What happens when our fantasy of how we hoped we would be as parents meets the reality of our child?
I was sharing with a friend this morning that when I started, I imagined I would never yell at my child(ren). He knew me, so he chuckled and said, “You are kidding, right?“
Last week was a great week here at Compassionate Parenting Solutions. Every parent who called was from my favorite parenting approach – RIE® Resources for Infant Educarers. Our conversations were deep and rich. Most of the calls were about toddlers. I had some lively and robust toddlers last week—my favorite type. I had a scratcher, a biter, and a compulsively climbing out of a criber. The parents were doing everything “by the book.” Doing the “right” thing, and the behavior was still happening. Each parent said the same thing – It is not working!
The best part of our conversation was busting up the idealization we can carry as parents: the idea that if we have a “parenting philosophy” we follow, we will solve our child’s behavior.
First, the definition.
Idealization – When the idea of something is better than the reality.
We parents are searching like never before in the history of parenting for answers and support. We find a book, a “method,” a theory, a class, and we think, “Whew. Now, if I can just follow the script, it will work out, right?“
Yeah, until the individual child shows up, and then the answer is—well, maybe. Sometimes. Or perhaps—not on this particular child.
Here’s the deal: In theory, theory and practice are one in the same. In practice – not so much.
As I tell my parents, I am you. I am just like my clients. I have had the same struggles. I am looking for answers (albeit teen answers) that fit my individual children. How I parent one doesn’t always work on the other. How I parented last year does not work this year.
Here are a few of my fantasy busters.
- I raised my voice at my 8-week-old son.I became obsessed with finding sleep solutions when my fantasy mommy was blown out of the water pretty fast through her own sleep deprivation. It wasn’t a yell, but it was a pretty desperate and intense tone—PLEASE sleep! I implored. If you don’t sleep, I can’t be a good mommy, as if it was up to him to make me a “good mommy.”
- Toddlers push back and test boundaries. I full-on yelled at him one day in toddlerhood—OK, more than one day. Here again, it was HIS behavior that needed to stop in order for me to feel sane. No, he was being a typical toddler.
- Teen attitude. As a teen – forget it! I have yelled at him in a way that some parents might know. It’s the one where you are sure you just hemorrhaged a vocal chord. He was upstairs looking down at me from the landing. It was perfect. He said, Look who is acting like a child now. As angry as I was at that moment, I couldn’t argue with the truth.
All three of these situations subconsciously pressure my child to behave in a certain way in order for ME—the mommy—the adult in charge—to be OK. It is not up to an eight-week-old, a toddler, a teen, or anyone else on this planet to be a certain way in order for me to be OK.
What perpetuates fantasy parenting?
- Thinking that if we follow a method or a “parenting theory,” we will see consistent results in our child’s behavior. Growth and development are about constant and rapid change. Although change is continual in the child through adolescence, it doesn’t look like consistent behavior. At each stage of development, it is as if your child has an entirely new brain. A new person shows up regularly in the crib, out of the crib, home, and the world. If we genuinely see our child as an individual, we can start to predict and pattern certain behaviors. But they will inevitably bust up our expectations and surprise us anytime we do that. Growth is surprising. This is the beauty of it all. We don’t look to the child for consistency, and definitely NOT to their behavior. We bring consistency to them – they do whatever the hell they do. And it is up to US – the grownups – to stay consistent in our behavior.
- Comparing our child to other children OR comparing ourselves to other parents. That is a trap. An excellent therapist/spiritual teacher of mine called it “The Poop Room.” It is that place we go that is sure to make us feel like shit. We know it, and we walk into the room anyway. We turn the handle, walk into the poop room, and every time, we think – Wow, how did I end up here again? I feel like shit. The comparison trap is an excellent indicator that we are doing idealization. And idealization is a great indicator that we will end up in the poop room.
Comparisons do one of two things.
- They either make us feel better. And if we are feeling better than – compared to someone’s worse than – we are bound to fall and be on the bottom once again. We can’t authentically hold a “better than” space for long.
- Or they make us feel worse. And who wants to feel that? Who wants to look around and feel less than or worse than what we see in our comparison to self? (Since I wrote this, social media has exploded onto the scene, and apparently, the answer to that question is – lots of us—and sadly, primarily women. Let me introduce you to the rabbit hole of my favorite researcher. His information is worth our time and consideration – https://jonathanhaidt.com/social-media/
But either way, comparisons are not based on reality. When we compare ourselves to anyone, no matter how well we know them, we compare our insides to their outsides. We are comparing our whole experience to their partial experience. We can only see so much. Until we live in their shoes, their lives, their homes, their relationships, and with THEIR families – we don’t know their reality. So, if we compare, we only compare to a partial reality.
Partial realities and partial solutions don’t work on our whole child.
My understanding of development helps me understand your child’s perspective. I come up with creative solutions that will help you and your child navigate some of the tricky spots we all face. Some of the support I provide is mostly because of this one factor—your child is NOT my child.
We are so close to these children of ours, and we can’t help it—we are attached to their outcome. This leads to another place where we can have blind spots and idealization slips in. We become so attached to the future outcome for our children that we can miss what is happening in the moment. We become so focused on the behavior of the child and what they are doing that we miss seeing who they are.
Because of my work, it makes me an especially dangerous parent. Dangerous because I can start to think I know shit. My teenager is here to remind me weekly – Mom, there you go again saying stuff that will never happen – because you don’t know ANYTHING. And I think, and sometimes I have the presence of mind and heart to admit it and tell him – you are partially correct.
Both of my children live in a world that is an alternate universe to my own. It is THEIR teen world. All I knew was my teen world, and that was a long, long time ago.
We are parenting our children for an unknown future. Our information is already obsolete. ~ Magda Gerber.
We don’t have to have all the answers right now, today, or every really, for our children. They just need to know we are looking. We are searching. And we are doing so on their behalf and our own. This is what grownups do. We search for solutions. We strive to be the best we can be. We continue to face reality and understand – we never stop growing or growing up. And by doing this with “self-compassion” and kindness toward the self, we model this for our children.
