Tag: struggle

you’re so smart & good job

Desere

You’re so smart!

How many teachers and parents say this phrase throughout their lifetime?

But there is a fundamental flaw in telling kids they are so smart.

My mentor was a big advocate of eliminating status in his classroom. Learning from him, I too attempted to create a classroom that was respectful of all ideas, one that pushed kids with different abilities to contribute their ideas.

Here is the problem with continuously telling a kid “you are so smart”. When they face something incredibly challenging and find themselves stuck, what are they going to think?

‘I am always told how smart I am, if I can’t do this it must mean I’m dumb.’

This is because they have a fixed mindset.

If, for example, a kid was told their whole life they are such a hard worker, what happens then when that kid is facing a challenging task?

‘Hmm, I must not be working hard enough.’

This is known as a growth mindset.

Tag jo boawler blogs and books

Tag article from facebook

…Yet

 

 

Good Job

When I wrote about finding RIE and the first time I let my son struggle, I described the situation when Franky kept trying to get to a ring that got stuck under his changing table. When he finally managed to get it free, I didn’t say “good job!” And here’s why

7 Alternatives to Telling Your Child “Good Job!”

In class story about G getting leg stuck

 

kid stuck one leg on ramp one in sandbox, unstuck, mom said good job

just say what you observe

imply stuck is bad?

and job,… this isnt job its play

Do you always need to cmoment?

No.

Only if kid looks at you

So while kid is playing.. You dont need to narrate every second every play by play

But when they look at you.. Thats when you can narrate. Thats where the organic language development comes in

 

“Watch baby thoroughly entertaining herself just by moving and learning her body. If she engages you or makes eye contact, be sure to verbally reflect what you see, i.e., “I saw that. You rolled to your back!” This is playing “with” a baby and connecting with her on her terms. 🙂

 

I get the worst of my kid’s behavior, it doesn’t mean I’ve failed

Desere

My return to writing was brought about by the feeling that I was hitting an ultimate low in my parenting. I was resentful and angry most of the day. I found it hard to truly enjoy my son’s presence. I felt like I was running through my day, every day. I was yelling at my son. I was constantly overwhelmed. I was exhausted. I thought I was doing everything wrong.

But then overnight, things suddenly… shifted. And I instantaneously felt better. I woke up feeling happy. I had an incredible day where I simply enjoyed the chaotic and beautiful person my son is.

And in my last post it was hard for me to describe exactly why things changed for me. However the next day I realized something that helps describe my altered state of mind. I began to explain in my first ever video you can watch on my facebook page here.

My aha was pretty simple: as my son’s primary caregiver I will always get his worst behavior.

This is something that I have always known, intellectually. I read about this in my parenting groups. I heard about it from fellow moms out there. But somehow I forgot it these past few weeks. I kept taking my son’s behavior so personal. I kept thinking because he was acting so horribly with me and at home, that meant he is a horrible kid and I am a horrible mother.

But him giving and showing me his worst has absolutely no bearing on who he is or my parenting. His less than ideal behavior does not mean I’ve failed. It does not mean the style of parenting I follow (RIE) doesn’t work. It does not mean that I need to carry his feelings on my shoulders all day.

And that revelation was a huge aha moment for me.

Our kids give us their worst because we are their safe space to do so. They use us as their release. When they are at school or with other adults, they have to follow all kinds of rules. Social rules. Academic rules. Cultural rules. Every place and every situation puts stress on them. They have very little control in most aspects of their life.

So they come home and unload on us.

The way they do so can be in the form of a meltdown, anger, or defiance. They can yell at us or just say no to everything we try to do. They may even seek out the opportunity to release by intentionally pushing our buttons or testing our limits.

Sometimes when we are home, I can feel Franky pushing me, like he is waiting for me to say no and hold my ground on something just so he can push back, meltdown, and get his release for the day. He wants to cry. He needs it. And I am the person that lets him do it.

Until I wasn’t…

The problem is that even knowing this has never made it easy during those moments. When you are with your child every day and everything just seems to be a struggle, getting out the door or eating a meal, cooperating with a sibling or brushing teeth, all these moments began to add up and weigh you down. It becomes incredibly difficult NOT to take it all personal. And that is exactly what I began doing.

