Posts Tagged ‘frustration’

Setting limits for ourselves and our children

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

“Cut it smaller!” said our two-year-old daughter, DD2.

“Is this good?” asked the well-meaning, patient dad as he cut a slice of pepperoni in half.

“No, cut it smaller!” whined DD2.

“Even smaller… Like this?” asked dad as he cut the pepperoni into even tinier quarters.

“No, smaller, smaller!” whined DD2 with a higher and more annoying tone of voice.

“Honey, please stop. That’s small enough.” said I, the exasperated mom.

“But sweetheart, I read this article the other day that talked about listening to one’s kids…”

–

That article happens to be my previous post … :)

Listening to our kids is very important but setting limits is equally important for us and our children. The dangers of listening and then doing as we are told are many. If we ever want to have a good (=peaceful, friendly, enjoyable, thougtful, honest, etc.) relationship with our children, it’s not going to happen if we only listen to them and do their bidding. Of course, we can listen and NOT do their bidding…

Listen or not to listen? The answer is simple: to listen. So that’s not the problem. To do or not to do as we are told by our children is the real problem. Fortunately, there IS a middle way, which is extremely difficult to reach. We will move from one extreme to another like a pendulum until we find that peaceful medium. This dance between the extremes and finding the balance is what I call the ‘art of parenting’.

What’s wrong with doing what we are told to do? Nothing. It’s a matter of choice and our choices are largely influenced by:

a) our character/personality;

b) our experiences with our own parents;

c) cultural influences;

d) our immediate mood.

I have seen a vast array of parents ranging from those who try to do everything for their children to those who are content observing their children.

We need to set aside all the factors that shape our choices and tune into ‘the moment of struggle’. Our kids are different; times are different; situations we find ourselves in are different. Even though there may be similarities, if we put everything together (person + time + place + event), we ALWAYS end up with a unique situation.

This does not mean that there are no guidelines for the parent to be a parent. After all, we ARE the parents—the grownups—and even though at times it seems like our kids DO run our lives and our household, we need to keep the following in mind.

1. A kid does not run the household.

Who cleans the house? Who does the grocery shopping, the laundry, the dishwashing, the ironing, the cooking, etc.? Who takes the kids to the doctor when they are sick? Who earns the money to pay for all the food, the clothing, the home, the games, the toys, the holidays, the techno gadgets? Yes, you guessed right. WE, the PARENTS do!!!

The parents are in charge and they are the ones taking care of the kids. We, as parents, already do a whole lot of stuff for our kids without them even asking for it! So chill, if you feel guilty you didn’t get the itouch that your kids wanted so badly from you. They will live.

2. Set YOUR limits.

Think of limits as a field of tall grass. The grass bows to the wind in order to keep its peaceful existence. A strong wind may flatten the grass as long as it lasts, but as soon as the wind is gone, the grass raises itself once more gracefully—unharmed. Our children are our wind: sometimes a breeze, sometimes a hurricane.

Planting a field of tall grass and then taking care of it so that it does not wither away are not easy tasks, but they’re important. It gives us—the parents—and our children a nice playing field.

Just like every child being unique, every parent is unique. Thus, every parent has a different idea of what kind of field they would like to plant: how big it will be, what kind of grass to plant, how often to trim the grass, etc.

We reach, what I call, our ‘boiling point’ when we neglect our field of grass and our dear wind starts to wreak havoc on our crops, i.e., when we let things slide and let our kids push our (their) limits. Our household starts brewing like a witch’s cauldron: we get frustrated and/or angry and scream at our children; in return they scream back at us; we wonder where we went wrong and how our dear little angels turned into such spoiled brats.

