My daughter will be 11 in October, and in that time, I have learned so much about motherhood, parenting, and about her. I am not a perfect mother, and make mistakes frequently, but I also get it right frequently, which is something that has been influenced by what I’ve learnt, what I’ve heard and witnessed of other parents, and from the insights of my husband. Today, I’m going to share a key lesson with you dear readers of The Mother Huddle that I believe can be exceptionally beneficial for our children, and that is parenting for the long run.
I’ve written before about the current educational crisis facing both schools and the young learners in them. We have an epidemic of students who aren’t hitting the educational milestones they should be, and a significant facet in this admittedly complex issue, is that many of these students aren’t getting the guidance at home that they need. Let’s start with screen time. I cannot tell you how often I’ve seen parents shoving a screen in front of their babies, toddlers, or kids to keep them entertained. Now, I’m not saying that it’s always wrong to pop on a cartoon for a restless little one when you’re stuck somewhere, like waiting for a doctor’s appointment, but what I am saying is that screen time needs to be limited. Don’t be afraid of your kids being bored, boredom is good for them and for their cognitive development. Boredom leads to richer inner worlds! The science backs me up on this, boredom is good for our kids, because they won’t want to be bored for long, so they will naturally go and do something fun or interesting. It may be looking for bugs in the backyard, daydreaming or imaginative play with their toys or reading! Reading is incredibly important for not just educational outcomes, but also for building our mental landscapes! My mind has been permanently added to by the rich worlds I have read about, as has my husband’s (who introduced me to a real love of reading) and the same with our daughter who has been reading novels for the last year and loves to discuss them with us! By allowing our kids to be bored sometimes, to make them turn off the screens and entertain themselves, we’re giving them a gift that they probably won’t appreciate for a long time, but that they will eventually come to realise was really good for them.
Something else I’ve learned with regards to parenting for the long run, is that sometimes our little ones are going to have freak outs and melt downs, and that it’s okay. When we hit that tantrum filled time when our daughter was about three, I used to do the whole time-out thing and try to control her outbursts. I had heard over and over how we’re supposed to let them cool off and then talk to them when they’ve calmed down… but why? When I have a meltdown, I don’t want to have to manage it all by myself, I want the comfort, love, and support of my husband to help me when I’m in distress, so why by all that’s green and good would I deny that to my child! Sometimes a few minutes to cool off can be a good thing, but this whole idea of pushing your kids away when their emotional state isn’t ‘appropriate’ is, to be frank, toxic, and is sending them the wrong message. It’s telling them, when things get too much for you, you’re on your own with that. In more recent times, when my daughter has been having a bit of a meltdown, I’ve found that giving her a big hug, not saying anything for a little bit, but just holding her, while she calms down, has been incredibly effective in not only bursting the meltdown bubble very quickly, but also helping her to feel loved, accepted, and supported.
That’s not to say I support all behaviour, but even when the behaviour isn’t one we want to encourage, we still shouldn’t be pushing away the child, we should be guiding the child. Which leads me to my final point that I wanted address. Something I have seen, over, and over, is small children acting in an inappropriate manner, let’s say maybe hitting their parents, or cursing at them, or speaking scornfully to them, and because a small child is doing this socially unacceptable behaviour, the adults around them are laughing. They’re laughing because they think it’s cute, and yeah, I can see it, a toddler dropping the f-bomb can be hilarious, but not when it’s at someone. I grew up being allowed to swear, it was never a big deal in my house, but I didn’t swear at my mother, because I was taught the difference between casual attitudes towards language and disrespect. Teaching our kids to respect others and themselves, doesn’t magically begin when they’re 7, 8, or 9, it begins from the start. I’ve seen toddlers interacting and one of them snatch a toy away from the other, and the parent of little Suzie-snatch-a-lot turn towards me and laugh with an indulgent ‘oh ho, how cute’, but all I could think is you’re setting that child up to have a very rude shock when you do start to teach them that that’s rude and inappropriate. Or worse yet, setting them up to be a selfish person in life if you never try to teach them that that’s not how we behave. I once saw a classmate of my daughter, who was 6 at the time, hitting his mother because he wanted to go home. She grabbed his hand and held it like everything was fine, and didn’t say anything. I felt like his actions needed to be addressed, but as it wasn’t my child and I didn’t know the mother all that well I didn’t say anything, but I thought to myself, I wonder at what age she will actually say to him, we don’t hit people? When he’s old enough that it actually hurts? It’s so important that we create guidelines for our children that will take them into adulthood.
That’s really my whole point here. Parenting for the long run is like setting up a railway, except the tracks are principles and the stops are age-appropriate guidance about how to adopt these principles. Understanding that our kids are always learning from us, and that we can guide them from the beginning as to how to interact with the world. So long as we tailor how we teach them based on their age and capacity to understand. A baby who is hitting other babies can be held in a loving embrace, smiled at, and have their fat little baby fist guided in gentle touch will already be taking in the lesson that we don’t smack people. A small child who is hitting other children can be gently talked to in simple terms, like the golden rule, they wouldn’t like to be hit, right? So don’t hit others… An older child or teen who has hit another could be talked to about the seriousness of these actions, and how when adults hit adults, they can face legal consequences. We have the same message the whole way through, but tailored and moulded to their capacity to understand. Planting the seeds of the values we want them to have as adults, right from the beginning, and allowing them to grow as our children grow is parenting for the long run.
