| It was ten o'clock at night. Little
Aaron, about five, was ahead of me in a long line of people waiting to
look through the telescope at the Nature Center. His mother, I was
happy to see, was holding him and laughing with him about something
he'd just said. But soon Aaron became restless, as children will when
they have spent a late hour waiting in a long line, and was being
warned to keep quiet. |
| At the first signs of impatience, his mother
spoke kindly: "The telescope won't go away. You'll get a chance
to look through it." However, she neglected to validate his
feelings. She didn't say: "It's so hard to wait for something
you've looked forward to for so long." Aaron began to play with
his mother's nose, twisting it this way and that, while making a sort
of whooshing, humming noise like a UFO hovering over us. As the nose
attacks and sound effects continued, his mother struggled to free
herself and to quiet her son. She tried reasoning with him: "For
a child who loves space as much as you do, you'd think you could be
more patient to get to the telescope!" Reasoning didn't work, and
as is often the case with children, it just made matters worse. Aaron
screamed, "I hate the stars! I want to go!" His mother
became annoyed with him, and began to react with anger: "Stop
that, Aaron!" And soon: "Stop that, right now!" and
finally: "Do you want to have any fun tomorrow?!" That took
Aaron over the edge. He started crying hard, and they left for home. A
child who loved space lost a chance to have a good look at it. |
Children are human
beings just as we are, and behave in accordance to how they are
treated, just as we do. |
| A child's rambunctiousness in public
embarrasses parents, because our society expects children to remain
silent and to behave as though they are mature adults - a most
unrealistic and uncaring expectation. Expecting the impossible can of
course only lead to disappointment and frustration for both parents
and children. Just like adults, children feel most cooperative when
treated with kindness, understanding, and faith in their inherent good
intentions. No adult feels cooperative when treated in a threatening,
angry way by a spouse, employer, or friend. In fact, we feel hurt and
resentful when treated that way, and far from cooperating, we often
resist or retaliate. Why then do we expect children to respond with
good behavior when treated with anger, threats, or punishment?
The deepest mystery of parenting is that we often miss the truth
about children's behavior, and yet it is so simple. Children are human
beings just as we are, and behave in accordance to how they are
treated, just as we do. We seldom stop to consider that this is simply
an inexperienced human being with real feelings, who is doing the best
he can do, given all the circumstances of his life up to that moment.
For how could he do any more? And why would he do any less?
Everything a child does makes sense if we look at things from his
point of view; there is a valid reason for everything a child does.
Aaron was understandably excited about this adventure, and if his
excitement had been more fully accepted and validated, would surely
have found the long wait less stressful. |
| Children deserve our
best efforts to give them love and understanding at all times. |
As a child advocate, what could I have said to
Aaron's mother? I might have validated Aaron's feelings and offered a
solution to his mother. To Aaron, I might have said, "It's so
hard to wait when you're looking forward to something!" To his
mother, I could have said "You know, airlines have the right
idea; they always board children first. Why don't I ask if you could
go to the head of the line?" I could have offered help:
"It's so hard for children to wait in long lines. If you'd like
to take him for a walk, I'll be glad to hold your place." Or I
might simply have encouraged her: "It's so hard for a child to be
quiet and patient at the end of a long day, waiting to do something
exciting. I think he's doing really well!" I could have said any
of these things, if only I had thought of them at the time. There is
such a taboo against intervening in one another's parenting that we
often overlook ways in which we can be helpful. |
| Children deserve our best efforts to
give them love and understanding at all times, even when - especially
when - they are not behaving as we would wish. If we can show them
compassion and understanding at those times, we can teach them by
example some of the most essential ingredients of a happy life: the
capacity to love others unconditionally, the willingness to offer help
and express empathy at all times, and not just at those times when
others are making life easy for us. If we can teach this to our
children, we have given our child a priceless gift, one that will
continue through the generations.
As Rick Lahrson, Director of the Portland, Oregon Kids Project,
once wrote, "Misbehavior in children is an attempt to
communicate, when all else has failed. Children have a drive to love
other people and to be a contribution to the people around them. It is
time for all children to be recognized as the magnificent people they
are, and accorded the dignity and respect that is due every human
being. We must establish a new way of seeing children." |
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