I became a non safe space for him because I would be angry with him. I would yell at him. I would get frustrated with him. And so when he was showing me that he needed help, I would shut him down.

My kind, creative, wonderful little boy is going through so many changes every single day. His world is like on extreme hyperdrive. He has little to no impulse control (which becomes zero if he is tired or hungry or lonely). He has very little control over certain aspects of his day like schedule or going to school or bedtime. His body keeps changing. His life keeps changing. His little brother keeps changing. And his emotions keep changing. It is scary.

So when he would get angry or defiant, or have physical aggression toward his brother or me, he was really saying ‘please help I feel out of control.’ And no one who feels out of control wants to be met with more anger and frustration.

So this was the big shift for me. I began to see him for who he was. I saw that he was struggling and needed my help. This made it easier to remain calm when I needed him to do something, because it wasn’t getting to me. If he didn’t wash his hands after the potty and I asked him to do it once. I would pick him up and do it. I didn’t automatically get mad or go into a huge lecture explaining why we need to do so. He knows. I’ve already told him.

So I began accepting that I’m his safe space to simply release his emotions. I do not need to accept those emotions as my own. I do not need to fix them. I do not need to change them. I can carry on with what I need to do and his feelings simply are just that, his.

I am happy he feels safe to share them in my presence.

I want him to feel safe with me.

And ultimately, if that’s the price I pay for having an emotionally intelligent and resilient human being in the world, then so be it.

hitting rock bottom with RIE…

Desere2 Comments

hello readers, if you’re still with me…

It has been almost an entire year since my last post. I am so sorry for that.

I was using this blog to help me marinate on certain ideas. It was a way to hold myself accountable in this respectful parenting style. It was an outlet. It was a proclamation of my parenting beliefs.

Yet I was really considering letting my site expire and never writing again… because parenting lately has been really hard. I mean kicking my butt hard. I have a 3.5 year old and a 1.5 year old. Most of the time I feel like I am just surviving the day. No, the hour. By 9:00am most days I’m broken. I’m tired and stressed. I feel like most of the day I’m running, like I can’t breath or catch up to even enjoy the presence of my two little dudes.

I try to keep my interactions respectful whenever I even have the mind to remember what I’m doing. But often, they are not. My tired brain has pulled me into not so great habits. I yell. I cry. I often grab my older son in ways that I am not proud of. I often give in to my younger son just so he stops crying. I am so sick of the yelling and fighting and crying and hitting.

How can I sit here and type up parenting advice when I’m struggling so hard? How can I write about the amazing features of respectful parenting when I myself have lost track of what that even means? Somedays I feel like this thing I followed so hard for 3 years is exactly why things are so hard. Sometimes I feel like RIE is awful, I feel like it has created awful interactions and awful behaviors with my boys.

I don’t feel respectful. More so, I don’t feel respected.

I mean that’s the ultimate slap in the face for someone who follows respectful parenting, right?!

My older son, Frank, is almost 4 years old and he is feeling some SERIOUS feels right now. He yells and hits. He loves me and hates me within seconds of each other. He asks for something and then yells for another. He hurts his little brother. He refuses to sleep when tired. He pretty much only eats bread and cheese. He is so dang strong-willed.

And it sucks. It just sucks. Most days I do not enjoy his presence.

Now I know that we have also put a lot on his already ever changing little developing mind in the past few months. We moved. We switched him from a crib to a big bed. We joined a new school. We started having him wear underwear. His brother is bigger, mobile, and verbal.

And that is a lot for a little guy. Someone who is already growing and changing every day, whose mind is doing leaps and flips every time he wakes up. Now he has a new house, new room, new bed, new friends, new park, new bathroom routine, new everything. It’s a lot. I get that.

But still… he is awful to be around.

I try my best. But most of the time I feel like I am tip-toeing around him so I don’t burst his precious, emotional bubble. It doesn’t matter though, because I always feel like a failure. I cook and he doesnt eat. I try new things and they never work. I try to talk him to him and he gives me nothing. I just feel like a failure.

That is a feeling I do not enjoy. My personality does not handle it well.

And then came the ultimate nap refusal. This broke me.

Franky was always an incredible sleeper. He slept a lot as a baby. He transitioned to three naps perfectly. Then two naps right on the dot. One nap at exactly 16 months. Slept every single day from 7pm-7am with a 2 hour (sometimes 3 hour) nap during the day.

