I think I’m changing
Well really I am so challenged I don’t know where to begin. Dave gave me the gift of time off for a lovely bath with my book tonight, after him being away for a couple of days! So of course, I take “Unconditional Parenting” with me and now am plagued both with inspiration and and uncomfortable sense that I can do and should do and want to do better.
Firstly, Kohn talks about food which interests me. He speaks of many studies (all his work is grounded in one study or another!) that have shown that the more a parent exhibits controlling behaviour re a child’s food, the less the child will grow to have any self regulation when it comes to calorie intake. Now, I have heard this from a personal experience of a friend of mine before. But here it is. When a parent forces a child to eat because it’s meal time (even if they’re not hungry) or forces them to wait for meal time (even when they are) or uses food as rewards, the children stop trusting their own bodies’ cues and dare I say it, often ended up with weight problems. Interesting!
Secondly, Punishment. There’s no way around it other than to simply state “I am wanting you to suffer so that you learn what I have to teach you”. Does that make any sense? No. We know our jail system doesn’t work. Punishment serves no purpose but to say to a child “I only love you when you act like this…and when you don’t, I don’t love you”. And warning them in advance does not make it any better. It just communicates a message of distrust: “I don’t think you’ll do the right thing without the fear of punishment” (back to Alfie’s original point a few posts ago, of the nature of children being GOOD not bad). If we are truly interested in TEACHING our children, we will take them aside and teach them with love rather than control. Be in control, but not controlling.
Thirdly – time out. Kohn says time out is nothing but an emotional punishment rather than a physical one and still speaks the same thing to children. Try this:
“Those giants who hold me and rock me and feed me and kiss away my tears sometimes go out of their way to take things away that I like, or make me feel unworthy, or hit me on the backside. They tell me they’re acting this way because of something or other that I did but all I know is now I’m not sure I can trust them or feel completely safe with them. I’d be pretty stupid to admit to them that I’m angry, or that I did something bad, because I’ve learned that I might be given a time-out or talked to in a voice that has all the love drained out of it or even smacked. I’d better keep my distance” (p 69)
i’m getting increasingly nervous about myself. Not from this book – probably I was this way already which is why I went on the hunt for some ‘zen’ from Buddhism for mothers. But there certainly is a reactiveness in me that again I realise, I don’t want as part of my parenting. There is also a judgement in me that I don’t want as part of any relationships. I easily can withold the love that Kohn talks about to convey distance to other people – and what I hadn’t realised is it is another method of controlling other people. Or attempting to!
The un-condition. Unconditional love. It’s going to change me. It already is, I’m just not yet sure how it will play out…
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