Tag: control

the need for control

Desere

Disclaimer: I wrote this in April 2020 but before I could finish editing and publishing, I got swept up with life and the state of the world. I never got around to finishing this post. Although we are fast forward 7 months, I feel like some of this could be valuable to someone out there. So here it goes…

The need for control. This is a basic human trait.

With everything going on, we are seeing this need manifest in all sorts of ways. The major way we saw people attempting to regain any sort of control in a situation filled with unknowns, is with toilet paper. Yes, the panic buying of toilet paper is, in its simplest and most raw form, just a need for control.

People are scared and don’t have enough information. We don’t know enough about this virus. We don’t know if we or someone we know will get sick. We don’t know what life is supposed to look like during this time. We don’t know what life will look like when this is all over.

The need to regain control in any aspect is enough to send people in droves to buy whatever they can, as much as they can, so that they feel like they are able to remain in charge of their life in some way. It is comical and seems insane, but it all really does make sense in terms of human behavior.

And as this is a parenting blog, the same can be said about children.

When our children feel out of control, it tends to lead to all sorts of behavioral problems. This is a normal part of parenting a “terrible” two, or a “threenager”, or really any child.

Children develop so quickly. They are learning things every second of every day from the moment they are born. They are masters at processing the world around them. But they have very little control over their daily lives. They are told when to put clothes on and what to eat. They are told where to go and what time to go to bed. They are taken to school and after school activities where adults are telling them what to do every second of the day. Kids often aren’t even able to play on their own without parents guiding them and telling them what to play with and how. This creates a strange sensation phenomenon. They are growing and maturing, but they aren’t able to control many aspects of their life. Consequently, they create situations in order to feel in control. They seek it out. And this often looks like a child being stubborn, or misbehaving. This can look like answering every question with a ‘NO!’, or throwing objects. It can be in the way they constantly are yelling demands at us, or that feeling that as a parent we aren’t doing anything right. It is often just their attempt at having some sense of control, over their body, their relationships, their life.

When our children do feel out of control, this is when we might see a meltdown or an emotional release.

So what does this have to do with what’s happening right now. Well apart from us adults losing control over many aspects of our life like the ability to go out or go to work or do much of anything, our children are feeling the same way too. But they are also just trying to process everything that is going on. And I am writing this post as a warning to take some ‘misbehaviors’ as warning signs that your child is just looking to regain some control.

For me, it is showing up as not wanting to go outside.

Which is crazy, because we are stuck inside all day everyday with no where to go. We are in quarantine. And everytime I tell my son we are going to go on a walk or a small hike, he freaks out. And this is a kid that used to thrive outdoors. I have been taking him outside every single day for his entire 3 years and 10 months of existence. And now without the opportunity to go to school or library or park or a friends’ house, he doesnt even want to go outside.

WHAT IS HAPPENING???

oh.. right… he feels out of control. The only thing he can control right now is his body being at home. Home where it is safe, with his toys which he knows. Home where the routines are the same, where he can count on the predictability of his day. He wants to be home.

So if your kids are acting strangely, uncharacteristically, then it could very well just be their way of seeking control in a very strange time.

thankful for relationships

Desere

I follow RIE.

This is a respectful parenting philosophy that focuses on building a relationship with your child based on trust and respect. It’s about modeling instead of teaching. This means to raise someone who is respectful and authentic, I must model those characteristics myself. This philosophy is about treating kids like you would any adult you love and respect. And my husband and I love this philosophy because it really resonated with us, and we can see the effects of parenting this way is having on our 2 year old son.

But in practicing RIE we are not normal. This style of parenting is a minority.

I won’t force my kid to say please or thank you or sorry. If I make him say it, it’s not authentic. Instead these phrases get modeled when I say them naturally myself.

I won’t force my kid to hug you or kiss you. I am teaching my son to respect physical boundaries. To raise someone who respects another person’s “no’s” means as a child I must respect his own “no’s”. His body his choice.