I mean this kid SPOILED me.

This past year, things have shifted for him. The moment we converted his crib – nap time changed. Of course it did, he could now get in and out of his crib alone!

This was quite the transition, but we talked it through and found a system that worked. We would read a story as usual, I would leave and shut the door, he would play for a bit, and when he was ready he would turn out the light and go to bed.

For the most part, this worked.

Some days he would come out a lot, and I would have to sit by the door and keep taking him back saying “it is rest time”. Some days he would play and play and fall asleep on the floor with the lights on. Some days he wouldn’t sleep and we would just move up bed time one hour.

Most of the time he really would turn off the light and go to bed. It was incredible to watch, when it worked.

But the move and new bed and underwear was all too much for this routine.

Counter-will was oh so strong. No matter how many times I tried to create a safe and inviting environment for him to nap, he kept refusing. He would not nap regardless of how tired he was.

He just likes to play and play in his room (which only has stuffed animals, books, and the few toy cars he brings with him). He enjoys looking out of and banging on the window. He enjoys messing with the clothes in his closet. He dances and sings. Oh and he comes out of his room one million times.

I tried putting a lock on his door but he freaks out with a passion every time I try.

I tried using a visual timer where he has to stay in his room until the timer is done and then he can come out. It worked the first day. Then it didn’t.

I tried talking to him about how he didn’t have to sleep but that every day we would do ‘rest time’ because it was important and healthy to take a break. You know, giving him the power so he didn’t feel the counter-will surge to do opposite whatever I said. I tried talking to him about how important it is to listen to what your body is telling you (sleepy, hungry, angry, sad, etc).

I tried everything.

And the stakes were high. I was tired and wanted this time to rest or eat or cook or veg on the couch with a tv show. Little brother naps next door and I didn’t want him to wake up.

Ultimately, the biggest reason was he still needed a nap. Every single day of no nap meant the entire afternoon was just a whirlwind of melt downs. This meant early bedtime to compensate, which often resulted in earlier wake up time, leading to a more tired afternoon temperament, and so the vicious cycle continued.

Day after day I tried.

I was so broken yesterday by it all. I just lost it. I was tired and angry. I couldn’t get anything done and Franky was losing it, hitting his brother and me and just being unpleasant.

I hated him and hated the routine and hated RIE. I hated everything.

I told (yelled at) him that I was done trying. That I didn’t have the energy for it anymore. That we were done with nap time and he would be tired every day and I didn’t care.

At night I went to my RIE mom tribe online to search. I don’t know what I was searching for because I felt like quitting RIE and quitting respectful parenting.

I guess I felt like my kid was being a little sh** and no one else seemed to be dealing with that. I felt like I saw other mom saying something to their kid and they would listen. But mine never listened to me. He just yelled and didn’t nap and hurt his brother and didn’t care what I said ever. I felt like I couldn’t even problem solve with him because whenever I tried to have real conversations with him he wouldn’t talk to me.

I felt like RIE failed me. That giving my boy 3 years of respect and trust and accepting his emotions and letting him take ownership of his outfits and his feeding just all backfired. Now I have an almost 4 year old who does whatever he wants and feels entitled to feel however he feels without a care about who he hurts. A kid who doesn’t eat well and doesn’t listen to his body.

I mean this is how I felt yesterday. I was just done trying so hard every day. Why do I need to work so hard at this very difficult style of parenting when it just sucks every single day. I want to do the easier style of parenting. I want to just make my kid listen to me through whatever means, with threats and rewards and punishments. I want to just let him watch TV so I can have a break during the day. I want to just show him how to do things instead of waiting for him to figure them out. I want to just lift him up and help him on the monkey bars instead of hearing him scream that he wants to try it but I am not helping him. I don’t want to sit and hear him cry and feel his emotions for long periods of time. It is all exhausting. It is exhausting trying to do all these things with the hopes the he will become emotionally intelligent and resilient and hard working and curious and resourceful.

So I’m reading and reading and reading …

And I am not sure if it was something specific I read, some actual tid bit of wisdom, or just reading for hours in general, but it hit me.

The problem is me.

This is a me-problem. I lost sight of it all. I lost sight of what this parenting style is truly about.

My son is his own person. He is not my problem to fix. He is not a problem.

