Square Pegs in Round Holes

At my son's kindergarten, the children were recently asked to pick between two sports activities: dancing and football. (You can see where this is going, huh?) He doesn't like football, but does like dancing, so he made the logical choice and chose dancing. Everything was fine and he carried on, not minding that he was the only boy in a group of seven girls, until they did the dance "show" and he was asked to come in as a prince because all of the girls were being princesses. Show me any boy (or girl), anywhere, who has ever dreamed of being a prince! Could they not have had a little more imagination and asked them to come in as animals or something? Anyway, luckily we had a suit which he'd worn to a wedding, so we dressed him up (he looked very "Riverdance") and he went along, but it seemed like something changed that day, because a few days later he said "I don't want to do dancing any more. I wish I'd've picked football."

I felt sad for him. Okay, maybe he didn't change what he wanted to do because of peer pressure telling him "This is a girls' thing, and you're not a girl", perhaps he just thought football looked more fun, or he liked it after the world cup, or he just wanted a change. But I couldn't help but thinking that he is a square peg and it's such a shame that he is expected to fit into a round hole, he doesn't understand why (I don't understand why!), but he knows that he should do something different. Then I thought, you know what, my kid isn't the only special and different and awesome kid. They are ALL like this. Every child starts off as a square peg, and every incident like this, every laugh, every word goes to shave a bit off the corners of that peg until they fit into the accepted, normal, comfortable circular hole. And why?! How much do they lose, do we all lose? Circles don't fit together that well anyway. With squares you can stack them all up with no waste. We fit and work better together when we are all individuals. How could we not? The whole world benefits when people are individual and have their own different and new ideas.

That said, I'm not going to push him to stick with dancing. He has to make his own choice about that. But I will continue to reinforce that there is no such thing as "girl activities" and "boy activities".

Is anger always bad?

Anger is a funny thing, really. For little boys it's something we're told to channel, into sports or “outdoor play” or video games or any number of alternative routes for the evil anger to escape by, lest it take over our small people and turn them into violent thugs by the time they reach adolescence.

For girls, it's different, the message that we get from society is that girls shouldn't be angry, at all. In the same way that “boys don't cry”, nice girls don't scream, shout or show any traces of anger at all. Girls are socialised to swallow their anger, often turning it inwards, a pattern which continues into adulthood – women reading this, have you ever felt annoyed with yourself when something didn't go right, even if you know logically that it wasn't your fault?

Anger can feel like a really scary thing, especially if you grew up being told that you shouldn't feel it at all in the first place, or that it needed to be channelled, and let out in some controlled way before it took over. It is especially frightening if you grew up in an abusive household, or have experienced domestic violence from a partner. The truth is that anger CAN make us feel out of control, it can fuel aggression and it can cause you to do or say things that you'd never do when you weren't feeling angry. But, I don't think we need to be scared of it.

What is anger really, when we strip away what it's not? It's not aggression, it's not violence, it's not losing control. It doesn't cause any of those things, it's one factor, sure, but it's not some big, scary and negative thing all on its own. Anger is being unhappy about something which is out of your control. Anger is feeling injustice. Anger is standing up and saying “Hey, this is wrong”. Acting on your anger is hoping that somebody hears you. The thought that nobody is hearing you, that is the scary part, but the aggression, the hurtfulness, all of those negative things we associate with anger, I don't think that is anger, it's desperation. You can be angry about something and feel totally calm.

Maybe instead of ignoring our kids' anger and hoping it goes away, trying to avoid it or trying to channel it off into some other source, or teaching them to squash it down, we need to teach them firstly, some better communicative strategies to be heard (because, usually, screaming your anger in somebody's face isn't the best way to endear them to your cause) but also how to deal with those times when their anger won't be heard. Because it won't always be, and that's hard to deal with without going into the desperation mode. Children have quite a lot of things in their lives which are out of their control. It's quite normal and healthy for them to feel angry about some of them. Something that is really hard to keep a handle on when you are an adult and have probably got quite good at the communication thing is that children of all ages, from newborn to teenagehood, are really really bad at communication in general. Oh, they may fool us by being all articulate and grown up and worldly about some things but startlingly often, they just revert to that base line of “Nobody is hearing and understanding what I want to say”, anger turns to desperation very very quickly and they turn to those desperation tactics to get someone to JUST SEE.