I won’t distract my kid when he is crying. Feeling sad is ok, just like feeling happy and angry and scared is ok. Crying is the process of being unhurt. Tears release toxins from the body and oxytocin. When tears are not welcomed or stopped, this releases the stress hormone cortisol, and often leads to aggression because the suppressed emotion has to come out somewhere. (Aletha Soleter of Aware Parenting)

http://www.michellemorganart.com/

I won’t force my kid to eat. I provide the meal, with a few options that include veggies and meat and carbs. I set the rules about eating at the table and staying seated. The rest is up to my son. He eats what he he wants, as much as he wants from the options I laid out. I will not force feed him or use tricks like airplane-ing food into his mouth. His body his choice.

I won’t hold my kid’s hands when he climbs up the playground. If you want your child to learn spatial awareness, don’t help them do things they can’t do on their own. No one wants to get hurt. No child wants to fling themselves down the side of a play structure. But if they were always given a false sense of security when they learned to walk and climb, then they won’t realize the physical dangers of doing certain things.

I won’t show my kid how to play with something. I give my son open ended objects to play with, and let his creativity take it from there. This builds problem solving and independent play.

I wont try to fix how my kid plays with something. Even if it looks “wrong” to me, I won’t intervene. Is there even such thing as playing the wrong way?

I won’t intervene if my kid takes your kid’s toy. I won’t intervene if your kid takes my kid’s toy. Sharing is so overrated in this age of helicopter parenting. I’m sick of people saying they need to teach their kids how to share. Sharing is intrinsic. It will emerge when the child cares to share. At a young age, toy taking is simply exactly how kids play together. It’s the transference of toys. And when left on their own, kids rarely have a problem with this. When they do have a problem, they often can resolve it with little to no adult intervention.

I won’t ask my kid questions I already know the answer to. It’s demeaning to ask someone “Where are your eyes?” Or “Where is the blue triangle?” My son isn’t in school, and he didn’t learn English and Hebrew by me asking him to point to stuff or use flash cards to drill words into him. He learns words through life. He learns because we talk to him in our normal authentic voice.

But alas, these things make me odd in the parenting world. And that’s ok. I’ve made peace with being a minority because I love the person my son is becoming, and I love the type of serenity this parenting style has given me.

What makes RIE hard is that once you start it, you can’t unsee it.

This means once you see young children as fully capable people, worthy of respect, it’s very very hard to see how the rest of the world interacts with them.

But I can’t shelter my son. That’s simply unrealistic and doesn’t prepare him to forge his own life with his own relationships.

RIE is based on trust.

I need to trust in myself and the job I’m doing as a mother. I am raising my son with respect. A few disrespectful interactions with other people won’t “ruin” my son. Janet Lansbury likes to say parenting is about the steady diet not the occasional snack. What I do on the day to day basis is what will shape his character.

I need to trust my son. I need to trust that not only does he know the difference between the way different people treat him, but that he also is fully capable of self advocating. That a consequence of the way I treat him is that he WILL stand up for himself when he feels the need to.

That’s the key… it’s when HE feels the need to.

So many times I’m watching someone interact with my son, and I’m thinking why is my son just taking it? Why is he allowing this person to talk to him like that or force a hug on him when I know he doesn’t always want a hug? Why is he allowing this person to show him how to play a certain way when he normally likes to lead his own play time?

I want to step in so badly. But I don’t because my son doesn’t need rescuing. He isn’t in danger, he is with people he loves and who love him. If I did step in, I’m now making it about me, not my son.

I need to let him build his own relationships with people around him, in his own way. I need to trust him to do so.

I am thankful for RIE. This philosophy taught me to sit back and enjoy the person my child is becoming, to really see the beautiful relationships he has made and how much certain people mean to him. I am thankful he has such strong relationships with people around him. I am thankful for how much he enjoys people who behave differently than I do.

Happy Thanksgiving!

what do you do all week?

Desere1 Comment

Since becoming a new mom and an even newer stay at home mom, I’m constantly asked “what do you do all week?”