He is a little person who is dealing with a lot of things, including the INCREDIBLE and developmentally appropriate urge to fight against anything I tell him as his primary caregiver. He is growing and changing. He often doesn’t want to nap because he doesn’t need to nap, even if that means being tired later.

Kids don’t usually think of things in terms of ‘hmm if I don’t nap now boy will I be tired later.’ Kids are in the moment. That’s one of the most beautiful and also most tedious aspects of being around little people all the time.

So yes at this moment of the day, when left to himself in his new big room with his new big bed and his new life, he does. not. want. to. nap.

I was the one who wanted to keep things the way they were and then getting angry when he was trying to show me that it wasn’t working.

I felt like I was the one dealing with the consequence of him not napping because he was in a horrible mood.

GAH I write it all now with such clarity. But I am not sure I am even explaining my breakthrough well enough.

I was taking all the emotions, all the feelings onto my own shoulders.

But I finally feel like I am seeing my son for who he is, which is something I lost sight of amidst the hustle of each never-ending day this past few months. I was purely surviving. I was surviving and growing contempt for what I perceived as failure. I was growing contempt because I longed for the days when he was this young little explorer and I just enjoyed every waking second with him but now I hated being around him.

A switch turned on.

A weight lifted off my shoulders.

Maybe it was when I read something about natural consequences. The thing about consequences is, it is something Franky is feeling. He is feeling the ultimate wrath of his tiredness when he doesn’t nap. I need to trust that as the consequence in and of itself.

When he starts hitting or yelling or melting down, it is all a cry for help. He has completely lost control. And that is a super scary feeling for someone so small. And then all I was doing was getting mad and yelling at him all day for it. I am supposed to be the safe space for his feelings and I wasn’t.

Instead I was soaking in all his feelings and taking it as my fault.

I think what I lost sight of was that RIE does not mean doing x y z and saying a b c meant my son would nap perfectly. RIE is not a set of guidelines. Many families use ‘quiet time’ when their kids transition out of nap and it works for them. This just wasn’t working for us.

RIE is about seeing who my son is, for who he is. It is a set of tools for speaking and interacting with him so that he feels safe to be 100% himself. Yes right now his authentic self is an annoying little threenager who yells and changes his mind a lot and is often tired by 4pm. That is him. Right now. He might change later. I cannot change him. He is not mine to control. He is not a problem to fix.

I am definitely not explaining this right…

The point is, I had a HUGE aha moment the past 24 hours. And for a year I was drowning and hoping this blog would just drown with me. But this aha moment just made me feel so good. I don’t resent my child anymore because of how he is feeling/acting.

I don’t actually know where I was going with all this. Clearly my 2 kid mom brain is not what it was when I first started this website. But man am I going to keep trying so bear with me. I love you all for putting up with me.

Give me your thoughts and lets keep going on this crazy journey together. yea?

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!

meltdowns are my fault too…

Desere1 Comment

Although I wrote about my steps to get through the wave of emotions that emanate from my 2 year old son, I find it important to ask myself, why am I here?

Why have I found myself in meltdown city, again?

Sometimes toddlers just need to release a lot of pent up emotions. I get that. They live in a world where they feel things strongly and can rarely verbalize exactly what they want. Even when they can say what they want or need, they aren’t always met with a “yes!” Their lives are often controlled by us, their care takers, and that is hard sometimes.

But other times, there are things that lead up to meltdown city.

This morning we took an extra long time to make our way downstairs. There was playing and exploring in my bedroom. I needed to take a shower which caused delays. My son is into moving his stool from room to room to play with the light switches. He kept saying he was hungry and wanted pancakes, but then would get distracted by something new. By the time we did everything we actually needed to get done (brush teeth, change diaper, new clothes), it was already later than normal and we were both hungry. Very hungry.

So we get downstairs, and now my son is on the verge. I can feel it in the air.

I rush him into his learning tower where he can stand at counter height and ‘help’ me cook. I hurry to bring out all the ingredients and start pouring things into the measuring cup so he can pour it into the big bowl. I am rushing. He feels it.

He is mixing and it is getting messy. I’m trying not to care.

He said he was done (mixing) and lifted the whisk out of the bowl to hand to me. The batter was dripping all over the counter and floor. I snapped, a little.