This is one reason why validation works really well for toddlers having tantrums. Saying “Yes I know. Mummy is being really unfair making you sit in your car seat when you want to sit somewhere else. And the straps are yucky and they hurt your stomach when you pull at them like that.” helps because they are being heard. Okay, it doesn't make a difference to what you're going to do about it, but just being listened to and understood is enough sometimes to keep that anger at a manageable, okay level instead of rising up to desperation and I-am-going-to-scream-all-the-way-home level.

I think when you get down to the bones of it, anger is actually quite a positive emotion to feel. It's about getting down to the bare bones of what is wrong in your life, and wanting to stand up and change that. It's brave to admit that you are angry about something, especially if you choose to deal with it in a constructive rather than a destructive way. A constructive way might be talking to somebody about how you feel, writing a letter, sending the letter, not sending it, writing a letter and then destroying it, starting an online petition (Just look at the twitter petition which was started this week, all by one woman who felt angry about something which was out of her control!) “being the change you wish to see in the world”, making a small change if you can't make a big change, accepting that something is temporary, accepting that something is the way it is and changing your perspective, writing a blog, praying, shouting into a pillow, finding an open space and telling the sky, singing your heart out, rebelling in small ways, talking to someone who is not the highest authority (older sibling, class teacher, local MP), finding someone else who feels like you do and making them feel less alone, making art, making future plans, looking at the bigger picture, counting to 10 and realising it's not that big a deal, deciding to put it down to experience and make different choices next time, talking to someone who can't talk back (your dog, your teddy, a photograph), playing out the scenario in your head in the way you want it to go, and finally and most importantly for children, always asking for help.

Rules for Rough Play/Physical Play

I sort of made these up on the hop today, but they worked really well with a bunch of 3-5 year olds so I decided to share.

1. Look at the other person's face. Is that a happy face or a worried/scared/sad face? If it is NOT a happy face, let's stop, make sure that person is okay and see if they need a break before we carry on. Remember the golden rule - it's not fun unless everybody's having fun!

2. No holding people down/dragging them/restraining in any way that they can't easily get out of. No excuses, I don't care if it's part of the game - if they can't get away, speak or move then not only is that frightening, they can't easily tell you if they are having fun or have had enough.

3. There is always a designated "safe zone" (we used a blanket) - NO rough play is allowed at all in this zone. It is for people who want a break from the game. If you want to play the game, then go away from the safe zone. If you want a break from the game, then sit in the safe zone and nobody is allowed to touch you. You can re-join the game when you feel ready. (Hogging resources by putting them on the safe zone may also be disallowed if they need to be shared!)

This is of course aside from the usual "if somebody says stop then you must stop" but we had a lot of confusion today with children running off saying "No, don't chase me!" and gleefully looking back to check that they were, in fact, being chased. I know some people take a black and white view of this where stop/no/etc always mean no, but in my experience this just doesn't always translate to real life and a culture where much of our play (especially adult-to-child play) and humour is about kidding around and saying the opposite of what is true (I'm going to eat your toes, nom nom nom/I think this sock goes on your head, doesn't it?/etc) it can be confusing to children when some adults and children react in different ways. Plus, I don't think it's beyond them (age/development appropriately) to take notice of things like tone of voice or facial expression and I think it's important to teach this from the start, to make the focus on ensuring that the others in the game look and sound happy, rather than carrying on until there is real distress being communicated or someone is really having to shout up that it's not fun for them.

I don't personally have a problem with rough or physical play as long as these rules are being followed, the environment is appropriate and nobody is getting seriously hurt. To me it's no different from a water fight. However I don't subscribe to the view that boys somehow "need" rough play more than girls do, it's a personal preference for each child. The safe zone hopefully allows children to participate as much or as little as they want to and of course you can adjust the size and boundaries of the safe zone to suit the mixture of temperaments of children you have in the group.

Be a Leader

There are a few different schools of thought on this, but something I have been musing lately and I wanted to share.

I have heard some people describe an authoritative style of parenting as being a "benevolent dictator". This is the one where you are in control, and the children are expected to, basically, do as they are told with very little questioning or talking back etc.

This doesn't really work for me, and I suspect a lot of others, because it relies on power as a form of control. I'm big, you're little, and what I say goes because I know best. Which is fine, until you get into a power struggle. The authoritarian approach here, of course, is to win that power struggle no matter what because all power struggles threaten the overall structure of the relationship and to lose control is the ultimate failure.