It’s a well meaning question, probably similar to asking “How are you?” or “How’s life going?”. But it doesn’t feel like that.

Honestly, it feels like an attack on me as a stay at home mom. It feels more like, “You are a stay at home mom so you better be doing stuff all week long”, “you can’t possibly be a stay at home mom and also just be staying at home every day”, or “You are busy enough to justify quitting your job, right?”.

Ok, maybe the people asking me this don’t really think all that. But I just really hate this question, “What do you do all week?”

Other than my insecurities as a stay at home mom, I believe the actual problem behind it is that new parents think they need to fill their week with activities to entertain their baby. And many do.

But I like being home most of the week. At home my son is comfortable and gets to have hours of baby-led play. At home my son is not put in and out of his carseat 100 times. At home my son eats on the floor. At home my son gets to nap in his crib.

I like staying home.

And of course, all of this is my prerogative as a mom.

But when people ask me “What do you do all week?” I find it very hard to answer honestly. I feel their pressure. I feel their judgment. I feel the stigma of the ‘stay at home mom’ and the societal pressure to constantly entertain our little ones. I just feel awkward and weird telling people that I don’t do much all week. So … I lie. I tell them that I do go to the library and play groups. I say I go to events with other moms like museums or gardens. Sometimes I just make stuff up because I don’t want people to judge me for actually just letting my son play most of the day while I watch.

I’m scared of others thinking that I am a lazy parent.

Am I?

Am I am truly lazy for wanting to be at home so that my son can just play? Babies learn about their world through play.

Am I lazy for not taking him to a class where the teacher leads all the babies to clap their hands and sing songs and move around? I want my son to have free exploration in his own way, which differs day to day. And that’s ok because babies do things in the moment, moment to moment.

So why do I need to have a week filled with activities?

As a high school teacher I encountered a lot of teenagers with overwhelming extra-curricular schedules. As teens, having well rounded lives is not a bad thing. But this over scheduling has now trickled down to kids, toddlers, and even babies.

Babies don’t need agendas. They just need a safe space to play and explore.

So instead of asking me what do I do all week, how about you ask me what my son does all week.

Because if you ask me what I do all week the answer will be the same, I don’t do much.

But if you ask me what my son does all week… he explores, he discovers, he feels, and he tastes.

He observes people outside and listens to different sounds coming through the window.

He bangs objects on other objects or slides them across the floor.

He is learning physics from rolling his ball across the room or throwing objects over the edge of the stairs.

He is learning positioning when he arranges his blocks in a certain way.

He is learning transporting when he picks up his toys and puts them in different sized containers or into his little truck.

He is learning transforming when he squishes the pieces of banana with his fingers.

These are just a few of the behavioral schemas I observe throughout the day. So no, I don’t do much all week. I simply stay home to allow my son to fully develop physically and cognitively through play. Yes, just whole spirited, uninhibited play.

self control

Desere1 Comment

In my last RIE class there was an incident that led to a big discussion about self control.

One baby, let’s call him A, kept going to a little girl and hitting her on the head. Although we have the two teachers and all the moms there, we were not always able to block the hitting. Whenever it happened, the girl would go to her mom who would hug her until she felt better.

At one point the boy walked (he is one of two in my class that can already walk) toward the girl. Our teacher who narrates said “A, no.” The boy’s mom, taking our teacher’s lead, began saying “no, no” to her son and scooting toward him. Then the boy hit the girl, hard. She was crying uncontrollably. Our other teacher, who interacts with the babies, came over. The boy’s mom and the girl’s mom came over. Three adults, 2 babies.

Both moms were trying to console the girl. Then the boy tried to hit her again. This time, his mom grabbed his arm and said “no you cannot hit her.” The girl was screaming. The three adults were hovering. The whole debacle seemed to upset the boy who just walked away to play with the toys outside.