We need to set our own limits with our own children – not the neighbor’s limits. (We got these extremely cute polka-dotted wooden clogs for DD2. She loves thomping around the house in those clogs, but after about 5 minutes of tock-tock-tock-clickety-clock, I have enough. The first day, after 10 minutes of toleration, I blurted out inadvertently, “Sweetie, it’s too much noise for the neighbors. Take the clogs off.” My husband joined forces with me and our DD2 stomped even harder. Oops!!! Our household just reached the ‘boiling point’: she protested loudly, I got even more frustrated, my husband joined my frustration. First of all, why did I tell her about the neighbors? The neighbors had not complained—yet. It was I—the mama—who was annoyed! Who knows whether the neighbors were even at home or not? Maybe our neighbors’ noise tolerance is way more than 10 minutes… I don’t know! What I know is my own limit, but I was not paying attention to that until the noise was getting totally on my nerves and even then I had to use the neighbors as an excuse… The next morning, when DD2 headed towards her beloved clogs, my husband tried to create a new rule in the house and announced that the clogs were not to be worn inside because the noise could disturb the neighbors—again the not-yet-complaining neighbor’s limits were being enforced… Our pendulum just swung from 10 minute toleration to 0 minute toleration. Ding dong! You know what I mean? Our solution: let her walk around a bit—not more than 5 minutes!—and then tell her to walk barefoot. Limit set, kid happy, parents happy.)

One last note on setting limits: set your limits so that you still have enough patience or tolerance to deal with any setbacks the wind may blow in your direction.

3. Listen to yourself, listen to your kid.

Setting limits is a tricky business and you will discover that it is a process that keeps changing and evolving over time. Some limits will be discarded naturally whereas some may stick around and some will have to be changed.

A child’s growth rate is much faster than that of the parent’s, which presents an interesting challenge for the parent. Our job as a parent is to be one step ahead of the game if we don’t want to find ourselves in situations where we feel like we want to smack our kid.

The key to successfully managing our ever-changing interaction with our kid is to listen. Listen to our own inner child AND listen to our kids. Understand where everybody is coming from and come up with a win-win solution. This requires mindful thinking, patience, understanding, honesty, and good communication skills. Like I said, it is no small feat!

4. Preserve the dignity of every household member.

It is important to preserve the dignity of each and every household member when we are setting limits and protecting our boundaries. Even though children may seem ‘childish’ and behave as if they don’t understand any of the stuff that is happening, it is important we show them the respect that they deserve as human beings. And as parents, we are not to be our children’s slaves, but their guides and beacons in life. Make sure that you set your limits in a way that does not take away your dignity. This way your children will always respect you for being who you are.

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Children’s well-being checkups and the maternal instinct

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

I saw a mother and a baby on the tram the other day. The baby was invisible in the stroller. A few minutes later the mother picked up her baby—not more than 3 months old. He could even hardly hold his neck. His mother pressed him against her chest, then lifted him up and took a good look at him—with sheer adoration—and then turned him around and propped him up in her lap. This happy and content baby, now sitting directly opposite from me, started staring at me. I stared back. He had big, serious, brown eyes and he held his gaze to which I caved in and started looking outside :-)

What was so special about this scene? First of all, a tram is not a place where one takes a baby out of her stroller. If anything, I would want to keep my baby in the stroller, because it’s safer—what with all the people jostling in and out; and the tram turning, braking and accelerating abruptly… Second of all, the baby was totally calm when this mother picked him up. So why in the world would a mother deliberately pick a calm baby out of his stroller on a tram?

  1. The mother does not realize the dangers of taking him out of the stroller, so she must be stupid.
  2. No one has told the mother not to behave like this, so she must be uneducated.
  3. The mother has not read enough books on how to travel safely with her baby, so she must be illiterate.

Then we went to Artis, the zoo in Amsterdam. There, among many other wondrous animals, we saw black spider monkeys. This one particular female was tending to her baby, playing with it, feeding it. This monkey mother—stupid, uneducated, illiterate—knew exactly what to do with her baby. Now, isn’t that a miracle?

Who taught this monkey ‘how to be a mother’ to a baby monkey? Silly question, isn’t it? The females of all species know exactly what to do with their offspring. But then, how come the females of the most intelligent beings on this planet are not so sure about how to be a ‘good’ mother?