The problem is, if you reject this, or decide that you don't always know better than your children, or some arguments/questions are okay, it is easy to think that the alternative is to be on a level with your children, like peers or equals. And this works brilliantly, as long as the child is in a co-operative mood, and you can always let the small stuff go... until you really need to do something urgent and boring and adult, like get to an important appointment on time or go to the supermarket to buy food for lunch because all you have in the house is a mouldy cucumber and three crackers, or clean up because there is now a mixture of cereal, crayons and some unidentified substance being ground into the carpet. Then, being on a level with them doesn't really work so well, because they react childishly (of course, they are children) and parents end up reacting in (mostly) one of three ways:

1. You retaliate childishly also, which winds you both up more. You end up on their level either having a teenage argument/slanging match, or come dangerously close to a sibling fight. You forget that they are a child and you are an adult and end up hurting them with words or deeds.

2. You start to panic and revert to authoritative-parenting mode because the equal-parenting mode isn't working. In an effort to regain control you start threatening, shouting or punishing. Because the authoritative is not your usual stance they don't take this seriously, or push harder to see what will happen (or because it is frightening for them to see the boundary wildly change and bend and move like this). You end up doling out a huge threat/punishment/telling off which is wildly disproportionate to the original crime, and then feel guilty.

3. You dissolve into a heap of self pity because your child never listens and you are clearly terrible as a parent and nothing ever seems to work the way that it is supposed to. You feel totally at a loss to make them understand and feel like a failure as a parent.

Sound familiar? I've done all three, so I can assure you you are not alone!

What I have realised recently is that there is in fact a role in between these two, a gentle, calm, compassionate leader. It didn't really occur to me - I had been swinging wildly from attempted authoritarian to best friend and it just didn't work. Now I find if I feel myself losing control I just have to remind myself in my head of this cool, confident leader position and somehow it comes out of my mouth and it isn't scary being in charge any more, and more to the point, my son really responds positively to it.

The way to think about it is this - have you ever worked in a place where the boss was really distant, and made a lot of orders without really engaging with the staff, who would never dream of doing the jobs they liked to delegate, and who expected total compliance? And have you ever worked in a place where the boss is genuinely warm and friendly, who mucks in, who is happy to listen to suggestions, who supports the notion that the whole team is in it together and is responsible collectively for the success of the operation? I know which boss I would be more productive for, more inclined to fulfil over and above their requests rather than doing the basics (and trying to wriggle out of things!)

Obviously, this is a big exaggeration and I don't wish to claim that parents who have a more authoritative style are cold and distant, because in the main they are not. But I find that remembering my old, kind manager who used to help out with even the most drudging of jobs, who wasn't afraid to make a cup of tea for everyone, really helps. And then the other part of seeing yourself as a leader comes in when you remember that actually, although children can be trusted to know their own minds on some issues, on others you are the expert in relative terms, you have the benefit of age, maturity and experience and you can be confident in your expectations of what is reasonable.

If you want to start leading and guiding instead of ordering, How To Talk So Kids Will Listen... has some great suggestions for children of about age 4+ but even general things like talking in a confident rather than desperate manner, trying to manage things before they are totally unmanageable, being aware of the overarching big picture, and making statements rather than requests or giving options really help. If being authoritative scares you more than it scares your children, try being a leader instead. It is far less scary!

5 Principles of Respectful Parenting

I just want to collate some things here, for the time being. This might end up being long but hopefully will be a fairly helpful list to refer back to, principles of (how I interpret) what might be called Unconditional Parenting, Taking Children Seriously or Gentle Discipline. Basically, principles of parenting where you don't resort to carrot and stick type behaviours.

It seems pointless (IMO) calling it "gentle parenting" because all this conjures up is images of wishy-washy parents telling their precious first born "please don't do that" in a soft voice while their child terrorises half of the playgroup. You can be as firm/strict as you like, it's just a different approach. UP and TCS are book titles so I won't use them.

1. Punishments are not always bad.

Sounds totally non intuitive, I know considering the whole selling point of UP and the like is the concept of parenting without using punishments or rewards. The point is that punishment for punishment's sake is what's bad, or counterproductive, at least. Try to ask yourself before you threaten or impose something:

Is this helping the immediate situation, or preventing the situation from reoccurring?
If yes, then it's probably necessary. If you prefer, you can think of it as a safety measure rather than a punishment. An exception might be, for example, if it was a first occurrence and you think your child would be able to self-police in future, and it is safe to let them do so.