This is when our teacher began a conversation about modeling. You see, when my teacher said “A no” her ‘no’ was indifferent. There was no shame or warning in her statement. There were already a few times that the boy hit the girl and was blocked. So this last time, when he walked over, the teacher simply stated, ‘no’. The mom’s ‘no’ was not the same. She said it a few times and it was done admonishingly. Furthermore, she resorted to grabbing his arm to stop his last attempt.

Who can blame her? This is an emotional scene. It is emotional because we as adults lose our self control and just react in the moment. Whenever we see our own child doing something to another child, or if another child does something to our baby, it is extremely hard to breath and calmly walk towards them. It is extremely hard to resist the reactionary “NO!” and the arm grab. And why wouldn’t it be extremely hard? It is a tough and emotional situation.

Yet we never get any repercussions for losing our self control.

Babies do not have a lot of self control. Self control is a skill that babies learn, slowly, over years and years. And although they do get better as they hit several developmental milestones, they are still led by their emotions. They can’t help it. When they feel something strongly it will take over and they are no longer acting out of reason or logic, but out of emotion.

The problem is the moment we grab their hand, the moment we act aggressively, our children will want to resist. They will resist when we physically hold on to their bodies. They will resist when we yell “no”.

“So what are we supposed to do?”, the boy’s mom and I both asked our teacher.

We can never model non aggression with aggression. If we do not want our children to be physically rough with another child, then we cannot be physically rough with them. There is never a time when we should grab our child’s arm or body to stop them from doing something. If we want to stop them, we block. This means simply placing our hand in between them and whatever or whoever we are trying to protect. If you find that simply blocking, as stated above, is not working, the best thing to do is to physically remove your child from the situation.

Practicing respectful parenting means not only respecting our children, but also teaching them to respect themselves and others. This happens organically of course because we treat them with trust and respect. We are models to our children.

Furthermore, our teacher noted, we need to remember that babies are building their self control and to notice the times they are demonstrating control rather than only noting the times they lose it.

Yes, toward the end of class A was constantly walking over to the girl and trying to hit her. What about during the first 30 minutes of class when he would walk over to her and admire the bow in her hair? What about all the times he walked by another baby, once even just inches away from them, without touching or hitting their head? What about when my son had a ball in his mouth and A walked over and grabbed the ball out of my son’s mouth without touching any other part of my son’s face? Most importantly, what about when he removed himself from the emotional situation to go outside? There were so many moments within the 90 minutes of class where A showed incredible self control. Which is not easy, especially for a baby who is walking among crawlers.

When I started teaching, my mentor gave me a book, Tools for Teaching by Fred Jones. This book had so much advice in it that correlates to RIE. One thing I remember reading was about controlling our own anger as a teacher. The book outlines ways to do this and the biggest rule is to breathe. When students get out of control or do something in class, first take a few breathes. This is because simply breathing forces you to calm down.Your heart rate goes down, your muscles relax. This also buys you a few seconds to think about what just happened, to act accordingly. Then walk over and do whatever disciplinary action needs to be done with the students. The high school where I taught, discipline was the #1 priority. If you could not control your class, there was no hope in teaching them anything. And I cannot tell you how many times this breathing technique saved my classroom environment.

It’s not easy though. It is not easy to have such control.

So back to parenting and back to the little boy. At the end, do we punish him for hitting the girl. No, we do not. Because he lost control. Which we all do. What we really need to start doing is what I had to do when I was training to be a teacher. We have to work on ourselves.

We need to train to have better self control. We need to slow down. We need to breathe. We need to reflect, respect, and respond (the 3 R’s), rather than react. We need to act gently.

It’s on us to change our behavior if we want to influence our children’s behavior. We need to work on ourselves so that we can be the best models for our kids.

And no…it’s not easy. But no one ever said parenting would be easy.

 

feeding the RIE way

Desere1 Comment

In my last post I wrote about my interpretation of this new thing called RIE and the ideas I was beginning to try out at home.

It began with asking Franky if I could pick him up and pausing, before scooping him off the ground. My husband quickly adopted this idea too, and within a few days this silly habit became the norm. Next would be feeding my son, the RIE way. Continue reading “feeding the RIE way” →