There are so many mothers among us—especially in ‘developed/developing’ countries—who feel more and more insecure about how to handle their babies. There is a dizzying amount of parenting books waiting to be purchased to give the inside scoop on how to raise a baby. The ‘civilized systems’ do not help ease the feelings of insecurity and inadequacy—in fact, they can make it worse. A friend of mine in Australia—she is not Australian, though—wrote this to me in an email:

“I am not sure about how other people raise their children here in Australia. But I know the government encourages one of the parents to stay home with the child by providing some tax benefit. The only thing that bothers me is that I have to bring my son to a Nurse every couple weeks. They will check his hip (for dislocation), testicles, neck strength (they take his hands and pull him up from a lying down position to see if he can lift his own head, etc.). I thought babies couldn’t hold up their heads like that before they are 3 months old. They can hold their heads/neck in some way but this is very brutal to me. My son cried every time when they handled him this way. I hate these repeated tests very much. I don’t understand why they keep checking the same thing. Maybe I am over protective but sometimes, I just think western medicine/checking is very intrusive.”

Now why does she HAVE to bring her son to a Nurse for a checkup? She thinks it is brutal, the baby cries, so what is the benefit of such an action?

The sad fact is: there is no logical explanation for this practice. Every country has developed its own peculiar ways of following the growth and development of babies and children. Sometimes there are overlaps and sometimes there are unique practices—such as this example.

So what can a mother do? She can simply accept things as they are and go on with her life. In my friend’s case, she can’t accept it. She doesn’t understand why, so she blames herself for being ‘over-protective’. (But that’s simply not true, because she can’t ‘protect’ her baby from these interventions, which in turn renders her helpless and frustrated.  By the way, had I been in her place, I would simply not show up for these check-ups! :-) And even then I would not think I was being ‘over-protective’…)

The mother on the tram (MT) made me think about my friend in Australia (FA). When MT pulled her son out of the stroller, she had no trace of a doubt on her face. In fact, she was behaving more or less like the monkey mother we saw at the zoo—just doing what felt natural to her. Why can’t FA do what feels natural to her?

FA’s frustration stems from a deeper underlying issue: The developed society where she resides in has placed certain mechanisms that prevent FA from getting in touch with her instincts. As harmless as it is, done under the guise of safety, concern, and health for our babies, the routine checkups of healthy babies and children act as a sinister blocker of our instinctual responses.

How many of you look forward to routine checkups at the pediatrician’s office (or at the consultatiebureau)? How many of you out there worry about whether your baby is the ‘right’ height or the ‘right’ weight? How many of you worry about whether your child is eating too little or too much? How many of you worry about whether the vaccinations are ‘good’ or ‘bad’? How many of you worry about whether you are doing a ‘good’ job as a parent raising your children or not?

If you said, ‘yes’ to the first question and ‘no’ to all the other questions, please accept my congratulations on being a SUPER PARENT. You can stop reading here and go on with your life :-)

If you don’t qualify as a super parent, then I would like to take this opportunity to offer you a life-long membership at my NORMAL PARENT CLUB free of charge :-)

I, as a normal parent, worry about many things concerning my precious children and dread going to routine checkups, because I don’t really think they are necessary. Some parents play the doctor game with their children to make them more sympathetic towards going to the doctor, but why do children regularly need to see a doctor if they are healthy? If anything, regular checkups should start when we turn 30, because then they could be used as a preventative measure for a wide range of health problems.

Yet, it has become so accepted and so ‘normal’ to take healthy children for ‘regular’ checkups that sometimes I have to grapple with feelings of guilt when I have to admit I have skipped several checkups—as if that would reflect on my parenting skills… Even though the doctors and the nurses are really nice and sweet, I still sweat over all the questions that will be asked, the ‘should-lists’ and ‘shouldn’t-lists’, and the age-appropriate safety hazard brochures that will be given to me. All these ‘harmless’ observations and interventions make me think about things that have never crossed my mind. I start worrying about new things that don’t even apply to our lives. My child and I get no benefit from these visits—except the accompanying relief that the next appointment is not in the near future, so what is the point?

In the realm of quantum physics, it is common knowledge that observation changes the outcome of an event. I believe this fact also applies to events in our realm (aren’t we after all an extension of the quantum realm?). Thus, the mere observation of the development of a healthy child undermines a mother’s instincts. Instead of letting the mother and child be; these observations shift the mother’s focus from her immediate emotional bond with her child to (a) historical accounts of how things have been and/or (b) hypothetical accounts of how things should be and/or how they can go wrong. Once the immediate emotional bond is severed this way, the mother has been thrown off course. She needs to make a conscious effort not to dwell on all that was discussed during the ‘regular’ checkup before she can establish her instinctual mothering bond with her child again.