Is this helping my child learn what's actually wrong with what they did?
Expecting your children to blindly follow rules is not respectful or helpful to them. Part of bringing up a human who has a good sense of self-worth, of right and wrong, is about learning why we have rules and what they are there for. Is it helpful in this way, or is it just teaching them "I shouldn't do X because something bad will happen to me."

Is this helping make things right? 
This is a tricky one, because sometimes making amends should not be forced. I don't agree with forced apologies, for example, or insisting a child hugs another who they've just hurt "to make them feel better". I think that apologies should come from the heart and if they're not ready or willing to do that, then you offer one in their place if appropriate. Sorry doesn't always make everything better, anyway. However, it's fair to insist that an item which was broken, lost or stolen ought to be replaced, if possible, and I'm sure there are other situations where this one does work, but generally it's best if it comes from the child themselves.

Is this just to make *me* feel better?
Which leads me neatly onto point two...

2. Don't take it personally.

When your child is playing up, it's not because they are out to get you, and it's probably not a power battle, despite what all the expert opinions seem to be. They are reacting in the way they are reacting because that is the best way they know to deal with that situation, whatever it might be.

Even if they've done something deliberately hurtful or spiteful, look for the reason behind that - it's more likely to be a misguided attempt to express an emotion, e.g. anger, jealousy, upset, and it's possible to convey "Actually, that isn't acceptable" at the same time as dealing with the feeling behind the actions - in fact it's often more important to deal with the feeling first and the action later, especially if you're feeling you want them to suffer, "pay" or feel bad for what they've done. You can't induce guilt by lashing out, it's more likely to induce resentment.

Emotions are hard to deal with, and can be overwhelming especially during the hormone surges of toddlerdom and adolescence, so try to cut them some slack. Even adults react emotionally to situations sometimes where they know they ought to stay calm. Remember also that young children often struggle to prioritise, so something which seems silly to make a fuss about to you might be the most important thing to them right at that moment. In older children, overreactions to small things can be an indicator of underlying stresses or sometimes hormone driven - puberty can start at around nine.

3. Show them what you want.

Both at crisis point and in everyday life, so, again, something often considered a punishment e.g. time out can work well here as long as you aren't threatening it or attaching negative connotations to it - just showing them "You are angry/excited/silly/winding each other up and I need you to take a breather" until they can do that for themselves. Or whatever anger-management technique works for them at that time - my son used to quite like being encouraged to throw a soft toy really hard at the wall to show me how cross he was. Other children respond well to being asked to draw their feelings.

In everyday life - model the behaviour that you want. If you slip into something you don't want them to model, like shouting, apologise as soon as you realise even if it's after the fact. Respond if they ask you to stop shouting, and own it, don't make them responsible for it (by saying things like "If you'd just listen, I wouldn't have to shout". Grown ups screw up too, and they need to see you swallow your pride and deal with that graciously if they are to learn to do the same.

Listen to their requests and acknowledge them (which doesn't mean you always agree) if you want them to listen to you, don't belittle their feelings if you want them to be empathetic, say please and thank you and sorry. (As an aside, "Thank you for..." is helpful if you're trying to avoid stock praise like "Good girl") Negotiate but be firm. It's good for them to see you sticking to your boundaries!

4. Be specific with instructions.

This is more of a 3b, technically. I've separated it because it seemed like a separate point. You can start even when they're tiny, not just saying "No" but "careful" or "hot" or "don't touch" and when they get a bit older trying to stick to the positive instruction like "Stay on the path" rather than "Don't go on the road" - it's also more instructive since not being on the road could mean the kerb is okay, or the grass, or that little low wall (which might actually be okay but you can negotiate easier if you're starting from a position of nowhere but the pavement.) So again, focus on what you want rather than what you don't want. It can also help especially with toddlers to instruct in advance/tell them what to expect, e.g. saying a few minutes before you get to a busy road that when you get there, they will need to go in the pushchair.

5. Look past the immediate behaviour.

This links back to all of the previous points, really. You can't take any behaviour as isolated, because it doesn't happen in a vacuum. Try to take into account all factors - immediate environmental ones, is it worse when they are tired/hungry/hot, do you react in a certain way when you are tired/hungry/hot too? Is there something going on which is worrying them - even if it seems unrelated? Are there hormones jumping around (puberty, toddlerdom, menstruation, relationship stuff - with teenagers) on either side of this interaction? Is the behaviour coming from an outside influence, either something they're copying or being pressured to do? (Look at your own actions here too). Are your expectations just too high?

