Small Moments, Big Life

A friend wrote me last week that she and her husband had abruptly arrived at a new stage of parenting.  Suddenly parenting was about behaviors more than care giving, more about discipline than bedtime routines.  She felt like the ground was shifting under her feet, without her permission.

That's the thing about parenting, every day you wake up not knowing what the world is going to look like that day. For example, my 5 year old daughter who is usually the epitome of sunshine and light decided THAT morning was going to be the day she decided she didn't want to wear her snowsuit.

The next morning, as she was struggling (but with no complaints) to get that same coat on, I realized that the tab on the zipper pull was actually broken off. Good grief!  How many times had I said the day before:

"It is a perfectly good coat.  It's silly to crab about a warm, working jacket."

Classic parenting. Just when you're sure about one thing, the rules change. Now, I didn't go out and get a new coat, but it did force me to reconsider the rest of the winter. It is important that she can zip the coat on her own - these small acts of independence matter. What I was so recently sure of - I had to pause and reevaluate.

One of my guiding principles of parenting is about life resiliency. The happiest, healthiest people seem to have an aptitude for bouncing back - sometimes even quicker and often even stronger.

So when the world is shifting, I try and think:

Rebound. Reconsider. React.  

In that order.

Maybe these are good guild lines for any relationship. I also find it to be true when thinking about my relationship with my siblings and parents. A few days ago, The Arch Mother, who has been bragging about how great her knees have been feeling, fell while getting out of the tub. She was fine, but hyper extended her knee and bruised her ego.  My first reaction was panic "You fell!?!" but I gave myself enough time to not make her feel worse about the situation.

"Calgon Take Me Away" could have been inspired by her proclivity to disappear into the bathtub sometimes twice a day.  As awful, as fearful as I felt about her slipping while getting out of the tub (where she would happily spend half her life - she loves baths and they are a peaceful part of her daily routine), I knew this was a jarring experience for her. I could hear her inner monologue.

"Old people slip in the tub - not me." 

So I knew this had to really bug her - the thought that she could be vulnerable in one of her safest places.

Instead of marching upstairs and installing railings on the shower walls (which she would hate), I gave us a minute to let the experience rest. Sometimes inaction is the best action. And the truth is, a few days have past and she's no worse for the wear, and so a big reaction would have been hurtful and unnecessary. As much as I hate to think about my mother getting hurt, an overreaction would have been a bigger injury. 

I try hard to not react first - but to collect myself and consider the circumstances. Life is best lived thoughtfully - and some of the most important moments emerge during every day, the seemingly insignificant small crisis, the action we take without thinking.

How many times a day do we allow our kids to interrupt us during conversation or in the middle of a complicated job? What are we teaching at this moment? The child learns to put his/her needs above the parents, and since that parent is the most important mentor in their lives, it creates an inflated sense of self importance. How do we think they'll react on the play ground when they need to take turns with a ball or on the slide or on the swing when their own parents can't differentiate between urgent need and standard issue?

Kids need attention.  They need love.  But sometimes, often times, love looks a lot more structured than cuddles and story time. Calmly making a child wait to interrupt or telling them you'll look at their project in a few minutes is often the kindest thing you can do for your child.  The trick is making sure you take the time to circle back, to spend a few minutes giving that right kind of attention.

Kids can adapt to this pretty quickly, for parents it's much harder. I recently had a conversation with a woman I admire.  We were talking about screen time and Wii. Our rules at the house mean no TV or Wii during the weekday. It's not a hard rule.  It's not written anywhere. In fact, I've never said it out loud.  It's just what I expect. On the weekends, the kids often watch cartoons on Saturday morning, and sometimes in the evening we play family games of Wii. We love the family movie night. She commented that

"I'm afraid of Wii.  I don't want the hassle the comes with technology." 

I totally understand this - in fact I felt exactly this way.  We bought our system a million years ago now, but it was after we'd suddenly lost my brother-in-law at 32.  The whole family was going to be under one roof for an extended time at the holiday and my husband and I thought that this would be something fun that would be active and a good distraction from the thick fog of grief of which we were still in the middle.  But I wasn't sure.  I worried about it getting out of hand.

Now several years later, we enjoy it.  We play it periodically, but certainly not every day, not even every week. Why isn't it an issue? I think, because at some point in my parenting, I discovered that I am bigger than any object, that I am stronger than any fear. We don't fight about the Wii because we don't let a whiny child win. We reward good behavior, not bad.

The kids know that if they want to play a game or watch a movie, that's reserved for good behavior. It seems impossible but it is so simple, so true.

So every time we give in because we're tired or busy or whatever, we're are creating future chaos. We think these small moments don't matter - that screen time for a kid who is falling apart is OK this one time - that buying the treats at the grocery store when everyone is melting down won't matter - or that turning the TV on when you don't have time to deal with the kids won't count.  But I hate to say that it does, it really does.

Life is built on these small moments. We have to ask ourselves with what kind of bricks are we building? Do we parent courageously? Do we parent with exhaustion? If we don't like the answer, we're the only ones who can change the situation. I hate to say that the answer to a lot of problems we face today is: Get more sleep. Schedule less stuff.

I fail at these things a lot, but not all of the time. We do the best we can. But the truth is we often could do better, we can always do better.  Hold your kids to high standards, but we would do well by our kids to hold ourselves to higher standards.