These regular checkups are to ensure the child’s development is on track—as if a parent is not equipped to detect warning signs. Ironically, when dealing with children who are sick, the doctors are advised to trust a mother’s instinct.

So how can it be that mothers can be trusted with sick children but not with healthy children???

Why do I need an expert to tell me my healthy child is healthy, when that expert has to rely on my instinct when my child is sick??? (However, there are also many cases when doctors do NOT trust a mother’s instinct and label the mother as worrisome and paranoid. Another friend of mine nearly lost her daughter because of such doctors, who told her there was nothing wrong with her child, when in fact something was horribly wrong.)

So what can we do?

  • Get in touch with our instincts and gut feelings.
  • Accept that each child is unique and the ‘average’ child exists only statistically—on doctors’ charts. Every child has his/her own developmental path.
  • Doctors don’t always have all the answers.
  • We know and understand our children much more than we think.
  • Have faith in our capability to be a parent. If we can give birth to a child, then we sure can help him grow up.
  • We are not raising our children; we are only helping them adjust to this world.
  • Have faith in our children.

At the zoo, there was this quote from J.H. Leopold on a wall:

Elke keer, dat ik in Artis ben geweest, begrijp ik de menschen zooveel beter. (=Every time I have been to Artis, I understand the humans so much better.)

I guess what he really wanted to say to us, mothers, was: Learn from the monkey mothers :-)

-

Helpful Links:

  1. Quantum theory demonstrated: Observation affects reality
  2. Trust a mother’s instinct on sick children, GPs told
  3. Mother’s instinct on sick children is right, doctors told

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Why should dessert be eaten the last?

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

I was trying to feed my two-year-old child (DD2), who has given me a hard time with eating ever since the very beginning. I had her favorite food on the plate and placed her in front of her favorite show. (Yes, I know, I have been a ‘bad’ mother by letting her eat in front of the screen, but despite all my tricks to get her to eat anything, she remains borderline underweight. Therefore, I have decided that getting food in her system is more important than teaching her table manners at the moment :-) )

Just when I settle down next to her, do you know what she says to me? She would like to eat it with candy! What do I do? I have to think fast–really fast! Do I pick this battle or not?

If I say, “First you eat your food, then candy”; I know I will lose for sure. She is very stubborn and when she refuses food, that’s usually the end of the story. No matter what I do, I can’t make her eat. Then she goes to bed on an empty stomach and then she wakes up in the middle of the night: hungry… You get the picture: I lose big time. (Anyways, it is not a good idea to use candy/dessert as a reward for children since it sends a mixed message: ‘I will reward you with ‘bad’ food that is delicious, if you eat your yucky ‘good’ food!’ or ‘Save the best for the last.’—but is sugar really the ‘best’ nutritious food ingredient???)

So what do I do? Before I know it, I hear myself say, “Okay, you can eat it with candy—but you have to eat it together.” (Ooops!!! What have I done? How ridiculous is that? Why did I say that???) And she simply says, “Okay.”

And she eats it! She eats a plate of food, every spoonful accompanied by one tiny chocolate M&M. The total number of chocolate M&Ms consumed? 11! Only eleven: much less than what she would have devoured if I had instead given her the tiny box after dinner. And this way she ate more than what she would have eaten—had she agreed to eat in the first place! I consider this a win-win situation for both of us!

It does ‘sound’ disgusting: adding M&Ms on top of your dinner plate, but why? Is there a scientifically good health reason why dessert is eaten afterwards? Or why we should not eat dessert and dinner together? Some dishes (like some pasta sauces and beans) require the addition of sugar. There are even sweet and sour dishes! Is it simply because we have been conditioned to think/believe that dessert is eaten after dinner? I have done a search on the web, but I could not find a logical answer to any of these questions. So why not M&Ms with food? :-)

Helpful links:

  1. Mixed messages: Kids & healthy eating
  2. Why is it customary to eat dessert after dinner?

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How do I make her clean up?

