Monday, April 08, 2013

On parenting

When your children behave,
give them respect and kindness.
When your children misbehave,
give them respect and kindness.

When they are hateful,
love them.
When they betray your trust,
trust them.

Believe this difficult truth:
Showing respect in the face of disrespect,
love in the face of hate,
trust is the face of betrayal,
and serenity in the face of turmoil,
will teach your children more
than all the moral lectures
by all the preachers
since the dawn of time.

The Parents' Tao Te Ching



Now that I have baby, there is no running from the need from parenting. Making those decisions on parenting is hard-core for me! Life is not only about me...sigh...I have a vague idea that discipline is good for the child, so I don't want to cut him short of that experience. On the other hand, this little boy is so free and pure, discipline sounds more like containing him in my own bubble, which will take him years to free himself again to find his freedom. Also it does not mean that he can walk all over me and do whatever he pleases, I don't think that is freedom, but rather selfishness...

I don't think we know what works for every child for teaching without fear, or parenting without imposing your own values. No one has the answer. Something might work for a family but it does not guarantee that it will work for my kid. Also we never know if it really works because we can only know a little of the inside world of a child as an outsider.

I believe freedom, creativity and expressing your needs are the cores of our humanness (!) I can't just start giving time-outs or punishments because so and so says so...I need to embrace the idea, feel it, live it and believe it in order to apply it to myself and then to my child. I have come a long way on being flexible and open, as a vegetarian I am feeding fish to my child. I also know that I know little about parenting so all these ideas might change overnight! Don't take me so serious please:)

One can say he is playing with his food. I get out of control when he messes the already super messy house and I do raise my voice hoping that he will understand mommy is upset with what he has done. Furthermore, that he will connect the dots that mommy does not want him to do that again. I don't know if our brain is programmed to make mommy happy. It is like that for me now but only after years of rebellion, I now know how precious my parents are.

I also know and believe that kids learn by example not by preaching. That is why I love that poem I posted on top of this blog. That is the model I want to be for my child. I don't want to enforce. I want to show and share. Now, he is running after our dog with a stick in his hand and hitting him hard. Poor Leroy Brown. That is of course not something we will not allow. But I am clueless how to deal with this, without making it a "I am your mom and I said so" attitude. I am also not going to have an adult conversation with a 15 month old child and expect him to take me serious or else:))

Great reading on Elena's blog about this...http://www.positivelypositive.com/2013/04/08/on-soft-discipline/


2 comments:

Aaron Johnson said...

That's a great poem.

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