Not all of these will excuse behaviour but they should help you work out the best way to approach it, using the other principles.

Separate Beds

I had a sudden realisation this morning that it was around this time five years ago that I met my abusive ex.

Just three months later, when he'd already moved in to my parents' house and was sharing my bed, I wrote an entry in my online journal about "love".

There are things we do for people that we love that they never know about, and to tell them would seem wrong and almost like we were looking for some kind of attention.

Like how I lose sleep because sleeping in a single bed really doesn't work with two grown adults for very long, and I know he has to get up for work earlier than I do, even though I know I need the sleep more and he'll only moan at me having ten minutes' lie in.

BTW, I just looked that up after remembering it earlier and I'd totally forgotten that I was already being subjected to "moaning at" for such simple pleasures as pressing the snooze button.

Anyway, I remembered this this morning because it totally horrified me that my former/younger self defined love  in this self-sacrificing way. I remember writing the post, as well, and feeling it was all ~philosophical~ and wise and mature.

No, almost-19-year old self. That is not what love is. Love is doing nice things, for each other, without it being some big ~philosophical~ thing. Love is both of you doing this simultaneously, not one doing it for the other and not getting anything back, or only getting anything when it's perceived that there's something in it for the giver.

Love isn't about hurting yourself to make your lover happy. Anyone who really loved you wouldn't let you do that. And love isn't about spending every possible second together, either! Love is about finding solutions which suit both partners. Like sleeping in separate beds, sometimes.

Warning: This post talks loudly about POO.

Nobody ever tells you, before you become a parent, that over the first few years of your child's life you will become horribly and irrevocably obsessed with poo.

We've all seen them, sure, the facebook posts proudly announcing that someone's little darling has produced a giant turd that morning in the exact shape of Daddy's foot, hopefully without an accompanying picture, and I expect that most people have exactly the same response to this kind of thing. "Thanks for that. I really enjoyed the mental image while eating my lunch." And we vow, silently, that if we ever have kids, we will Not Be Like That.

Except, then, you go to your antenatal classes, and one of the first things that gets handed to you is a handy guide to all the different colours and flavours of your forthcoming newborn's poo. And you think nothing of this, because at this point all you can possibly think about is the birth and the fact this person with a gigantic head is going to somehow have to come out. So we forget about poo for now. And when the baby is born, we deal with the meconium with horror and then generally put it behind us and think "Thank god that's over!" and then go about our lives happily without a single poo-related thought polluting our minds.

Until. The baby group where another anxious mother is concerned that her baby's poo is perhaps too green. Too green? You wonder, and so you listen and come to learn that Green Poo is a terrible symptom of all sorts in babies, particularly breastfed babies, and can be caused by eating too much garlic*, drinking fizzy drinks**, or your breastmilk being "wrong", too much foremilk, or not enough foremilk***, and it can be a sign of diarrhoea, and suddenly you become infected with the Poo Obsession.

There are the green ones. There are the saved-up ones, where the baby waits for six, seven, eight days and you're on tenterhooks waiting for the inevitable poonami to strike, usually on a really hard to clean piece of furniture. Then there are the weaning ones. Sweetcorn, peas, gruesome but inevitable. Bits of undigested carrot, lovely. The banana "worms". (OH GOD.) But you get used to all of this, and even the meat ones no longer faze you, and then you come to potty training, which is pretty much where we are now. My son has just started doing his poos on the toilet (the final step for us - hooray!) and I am INCREDIBLY DISTURBED by them. They must be about half his bodyweight, and they're as long as his arms. But the most disturbing thing? One of them has taken up residence in my toilet and refuses to be flushed away, whatever we throw at it. It has been four days now, and it still sits there, staring at you with its one eye, and dissolving. Extremely slowly.

And I know, I KNOW. I have just done it. I've just written an entire blog post in order to express my opinion on my son's poo as though it's worthy of the interest of anybody else in the world. Don't shoot me. I'm a parent. I've been hit by the urge to discuss poo in public just like everyone else. Don't lie and say it's never happened to you, because one day, it probably will.


* Unlikely.
** No, it really can't.
*** This one's a possibility. If you are still in the worrying about green poo stage I suggest you read the Analytical Armadillo's excellent and very informative blog post on the subject, here.