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

As I stepped out of my morning shower, I witnessed my husband and our 2-year old daughter (2DD) in a deadlock: dad holding 2DD by the arm while repeating, “first pick this up, first pick this up, first pick this up…” and 2DD screaming and making futile attempts to break free from dad. I automatically thought that I should step right between them and take control of the situation, but with considerable effort I held myself back and steered in the opposite direction. Dad and 2DD should be able to sort through their own fights, right?

However, not a minute had gone by when a crying 2DD came to me looking for some comforting. I was not going to console her right away, because I did not know what had exactly taken place. Why did dad let her go? Did she pick up the stuff she was supposed to? Or did dad lose his battle and caved in to her crying? If she did pick up the stuff, then consolation was okay, but otherwise… If dad lost this battle and 2DD is coming to mom in order to escape from dad, then that is definitely not okay. This sets the stage for many more lost battles for dad and a mom-2DD alliance or vice versa (where she teams up with dad against mom). The alliance should always be between the parents and the sooner you show and teach this to your child, the easier disciplining will be.

So what had really taken place? I made my appearances to dad and inquired about the incident as nonchalantly as I could. He told me that she had done her usual thing when she gets frustrated – that she had started throwing things on the ground and then he had told her to stop and to pick them up. When she had not done as she was told, he was frustrated himself and did not know what to do other than insist that she clean up: thus, the deadlock situation. In the end, he had lost his battle: he had let her go.

So what could dad have done to handle the situation? First of all, never tell an already frustrated kid what to do, because it just won’t work (and this applies to kids of all ages—not just 2-year-olds!). The first thing to do is to TRY to understand the source of frustration and work with that. Asking her to clean up when she is in the middle of throwing a tantrum will only create more frustration for the kid and will probably cause her to throw even MORE things on the floor! Here is how I would have handled the situation:

1) move slightly away from the situation and wait 20-30 seconds to see if her act is slowing down;

2) if I see her tantrum continuing or increasing, then that means she is frustrated about something and needs my help to figure it out, so this time I actually move right next to her and down to her level and have her eye-to-eye;

3) I tell her firmly to stop and ask her what is happening and TRY to listen (even though it can be really difficult to make out what she tries to say at this age!);

4) if I have her attention (wonderful!) we can start sorting things out and once the source of her frustration is taken care of, then we can move on with cleaning up her mess together;

5) if I can’t get her attention and if she is still going on with her tantrum, this time I use my arms and pick her up and make her stop, take her into a separate room and give her a time-out.

Wow! That takes time and energy! And we have barely touched on how to get her to clean up after herself. The truth of the matter is, two-year-olds are too young to learn to clean up after themselves. They have to learn other things before they can learn to clean up. That does not mean that you are the one who always has to clean up after your children. The best you can do is pick moments when your child is not frustrated and then clean up together with her. What most parents would like to see happen is that children clean up after they are done with playing. What you need to understand is that children will play until they are TIRED of playing. At that point, you can be sure that cleaning up is the LEAST likely thing that they would like to do next, simply because they are TIRED! When you ask them to clean up toys that they are TIRED of playing with, you can be sure that you are setting yourself up to be a major source of frustration for your kid. Leave the toys lying around like that for a while and come back to clean up together after your child has eaten or slept and is not tired to clean up. However, if you can’t stand the clutter of toys around, that is your problem—not your child’s problem. So don’t make your problem become your child’s problem. Clean them up yourself and save yourself and your child from further misery!

A pediatrician had once told me, “Pick your battles with your kid.” How wise, but how difficult to implement! When you are dealing with a two-year-old, keep in mind that you are dealing with a human being going through their toughest developmental stage in their whole life (if you thought puberty was tough, it’s only because you don’t remember how difficult it was when you were 2!). And really: pick your battles! A 2-year-old is a willful, irrational, nonnegotiable creature who will not give up on what she wants whatever the cost is. She can not do a cost-benefit analysis; the only thing she knows is what she wants in that moment and nothing, NOTHING else matters. It is a huge developmental step: she is on her independence path. Have some respect :)

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