When our son was born, we had a nurse who liked to give what I would call “unconventional” advice about how to care for him – stuff that she’d learned simply by being around a lot of babies over the course of her career.
You know you’re in for something good when your nurse starts a story with:
“You won’t find this in any medical textbook, but…”
And when she said those things, I knew she was either 100% right or 100% insane. No middle ground.
I like her approach enough that I’m going to steal it and use it here.
You may not find this in any parenting manual or psychology textbook, but I have a theory about young kids: Kids will establish how they relate to you forever based on how you relate to them when they are very small.
Here’s what I mean.
If my son learns at five that I laugh at him/fuss at him/ignore him when he brings me what he thinks is a problem, how much communication is likely between the two of us when he’s 15?
Based on this idea that kids will solidify how they relate to you when they’re small, here are a few notes based on what I’ve seen in my life:
1) Be a receiver. I’ve posted about this before. My goal when my kids start a conversation is to keep them talking and draw out what they’re saying as much as possible.
While I was driving Son home from school the other day, he said, “Daddy, I like Saturdays.”
I asked him, “What is it that you like about Saturdays?”
I kept drawing things out of him and eventually he told me that he likes Saturdays because we’re all together as a family.
Made me glad I didn’t just say, “Me too,” or “Yeah, but Saturdays can be really busy sometimes.”
2) Lose the sarcasm. Mary Craig and I like to think we’re pretty funny people. Sometimes when one of the kids says something, I’ll reply sarcastically. Kids don’t speak the language of sarcasm. Getting a laugh off my kid while they’re trying to talk to me is cheap. I think they don’t know, but they know.
3) Remember they’re kids. Kids have kid problems and kid fears. They celebrate kid stuff and cry about kid stuff. Their reality is their reality. I think kids feel disrespected or diminished when you don’t recognize that their stuff is real to them.
4) Be mindful of what they really want from you. What I mean is, answer the question in your mind, “How would I want my mom or dad to react in this situation?”
If I hit a homerun on the tee-ball field, I’d want to hear my parents cheering the loudest in the stands. If my friends picked on me all day, I’d want someone to love on me. If I brought them a problem I’d created, I’d want them to listen without reacting harshly.
That’s not to say it’s my job as a parent to always give my child what he/she is wanting from me, but I think being mindful of them is the best place to start.
Like I said, you probably won’t find those in any textbook or parenting manual. So like our nurse, there’s a chance I’m 100% insane with this.
But if I’m on to something, and the preschool and kindergarten years really are when you begin to set patterns of relationship and communication for the later years, what would you add to my list?
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