I am learning to be a parent the way I believe most
parents have learned to parent: through life learning. Admittedly, I
tried following advice from the “experts” about parenting, but I am
learning to follow the advice of the ones who truly understand what my
children need: my children. Since starting to follow their lead, I have
rarely been disappointed; after all, in this case they are the experts.
This has proven to be true in many aspects of life, including toilet
training, conflict resolution, eating, and sleeping.
Toilet training
Let me start with toilet training. When one of our
daughters starting speaking clearly when she was ten months old, we
began to believe that she is a very bright little girl…because she is.
Most parents feel this way about their children and that is because
children are, indeed, very bright. As adults, we are amazed at what they
are capable of doing because what they are capable of doing is amazing.
Unfortunately, sometimes we forget how amazing they are and we try to
interfere in their development. Let me explain how I interfered with my
daughter’s toilet training and then, realizing how dumb I was being,
left her alone to thrive according to her own inner guide.
The reason I mention that she started speaking at a
young age is that it led others to pressure us to start toilet training
her earlier than she was ready. They argued that since she could speak
early she should be toilet trained early, which, I now understand, is a
false connection.
We were uncomfortable with pressuring her, at age
one, to do what we believed she was not ready to do, feeling that if she
was ready she would have done it; nevertheless, we bowed to the
pressure. Fortunately, that lasted a short time and we quickly backed
off. Unfortunately, the pressure from others continued to mount. Our
friends would tell us how their children were toilet trained and we
wondered if we were being negligent in not dedicating the time to train
our child in the way that they did. Most of them shared how they sat
with their children in the bathroom for endless periods of time and, of
course, treats was the method that generated the best results for them.
However, the more we relaxed the better things got.
And as we relaxed, I observed a few things about the way most parents in
our society deal with this issue. First, do people really believe that
without “teaching” children about our bathroom ritual they will not pick
it up? Second, while many parents claimed that their children were
toilet trained, we later realized they were not; it was the parents who
were toilet trained. The parents knew when their children would likely
go to the bathroom (after drinking large amounts or at certain number of
minutes after eating) and so the parents would bring the children to the
bathroom often and for long periods of time with the hope that their
children would go in the toilet and not in their clothes. Third, given
this hit and miss approach, the children would often have “accidents.”
Fourth, the parents would incessantly and irritatingly constantly ask
their child if they needed to go to the bathroom.
We waited until our daughter was ready and until
she wanted to go to the bathroom and this is our experience: When she
turned three she, for whatever reason, decided that she no longer wanted
to wear diapers. She has had only a few accidents and they were mostly
within the first few weeks of having decided that she no longer needed
to wear a diaper. We do not have to ask her nor remind her if she needs
to go to the bathroom, she just does it. That is because she was ready
and internally motivated to do it, rather than being coerced or bribed
into it by an external authority. At first, the whole process took
practice, but we trusted her to figure it out and she has.
Perhaps the most interesting part of this whole
process is that the children who were “toilet trained” earlier than my
daughter are still having accidents and are still being reminded and
harassed about whether they need to go to the bathroom or not. I wonder
if these children have internalized that this process is not one that
they internally control, but one that adults have to control for them
and because of that it will now take them longer to be truly toilet
trained than it would have if they were left to figure it out on their
own.
Our daughter still wears pull-up diapers on most
nights and will stop that when she feels it’s the right time. When she
has a lot to drink before she goes to bed, she asks for a pull-up, and
when she does not have a lot to drink she tells us that she does not
need one. So far, we have only had to change her sheets in the middle of
the night once.
Conflict Resolution
Conflict resolution requires the same trust that
the children will work things out for and by themselves. At first, they
may do so clumsily, but in a short period of
time they will learn to deal with conflicts in a way that leads to
mutually satisfactory resolutions. Our family’s experience shows that
children develop their conflict resolution skills by doing conflict
resolution on their own without adult intervention. By constantly
intervening, adults are telling children that conflict resolution is not
something that they have control of, but that it is externally imposed
on them by an outside body. This, of course, disempowers children and
takes away their own agency.
I noticed this with my two daughters. They are now just over one and
just over three years of age. I embraced the trust in them being able to
solve conflicts on their own before my wife did. We noticed that when I
was with them, there would be fewer conflicts between them and that they
would resolve them on their own within seconds and without appealing to
me to mediate. Whereas, when my wife was with them, the conflicts would
be more frequent and longer, and the girls would run to her to resolve
them. Once we noticed this, I suggested that my wife try to trust our
daughters to deal with the conflicts on their own and not immediately
intervene. Within a short period of time, the children realized that
they were their own problem solvers. The result was that the number of
incidents went down and the time the conflicts lasted was reduced to
seconds.
This morning, the 16-month-old was playing with a pair of shorts, when
the 39-month-old suddenly ripped it from her hands. I was shocked and
immediately felt like reprimanding the eldest for her inappropriate
behavior. Luckily, I resisted and my daughters were the better for it.
