1. We expect children to be able to do things before they are
ready.
We ask an infant to keep quiet. We ask a 2-year-old to sit still. We ask a
3-year-old to clean his room. In all of these situations, we are being
unrealistic. We are setting ourselves up for disappointment and setting up the
child for repeated failures to please us. Yet many parents ask their young
children to do things that even an older child would find difficult. In short,
we ask children to stop acting their age.
2. We become angry when a child fails to meet our needs.
A child can only do what he can do. If a child cannot do something we ask, it
is unfair and unrealistic to expect or demand more, and anger only makes things
worse. A 2-year-old can only act like a 2-year-old, a 5-year-old cannot act like
a 10-year-old, and a 10-year-old cannot act like an adult. To expect more is
unrealistic and unhelpful. There are limits to what a child can manage, and if
we don't accept those limits, it can only result in frustration on both
sides.
3. We mistrust the child's motives.
If a child cannot meet our needs, we assume that he is being defiant, instead
of looking closely at the situation from the child's point of view, so we can
determine the truth of the matter. In reality, a "defiant" child may be ill,
tired, hungry, in pain, responding to an emotional or physical hurt, or
struggling with a hidden cause such as food allergy. Yet we seem to overlook
these possibilities in favor of thinking the worst about the child's
"personality".
4. We don't allow children to be children.
We somehow forget what it was like to be a child ourselves, and expect the
child to act like an adult instead of acting his age. A healthy child will be
rambunctious, noisy, emotionally expressive, and will have a short attention
span. All of these "problems" are not problems at all, but are in fact normal
qualities of a normal child. Rather, it is our society and our society's
expectations of perfect behavior that are abnormal.
5. We get it backwards.
We expect, and demand, that the child meet our needs - for quiet, for
uninterrupted sleep, for obedience to our wishes, and so on. Instead of
accepting our parental role to meet the child's needs, we expect the child to
care for ours. We can become so focused on our own unmet needs and frustrations
that we forget this is a child, who has needs of his own.
6. We blame and criticize when a child makes a mistake.
Children have had very little experience in life, and they will inevitably
make mistakes. Mistakes are a natural part of learning at any age. Instead of
understanding and helping the child, we blame him, as though he should be able
to learn everything perfectly the first time. To err is human; to err in
childhood is human and unavoidable. Yet we react to each mistake, infraction of
a rule, or misbehavior with surprise and disappointment. It makes no sense to
understand that a child will make mistakes, and then to react as though
we think the child should behave perfectly at all times.
7. We forget how deeply blame and criticism can hurt a
child.
Many parents are coming to understand that physically hurting a child is
wrong and harmful, yet many of us forget how painful angry words, insults, and
blame can be to a child who can only believe that he is at
fault.
8. We forget how healing loving actions can be.
We fall into vicious cycles of blame and misbehavior, instead of stopping to
give the child love, reassurance, self-esteem, and security with hugs and kind
words.
9. We forget that our behavior provides the most potent lessons to
the child.
It is truly "not what we say but what we do" that the child takes to heart. A
parent who hits a child for hitting, telling him that hitting is wrong, is in
fact teaching that hitting is right, at least for those in power. It is the
parent who responds to problems with peaceful solutions who is teaching his
child how to be a peaceful adult. So-called problems present our best
opportunity for teaching values, because children learn best when they are
learning about real things in real life.
10. We see only the outward behavior, not the love and good
intentions inside the child.
When a child's behavior disappoints us, we should, more than anything else we
do, "assume the best". We should always assume that the child means well and is
behaving as well as possible considering all the circumstances (whether obvious
or unknown to us), together with his level of experience in life. If we always
assume the best about our child, the child will be free to do his best.
If we give only love, love is all we will receive.
