Everybody has a fight sometimes , I think. Sometimes more , sometimes less. Sometimes quieter , sometimes really loud.
Last week I had a quarrel – and as a result total contact cessation on my part.
I couldn’t take it anymore – at every visit my children were educated. And not from me – we live after all Uneducated.
That many (especially in my family/surroundings) do not know this way of living with children and perhaps find it difficult to accept this, I find okay – nevertheless, so far no one , except for this person, has tried to permanently put himself above me and educate my children.
When it finally came that after only two minutes my daughter was snapped at because she preferred to wear her Crocs in the rain instead of "weather-appropriate shoes" and didn’t want to wear her pantyhose after all – that’s when I discreetly (okay, it was more like an explosion) snapped.
Yes, I am a young mother – and yes , I do it differently, but still I was taken seriously by everyone so far and it was accepted!
Take your child seriously from the start – because there is no FSK from when your child deserves to be treated this way!
When I hear a child’s crying being downplayed, ignored, ridiculed, or responded to with the words, "He’s just defying!" is made badly – there the neck hairs stand up for me.
Even me sometimes thoughts creep in like "Is nothing wrong – can not even stop crying now?!"But there is always a reason, even if it is the unfulfilled will.
And there is no need for an unsympathetic adult who then makes fun of me and wants to clear his own conscience in front of others. (No, it’s not cool, and parenting doesn’t work either, when the child is in a completely desperate tantrum and I completely ignore him or take out my power club and then further offend my child and damage his trust in me!)
It is exhausting, yes. Damn exhausting even.
As a mother of two toddlers, I know it can be really exhausting to hold your nerve and be need-based every time there’s a boo-boo or disagreement. Mindfulness must be learned – of course, it’s hard when you yourself were not treated mindfully in your own childhood.
Why I snapped
All this pent up rage came up in me.
The lioness who wants to defend her children.
The child who was not heard and not taken seriously.
The child who was subjected to the power of the parents.
The child who was not allowed to decide.
All the anger from my childhood that I was not allowed to live out, that I was not accompanied in, came up.
I saw myself, as a defenceless, two-year-old girl in front of me. Who has no choice. The one who sits there in front of me crying and completely desperate – my childhood to go through.
I snapped – because I could. And because I wanted it.
Because I didn’t want anyone to talk to my little self like that.
No one to tell me, as a grown woman, not to act out – and even if I had, I wouldn’t have cared.
Cause it doesn’t matter what others think
It doesn’t matter what others might think. You think it anyway. Maybe they think something completely different.
This is not about you, your upbringing or the thoughts or whispers of strangers.
It is about a person who deserves to be taken seriously. Who wants company in his grief or rage – just as you laugh along when your child laughs.
The point is that everyone deserves to be taken seriously and accepted – whether you find their behavior ridiculous or not. For it is not the behavior that is ridiculous, but your thought that it is ridiculous.
No one in need is ridiculous, it’s just that we think about what others think of us and our parenting skills.
The child in me is still hurt
No amount of freaking out is going to change that – even if it did some real good.
I separate myself from people who don’t value me and accept that I don’t become such a -sorry- shitty authoritarian mother who can’t let her own children grow up mindfully because she is still hurt from her own childhood and so convinced that violence and power are the non plus ultra.
I was given my children to love them unconditionally – and not to tie our love to conditions (obedience, etc).
I got them because I know they are perfect the way they are – and not perfect until I shape them the way I want them to be.
"Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.
They come through you, but not from you,
And even though they are with you, they are not yours.
You may give them your love, but not your thoughts,
Because they have their own thoughts.
You may give a house to their bodies, but not to their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but do not try to make them like you.
For life does not run backwards, nor does it dwell in yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children are sent out as living arrows.
Sagittarius sees the target on the path of infinity,
and He stretches you with His might, that His arrows may fly swift and far.
Let your bow be aimed at joy by the hand of the archer;
For just as He loves the arrow that flies, He also loves the bow that is steady.
Khalil Gibran, Arab poet, 1883-1931″ ( source )
Take your inner child seriously
You would have surely wished that your parents would have reacted mindfully and empathically when you were in need – then see your own inner child sitting next to your angry child.
It speaks quietly and sensitively to your child, saying it’s okay to be angry.
And that mom and dad will comfort and reassure it right away and they don’t care what others think, because what really matters is that your child gets the company it needs and not what others think of you and your child.
I did not have a child to then be judged by strangers as if they were the "Jury of Life".