Last week I went to a parents workshop. I was looking forward to it, mostly because my husband and I went together. We are hardly ever able to do stuff like this together, so I really was pretty excited about it. Also I am always hungry to be with other parents, to hear how they deal with the daily challenge of being a mother / father in a modern world.
The workshop was ok, very nice people, some valuable input from the teacher… Also all of the women were working moms like me, so we did have a lot in common. But in the end I felt kind of disappointed. I could not put my thumb on it at the moment, but I have figured out that I just don’t fit with that crowd anymore (or never did). I felt as if I was the only one really wanting to find out about deeper aspects of parenthood, others seemed more or less to look for justification, for the confirmation that what they are doing is the right way. And if I tried to go a little deaper, talk about the kind of philosophical questions that I ask myself, they just changed into helpful mode, telling me what to do, instead of sharing their own stuff with me. So I stopped sharing.
One of the things that disturbed me was a discussion about how to help children become self assured and how to enable them to resist peer pressure. Most of the discussion was about how wanting to be part of a group is also a good for you, that adapting to certain society rules is good for you etc. This is ok by me, but was not the subject. There was also the argument that, if I as the mother make the child respect my needs, this teaches the child to repect his. I am pretty sure that this is quite wrong. It is of course ok to know your own needs and look after yourself. But this is not for the child’s benefit, but for your own (and it afterwards you are a happier person, the child might benefit a little bit, too). The way to teach children how to respect others is by respecting them and their needs!!! This is not the same thing at all.
When I tried to explain that I feel that we as parents should try to respect our childrens needs and not pretend that we do things that we do for ourselves actually for THEM, this brought up that my son probably is one of those little tyrants you can read a lot of articles about. This is absolutely not true. He is strong headed as I am, and expresses his feelings not always in the most polite way. But we wanted him to be able to express his feelings, this is still important to me and I accept that he cannot always do this in a polite and quiet manner, as adults do tend to ignore that. This might not always be agreeable, but it is not his job to be agreeable. He is a sweet, caring, helpful boy, says thank you and asks for permission – most of the time and as much as is healthy for a lively young boy of just 7 years of age.
Luckily my son goes to a great school where children are respected and parents and teachers are closer to my world view, so that some really meaningful exchange is possible. And also I have my beloved books by Jesper Juul, Rebeca Wild and Emmi Pikler and the journal by “Mit Kindern wachsen“. Reading some of their articles always helps me get back on track and to the way my heart knows children should be treated.
Filed under: me as a mother | Tagged: child, children, kids, parenting, parents