We were both on the verge…

I started the stove and got the batter ready to pour. My son started demanding the big spatula, but when given that one he demanded a different one. He then started crying for gold fish. I normally never give him snacks before breakfast but I caved. I felt  bad that we were taking so long to get breakfast going so I opened the cabinet of his snacks to hand him a small bowl of gold fish. Big mistake.

He sees all his snacks and starts changing his mind as fast as I can hand him things.

He throws his bowl on the floor. Gold fish everywhere.

Now I’m angry, trying to clean up the gold fish while simultaneously pouring batter on the pan and make those gosh darn pancakes already.

We were in meltdown city.

It was awful. It was a disaster.

And the worst part was that I led us there.

Reflecting back on this whole experience, I am shocked that I didn’t think from the beginning to just hand him a bagel and have that be our breakfast for today. My son loves plain bagels, and it takes less than a minute to prepare. I could have had him at his table, eating breakfast with a cup of milk in no time.

Maybe he would have insisted for pancakes since he did ask for them earlier, but I doubt it. Even so, I could have dealt with it in the moment. A simple “you really wanted pancakes but I prepared bagel for you this morning.”

Instead, I fumbled in the kitchen and went through the motions of cooking with him. Cooking is already an activity that is iffy because I am trying to ‘direct’ him a lot while allowing him the space to explore and learn in the kitchen. It’s not my favorite but my son really enjoys helping me prepare food.

That was my mistake. I led us through all the small setbacks that ultimately drove us to a meltdown. And I write “us” because I was hungry and angry and sad and exhausted too.

I am writing to make a promise to myself to be more aware in the moment. So much easier said than done. But I know that it is like a muscle that takes practice. I need to start being more conscious of the environment I am creating and avoid situations that could lead us to a meltdown. If I take too much time upstairs and he has already expressed his hunger => bagel breakfast. Simple.

Not really that simple. Actually parenting is never simple. And there are SO many moments throughout the day where we have to make split second decisions that can shape both of our emotional outcomes. That’s so hard. But maybe the act of physically writing about it will help me remember? It is so hard to be calm and rational in those moments though.

So the point of this blog post is to humbly spread awareness that sometimes we parents cause the meltdown. This is especially true when we are dealing with a hungry or tired child.

I don’t have an answer to stop this. I don’t have a “just do this and this and you can avoid meltdowns!” solution. But maybe we don’t need to stop it. Maybe it isn’t about avoiding meltdowns but more about being aware of why they happen and how to get through them in an emotionally healthy way?

 

you dont need to show them

Desere

In my very first post I described the type of teacher I was and how I believed aha moments were pivotal to my classroom environment. It was so important to me not to take away my students’ aha moment and this influenced my style of teaching. I had to build this type of culture of students leading the learning.

I never lectured and I never showed my students how to solve anything.

This may seem like a weird thing for a teacher to say. I promise you, my students learned, a lot.

But the difference with my style of teaching was that they were able to own each aha moment. And there is something to be said about this. When someone shows you something and you replicate it, you may feel good that you can do it too. But when you achieve something on your own there is a whole new sense of worth.

I have seen students rise to the occasion. I have seen how being confident in my students’ abilities led them to actually figure things out without me showing them how. All I had to do was let go of this need that I had. A need to show them. A need to ensure they do it right.

I heard this with teachers all the time. If I don’t give them the formula how will they know how to solve the problem? or If I don’t show them an example how will they know what to do?

I understood. You don’t want your students to fail. You want them to do it right, to complete their homework, to pass the test, to move on to the next teacher without making you look bad. You want them to succeed in life.

So it is hard to sit back and wait. It is hard to let someone do the learning, to do the heavy lifting, other than you. Especially when you think it is your job to show them how to do everything.

It was hard for me at first too. I remember when I was working under my mentor teacher, I kept wondering what was the point to this style of teaching. How could it be worth it for some concepts which could have been learned in 5 minutes to actually take hours to learn? I’ll never forget the pythagorean theorem lesson.

How long does it take to draw this on the board, have students copy it down, and explain you simply plug in whatever numbers you have to solve for the unknown side? About 5 minutes. I remember my teacher in high school showing me this and then giving several example problems of doing just that. I remember being able to do the same at home and thinking I was a genius because I totally understood the pythagorean theorem.

