Most of us could probably agree that smoking pot every day isn’t an ideal long-term coping solution (unless your name is Snoop). Most of us would also probably agree that it’s not necessarily a lifestyle choice that we want for our children, either. But how do we get our children to make choices for themselves that reflect a healthy and joyful attitude towards life? How do we get them to make choices – not because we tell them to – but because they can see the natural consequences for themselves?
If you’re not a parent, you might think that this blog doesn’t apply to you, but I’m going to encourage you to keep reading, because you may see some of the patterns of your childhood in stark relief.
Skittles for dinner?
A home-schooling friend of mine came over recently, and her family has embraced a radical (IMO) form of home-schooling called Unschooling. If you haven’t heard of it, let me badly garble the gist of it for you: kids should be allowed to make decisions for themselves. All decisions. Including what time they go to bed, what they eat, when they eat, what kind of school “lessons” they’ll do, how much screen time they have every day, even whether they want to go to church or not.
As an example, my friend’s kids regularly stay up way late – like, 2 am late. And sometimes, all they have for dinner is a bag of Skittles. Or marshmallows. Or potato chips.
Like many of you reading this, I was stunned. “They can eat anything they want to? You buy them whatever they want at the grocery store? Gummi worms for breakfast?” I almost fell off of my mommy chair right then and there.
I hate zucchini!
But then I started remembering how just the other day I had forced my kids to eat their zucchini before I would give them any dessert, despite massive protests of “I hate zucchini. It tastes yucky.” And I had a huge epiphany about how badly my kids must have felt at that moment in time.
Do you have a food you just can’t stand? Liver, bananas, avocado, kale? Now imagine if an authority figure in your life (like your boss or therapist or religious figure) told you that you had to eat that hated food before you could have dessert. My hated food is onions, and if someone forced me to eat raw onions right now, I would die a little bit inside. I would feel manipulated and resentful, even if I couldn’t articulate that. I would want to scream and tear out my hair, because it would be totally unfair of that person not to take into consideration my aversion to onions. But yet, that’s what I had done to my children?
Why do we want to control our kids?
Part B of my epiphany was wondering whether the reasons that I truly want my kids to eat zucchini (or to wash beneath their fingernails or to go to bed early) aren’t necessarily for their own health, but because of control. I want to be in control of all of these aspects of their lives. Sure, their health may be an ostensible reason behind my rationale, but really, at the end of the day, it’s about control. Which leads to other questions, like,
- Is it more important to me that they eat their zucchini, or that they have a good relationship with me?
- Would I rather that they ate their zucchini, or that they grew up thinking that “my mom was always so awesome at mealtimes – so involved, so present, so happy to be there with us.”
- Would I rather that they learned to trust their own decisions, or looked to me (or anyone outside of themselves) to tell them what they “should” and “shouldn’t” do?
As a corollary to that, why is it that we don’t we treat our children like we do other (adult) people in our lives? Why don’t we give them the same respect that we give to our coworkers, for instance? Most of us claim that our family is the most important thing in our lives, and yet we quite often devalue the relationships that we have with our children in favor of our own sense of propriety and what we think our kids “should” be doing. We are usually so worried about what other people will think (such dirty children!) or our own inability to cede control (Come here now! Because I said so!), that we can’t even really see the real reasons behind our requests or demands.
How can they make good choices if we make all of their choices for them?
We want our children to make choices for themselves based on natural consequences, but yet, we don’t actually allow them to make those choices. Instead, we make all of their choices for them, essentially telling them, on a conscious or subconscious level, that they aren’t capable of making good choices for themselves. Laina Orlando (who I’ll be interviewing next week – stay tuned!) talks about this in Conscious Parenting; if we tell them, in our words and our deeds, that they aren’t able to make good choices, then they will begin to model our expectations for them.
Whose opinion is more valid…mine, or my child’s?
A lifetime of telling our kids that “we know best” adds up to the message that whatever they (the children) are doing, or thinking, or emoting, isn’t as important as our (the parent’s) version. And then what happens? Once they’re a little bit older and are now supposed to make choices for themselves, then they want to do exactly everything opposite of what their parents have always tried to keep from them. Much like my children will shovel in as much candy as possible at a birthday party.
I can almost hear the argument to this– “Erin, forcing your kids to eat their vegetables doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll make bad decisions later in life.” Agreed. But it’s not really about the vegetables here. We (and by “we” I mean most Westernized parents) have taken away our children’s power, and how could that not translate into problems later in life? Problems that most of us are still dealing with in our adult lives – like still not being able to fully own our power or to own our emotions. And could that be (partially at least) because our parents were constantly telling us that we weren’t ever doing the “right” thing? When we are constantly telling our children to “hurry up” or to “stop playing Legos and put on your shoes” or “eat this, not that,” then we are in effect doing just that.
Another argument against this way of parenting is that allowing our children to make all decisions themselves is just an excuse for a very laissez faire style of parenting, one in which parents get off the hook for being parents. But the point isn’t to just “let your kids do whatever they want” but to allow them to experience first-hand what it means to make choices, and then to see the consequences of those choices for themselves. After all, we can tell our kids all day long that eating only marshmallows isn’t healthy, but when they experience it for themselves, and then are able to talk through the consequences (“Gee, my stomach really hurts from only eating marshmallows today”) with a caring and loving parent, then they will have learned infinitely more than by just hearing the words. Just like in adult life – think of a boring presentation where someone drones on and on versus a hands-on, experiential learning workshop.
Eventually, my home-schooling friend says, her kids learned that eating only marshmallows wasn’t a great idea, and now they often choose healthy items to eat. And isn’t that what we want? For them to make the best choice for their own needs and health, even when we’re not around?
Would you tell Arnold at the office to “Come here, now!”
I would like to be in a place where everything that comes out of my mouth to my children is something that I would say to a coworker. I would ask them what they want to do and I would be respectful of their time and their need to complete something (even if it is something that is, in my mind, “unimportant”). Because who am I to say that the Lego castle isn’t important? Would I expect Arnold from the office to drop everything and walk away from whatever project he was doing, simply because I demanded it of him? Um, probably not.
Does this mean that my kids are now going to be able to eat whatever they want for dinner? Also, probably not. I’m not quite there yet. But they are going to be able to skip the zucchini if they don’t want to eat it. And maybe then they can have all the Skittles they want…for dessert.
Wishing you all a little more compassion towards yourself and your children today. (And if I come to your house to dinner, please don’t make me eat any onions!)
