewards, more praise.
Unless we take the control out of play, and then we have the ability to be our authentic selves. And what amazing people we can be when we are setting our own goals and achieving them through hard work we've taken on happily to achieve the goals we've created ourselves.
Obviously I'm not advocating that we don't teach our children. We must engage with them. But it takes work! It is hard to help keep a small child distracted and happy while waiting for a meal to arrive. It means you have to talk with your child. Come prepared with crayons and paper. Listen to their frustrations. Acknowledge their impatience. And even then, it just might not be smooth sailing. Because little kids don't have the same kind of self-control that (most) adults have. Their brain is not fully developed. So we just have to model, model, model.
It's hard to say, "okay, you don't have to go to gymnastics. I see you're tired and not interested today" when you're 3 year old just wants you to hold him. It's hard to sometimes separate our wants from our child's needs. I paid for the class. I drove him across town. I came prepared. But...he just needs to know he is safe and loved, even if he's not performing how he's expected.
Lord knows it is frustrating when ten million people are staring at your enraged child in public. And it's a lot more work and effort to talk your child through it, to ignore the passerbyers, and have the ultimate goal be to teach your child how to manage her own big emotions, as opposed to stifling them with fear or rewards. It's hard. So hard. Controlling our own emotions when our kiddos are experiencing big emotions is truly one of the more difficult things in life.
But really, half the battle is just accepting you cannot control your child. Once you've done that, truly have done that, you can do anything. You're a rock star.
We are taught to believe children must be controlled. But really, our job is to control ourselves. Perhaps that's even more daunting a task though, eh?
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