But with my style of teaching, with my mentor’s style of teaching, this theorem took an entire 1.5 hour lesson. Without me describing every detail of that lesson right now, basically the curriculum uses a game and probability to guide students to develop this equation on their own. Yes, they literally come up with the pythagorean theorem by the end of the lesson. And yes it takes 1.5 hours, sometimes longer. But at the end students really understood why this equation looks the way it does. They understand why we square the sides and why it equals c squared. There is an entire progression to their understanding. And only at the end do we say, “oh actually the equation you just came up with, well a man a really long time ago named Pythagoras found it first so now we name it after him.” Every time I taught this lesson (or any lesson) my students were not only so proud of themselves, they enjoyed it! The best part, they remembered what they learned months later because of this deeper understanding.

But it’s hard to let go. It takes so much longer. It takes patience. It takes more work on your part than you think because you are sitting back and watching kids fail over and over without ‘saving’ them. You are thinking about how to guide them without doing it for them. But I promise you this way works. My students always got there in the end. They did because everything they have ever learned and seen and done in their entire lives is a part of them and has given them the tools they need to build off their own understanding. Sometimes they needed help, of course. But that’s when I used questioning to help, to guide them, instead of giving them direct answers.

Anyway, I’m telling you this because I want to continuously shed light on the type of teacher I was, which has played a HUGE role in the type of mother I am and the style of parenting I believe in.

As parents, we tend to think our job is to show our children how to do everything.  It was just like hearing the teachers, but now I hear it with parents. She will never know what to do if I don’t show her first. or I need to show him how to do it. 

First of all let go of that. Who cares?

Who cares if your child will use the little watering can as a drum for the next few years? Why does it matter for your one year old to know how to put the cymbals together to make a noise, or to pick up the crayon and draw something on a piece of paper?

I know you don’t want your kids to fail. You put things in their hands and do things for them. It is out of love and I understand this need as a mom, and as a teacher.

But it is a disservice.

Your child is not learning when you do things for them. They are not achieving anything, their brains aren’t growing, and they are not owning the aha.

If it’s a matter of saving time, when would you like to save the time? Is it worth it to save time now, when they are young, by showing them how to do things, only to be stuck years later with someone who can’t figure things out on their own? Someone who can’t persist through their own struggles? I mean it was like when I was teaching. The first 3-4 months were just setting up the classroom environment, setting up my students to rely on themselves and their groups instead of me. It was taking the time, excrutiatingly, to push students further and further so they see that they don’t actually need me to do everything for them. It was sitting with each group, one at a time, literally showing them how to work in a group and how to share ideas. It was setting up this foundation which took so much time and effort in the beginning of the year, so that by the end I was able to sit back and enjoy the learning happening all around me, often without me.

Furthermore, part of respectful parenting is treating your kids like you would adults who you respect and care for. Would you buy someone a gift, open it for them, and show them what to do? I mean, that’s crazy and demeaning. I can’t imagine doing that for my husband or my mother or anyone. So why do we do this with our own children?

Let them do whatever they want to do with whatever object they have in their hands. (as long as it is safe of course) Let them explore. Let them be young and creative.

You are worried they will never figure something out, but children’s minds are inherently explorative. They are constantly learning everything around them. Their brains are working and growing at max capacity. It has to be for them to learn to crawl and walk and talk and eat and everything. So just naturally they will try everything until something works. When we enjoy the process rather than the product, we enjoy watching our little ones figure things out rather than showing them what to do each time.

Earlier I mentioned that teachers feel like their job is to show students how to do everything. But shouldn’t it be more than that? I could care less if students remembered the binomial theorem or even the formula for area and volume. We have computers for that who can do it better and faster than us anyway. Instead I always felt like if I could send out to the world people who knew how to work together and problem solve, who knew what to do in challenging situations, and who knew that where there is struggle there is also strength, then I would be a successful teacher.

I knew that the trivial mathematical stuff didn’t matter, but the characteristics they were building in my class did.

Shouldn’t it be the same as a parent? Do we really care about showing our children every thing that crosses their path? Do we need to stress ourself out to make sure they do everything “the right way”? Or should we instead be striving to raise resourceful, persistent, confident, cooperative, aware human beings?

Let’s focus on who they are. Let’s trust them. Let’s do less so they do more. 

don’t lead the read

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