You see, all the eldest needed was time – time to think about what she
had done, time to witness her sister’s reaction to what she had done, and
time to realize on her own that what she had done was not right. Then,
she apologized and handed the shorts back to her sister. Now, if I had
intervened, all that contemplation and reflection and the resulting
self-correction would have been lost to my overbearing presence and
distrust in the power of allowing children to resolve their own
conflicts.
You may be thinking that this lesson was at the unfortunate expense
of my younger daughter’s tears and that ethically it ought not to be
allowed to happen. You may be thinking that as her parent I should
protect her because she is young and vulnerable. I want to suggest that
this example shows that she is not vulnerable but powerful and that she,
too, benefited. She came to understand that she has a voice and that if
she does not like something she has the power to protest and to change
the situation. She also learned about compassion as her sister modeled
for her the proper course of action.
The way these two little girls resolve their conflicts is very
interesting to observe. Sometimes the eldest one gives in to the younger
one, sometimes vice versa and sometimes they find a way to share. As
adults, I think the best my wife and I can do is simply to model good
conflict resolution strategies between us, so that the children can
learn the strategies in a similar way that they learn to walk and talk:
by observing, by listening, by asking questions, by trying it
themselves, by succeeding and by failing, and by any other way that we
are not sophisticated enough to understand.
Eating
All this is not to say that my wife and I think we are perfect
parents. We often lapse into moments where we recognize that what we are
doing is not the best approach, but yet we carry on anyway because we
are fatigued, frustrated, or whatever.
Sometimes, this happens when we lose trust in our children’s
abilities to make the best decision for themselves, or at least to learn
from their mistakes. Perhaps the area where we have most difficulty is
in trusting that our children will eat the right foods. For this lesson,
we learn best from my parents. The girls spend a lot of time with their
grandparents and they mutually adore each other’s company. When it comes
to food, my parents will never deprive our children of any food that
they want. We have a hard time with this because we fear that if given
this liberty on a regular basis, our daughters would chose always to eat
unhealthy food. In fact, they eat healthier overall when they are with
my parents for a few days than they do when they are with us!
One explanation for this might be that we create a hierarchy among
foods and make an issue of it. By depriving them of some foods, we make
those foods more attractive and enticing for them and so they play the
game along with us and naturally want those foods that are forbidden.
However, when they are with my parents, food is food and they can have
any food they want anytime. The result is that they end up eating a
greater variety of foods and many of them are healthy. Some of the foods
they eat there, they will not eat at home. We are slowly realizing this
and are trying to implement change. Again, the operative word is trust
and we are learning to let go and to trust in them more and more. And
the more we trust them, the more they take responsibility in their own
lives and the healthier they grow.
Few people thrive in oppressive and controlling environments. These
types of environments, I believe, are ethically inexcusable. In
addition, what does overly controlling what children eat do to their
ability to listen to their own bodies – to their ability to decide what
they need to eat, when they need to eat it, how much they need to eat?
Is there a connection to our increasingly high obesity rate? In my mind,
if children are not allowed to listen to their own bodies and are
dependent on external cues to guide their eating habits, then it must
impede their ability to rely on their inner guides. I witness all too
often children strapped into their chairs, threatened and detained until
they are force-fed all of the right amount and types of foods as
determined by an external authority. When I watch this, I am reminded of
the studies that consistently reveal how our portion sizes and what we
believe they should be are much higher than what they should be.
Sleep
Sleeping is another hugely contestable and contentious area. I often
hear parents say that if they do not put their children to sleep they
would never sleep. Again, the truth appears to be that if we trust that
they will sleep when and where they feel most comfortable, they will
sleep. In fact, it would probably be easier to put someone to sleep than
to try and keep them awake.
Once, on a drive home, my wife and I tried
to keep our eldest daughter awake for a few more minutes so that we
could then place her in her bed at home, believing that she would have a
sounder sleep there. Trying to keep her awake proved humorously
impossible. After trying to talk to her and lightly nudging her, we
learned that sleeping is not something children resist but something
that children do. So why this belief that children will not sleep unless
we force them to? And if we always force them to rather than allow them
to – as with other aspects of their lives, what collateral unintended
consequences are we creating with respect to children’s agency and self
empowerment?
Carlo Ricci teaches in the faculty of education’s graduate
program at Nipissing University. He incorporates the spirit of
unschooling, democratic and learner centered principles in all
of his classes. Everything of value that he has learned, he has
learned outside of formal schooling; he has never taken a course
in school connected to what he now teaches and writes about. He
has experience in teaching almost every grade in elementary and
high school and has also taught in undergraduate, teacher
education, and graduate programs. His personal schooling experience as a student and later as a teacher has inspired him to revolt against institutional schooling. He continues to heal from the wounds inflicted on him by formal schooling.
