“Only remember one thing before you go home—love your kids, not till it hurts, but till it makes you feel good. They’re all you have or maybe ever will. But they don’t belong to you. They’re only on loan, so love and enjoy them while you can, then let go when the time comes. Don’t hold the strings, and never make them feel beholden to you. They don’t owe you anything… I’m going to be the best damned mother because I’m going to listen. No sermons…”
excerpt from Portraits (1979) by Cynthia Freeman
I had written this quote on a piece of paper 19 years ago when I was 19. (How weird is that!!?) I stumbled upon it when I was flipping through an old notebook in my parents’ house. I don’t even remember what the book was about. However, this part must have struck a chord with me because I went through the trouble of writing it down and dating it August 17, 1991.
Maybe I was leaving a message for my future self…
No, not MAYbe. I WAS leaving a message for my future self.
If there is anything I have learned in life so far; it is the simple fact that there are no coincidences. If I happen upon a piece of paper that I wrote 19 years ago when I was 19, it is too wacky a coincidence to be a coincidence. You know what I mean? I mean it was no coincidence. It just was meant to be.
I think I know why I wrote it down. Most of my life, I have felt that my mother was not listening to me. She claimed she knew what was best for me; she claimed to do the right things for me; she claimed that some of my choices were wrong; she claimed she knew me better than I knew myself. You get the picture? (Don’t get me wrong, I am not writing this to bash my mother, in fact, I truly believe that her intentions were pure and she meant no harm. She is a wonderful person with a heart of gold and I love her dearly. After all, I am who I am partly because of her, so if I bash her, that means I bash a part of myself!)
Now that I have children of my own, one thing I try to do is to listen. I make every effort to listen to them, to understand where they are coming from to give them the space for their personalities to flourish.
After I came across Cynthia’s quote, I began thinking again. Do I listen enough? And do my kids listen to me? Because being listened to is just as important as listening. Listening and being listened to are like two sides of a coin. If I don’t listen, then how can I expect my children to listen to me? If my children don’t listen to what I say, are they to blame or am I to blame? (Well, I never want to blame anybody for anything, but being human and all, when things don’t work out the way we want them to, most of us like to point a finger at something to ease our frustrations—even though it is not the most constructive way of resolving problems.)
Listening to children is not an easy task at all. The fact that our babies are born ‘speechless’ makes it even harder, because we—the parents—have to figure out what they are ‘saying’. This is especially challenging for first-time parents since they are totally unprepared for baby language 101, which consists mostly of crying.
However, ask any experienced mother and they can easily distinguish between cries of hunger and cries of boredom. In fact, there is a long list of different cries ranging from the ‘change-me-I-pooped’ cries, to ‘pick-me-up-I-want-to-be-held’ cries, to ‘I-don’t-want-this’ cries, to ‘play-with-me’ cries, to ‘I’m-tired-but-can’t-sleep’ cries, etc.
Unfortunately, they don’t teach us how to listen to a baby at school—maybe they should! Most people get annoyed with crying babies and children, because they don’t know how to listen. All they want is for the baby to shut up. Now, I, on the other hand, get annoyed with those people, because here is a being who is trying to communicate in the best way s/he can what his/her problem is. These precious little beings are our future and it is up to us to help them the best way we can. We bring them into this world. Is it not our responsibility to try to understand them? If we just expect them to do our bidding, then how is our relationship with our children any different than that of a master-slave relationship?
There is some good advice to first-time parents about why babies cry and how to stop it. The advice consists mainly of telling parents to make sure that all the baby’s physical and emotional needs are met, i.e., feeding, changing diapers, dressing appropriately, gas pains, etc. If all the baby’s needs are met and the baby is still crying, the advice is to tell the parents to relax because it is normal for the average baby to cry about 1,5 to 2 hours per day for no reason at all.
Well, this is the part where I have to raise my voice and say, “Objection!” Just because WE don’t understand why a baby is crying does NOT mean that the baby is crying for ‘no reason at all’. A crying baby is definitely trying to communicate something. WE are the ones who are incapable of deciphering its message.
Moreover, the ‘average’ baby does not exist. WE have created the ‘average’ baby to make OUR lives easier. In the process, we have done great injustice to every baby’s unique existence. Even though I write it out like this, I am still guilty of comparing my children to some phantom average child to reassure myself that my children are ‘normal’. And what if they’re not ‘normal’? What then?
We have to stop measuring our kids against a benchmark that does not exist.
Instead of relying on the ‘average’ baby/kid advice to approach our children, we can start listening to our kids and learn from them. We have to stop responding to them based on the ‘average’ kid model. For example, feeding our babies is usually based on the ‘average’ kid model: what to feed our babies, when and how often we need to breastfeed, when to start introducing solids, what should they eat as they grow older, etc. However, the ‘average’ baby feeding model has failed me with both my children. And you know what? Even though I tried in the same way, they both turned out to have totally different feeding habits and preferences. How remarkable is that!
Sleep advice is also based on the ‘average’ kid model and when it boils down to applying it to the individual kid, most of the time, it.just.does.not.work!
Learning to listen to our children is the key to establishing and keeping good communication channels with them. It starts with tuning into the baby talk and then just blossoms into more beautiful and meaningful interactions with our children. Listening is not simply done with ears. We need to rely on all our five senses plus more—our sixth sense, our feelings, our intuition, our hearts. Only when we are capable of ‘listening’ with total sincerity and respect, can our children make themselves be heard and be open to listen to what we have to say.
Like Cynthia Freeman said, “Love your kids, not till it hurts, but till it makes you feel good. They’re all you have or maybe ever will. But they don’t belong to you. They’re only on loan, so love and enjoy them while you can, then let go when the time comes. Don’t hold the strings, and never make them feel beholden to you. They don’t owe you anything… I’m going to be the best damned mother because I’m going to listen. No sermons…”
How do you listen to your children?
Tags: average kid, babies
[...] Listening to our children [...]