We've Come a Long Way

I've had the feeling, several times recently, that I've come a long way with my parenting since we started unschooling. Usually it's hard for me to put my finger on what makes me feel this way, and sometimes even when I can, I don't remember very long. Unfortunately it's always easier for me to see what's going badly than what's going well. I do have a long way to go in some respects, but it's good to recognize progress, too. So here, to aid my memory and for your perusal, is a sample of what's going well.

A friend wrote recently that she'd been in a huge fight with her preschooler about what to wear. It was a chilly, windy day, and he wanted to wear shorts instead of pants. She struggled with him for 45 minutes, including a time-out that left her with bruises, before finally leaving the house with him still in shorts, because otherwise they were going to miss another child's appointment.

Looking back, I can remember having this kind of struggle. I used to be much more controlling about what my kids wore, what they ate, and what time they went to bed, and we did have big struggles on all three fronts at times, from which we all emerged exhausted and often with a good deal of ill will toward each other. Parenting was a lot harder then!

Now, if one of my kids wants to wear shorts when it's cold, I'll tell them what I know about the weather forecast, or ask them to step outside and see if they still think that's a good idea. If they still want the shorts, I just pack something warmer along with us (or send it with them, if I won't be with them) so that when and if they change their minds, they can change their clothing as well. They usually do want the additional warmth before they get home, but sometimes I'm wrong and they're fine without it. Either way, it doesn't stress our relationship.

Similarly, if fruits or veggies aren't going over well one day, I now have enough experience to know that they probably will the next time I offer them. Sometimes my 5-year old subsists on mac and cheese or variants on that theme (quesadillas, toasted cheese sandwiches) for a couple of full days, and then breaks his dairy-and-grain fast with a large bowl of carrots. His body eventually tells him it needs some variety. I encourage the variety when I can, but I don't force the issue anymore.

And with sleep, we just try to get a pleasant bedtime routine going at a reasonable hour, and things usually wind down naturally; not always as early as I'd like, but usually as early as I've actually planned effectively for (being proactive really helps, but sometimes I'm too tired to be at my most proactive). Every once in a while one of the kids is so into an activity that they don't want to stop. But eventually they do, and usually it's before I really was going to be in bed myself. They might fall asleep somewhere in the middle of something and just get covered up where they are or carried to bed; or they might call a halt and go to bed more or less on their own when they are tired enough. (One of my unschooling role models, Sandra Dodd, when people used to ask her what time her baby went to bed, would usually answer, "About half an hour after he goes to sleep.")

All of these issues are about having control over their own bodies, which I know all kids want. I remember wanting it, too. Sometimes they might want or need some guidance, but mostly they would like to be the ones to decide what goes in their mouths, what gets put on their bodies, and when they sleep and wake, as much as possible. Fair enough -- so do I, even now!

There are several other concepts at work here. One is another idea I've heard from Sandra: the suggestion that parents behave as if we have a coupon book full of "NO" coupons, with some large but finite (and I would add: unknown) number of coupons, and that at some point they will all get used up. We'll lose our ability to effectively stop our kids when that happens, and we can only try to ensure that they're making good decisions on their own by then. In other words, we have to choose our battles as parents. Or better, in terms of a partnership model with our kids, we have to use our influence wisely and refrain from advising or directing sometimes, or everything we say will start to sound like "Blah, blah, blah." If we restrict our advice to when it's truly useful and necessary, or when it's specifically requested, our kids will be much more likely to continue listening.

Another key concept, which I started realizing as a classroom teacher, before I had children, is this: We only have control over other humans when they are sufficiently small and/or cowed to believe we have that control. My seventh-grade students were (mostly) like elephants tethered by strings -- completely capable of taking over the classroom should they decide to, especially if they cooperated with each other, but mostly consenting to follow my plan, or at least not to derail it. The social contract kept me (mostly) in control, but I knew that control was illusory, and if the kids caught on, my classroom routine would be toast. In classes where I had one 7th-grade elephant who had broken his string, it was much harder to lead the other students effectively. So I tried to be reasonable, a benevolent leader, and I hoped for the best. And I was so scared I couldn't keep breakfast down on school mornings. Really. And this was not in a rough neighborhood or school. When my kids were babies, I could mostly control them with little struggle, because they were so small and helpless. (Their bodies, that is -- their voices were another matter!) But when they were toddlers, I began to realize that my control over them would rapidly come to resemble my classroom authority, and that someday they would be as big and strong as I was, if not more so, and I'd better have figured out some other way of maintaining peace by then! That got me thinking about choosing carefully what was really worth a struggle, and working toward resolving conflicts without resorting to my greater mass and strength.

The last concept, and I think the most important, is that my job as a parent is to help my kids learn whatever they will need to know to be able to make good decisions once they are on their own or I am gone. And I believe that the best way for them to learn to make good decisions is for them to get to make lots of decisions (not just blue-pants-or-brown-pants decisions, but pants-or-shorts-or-fairy-costume decisions too) and experience their consequences. Natural consequences only -- I still use my own experience to soften the mistakes when I can. I don't actually want them to get hypothermia if they're under-dressed, so I pack warm things whenever I think it's a good idea. (But if I forget, we might have to cuddle and shiver for a bit; and I do insist we all have jackets around our waists when we go hiking in the fickle Colorado weather.) The point is not for them to suffer real harm or misery. The point is for them to be able to make decisions, make mistakes sometimes, and learn how to fix those mistakes.

How's it working out with the kids? They're learning. Now that those jackets have come off the hips and been used during a few hikes, I don't get much pushback on taking the jackets in the first place. And after feeling cold and changing a few times, they usually listen when I say I think today's weather forecast calls for pants, not shorts. They eat less variety than I hope they will someday, but when you look at the long-term trend, it seems to be toward a reasonably healthy diet. They get enough sleep most nights -- and if they don't, they go to bed earlier the next night pretty willingly.

Eek! That last paragraph makes it sound like I think they're learning because their decisions are looking more like the ones *I* would make. To some extent I guess that's reasonable: I have more life experience, so some kinds of decisions will converge on similar territory. But perhaps one of my next steps will be to find a different way to see progress and learning: to see paths that diverge from mine as potentially wonderful on their own merits. Or to judge my kids' decisions less and just try to understand and enjoy them more.

I can't predict now where I might be headed on that score. But I suspect that as we get some basic-survival stuff (avoiding hypothermia and fatal car accidents, say) out of the way, it will get easier to appreciate paths that are different from what I would choose. For now, I appreciate that there's far less stress and conflict and more visible caring and kindness in our lives than there used to be, and that my kids are trusting my advice more when I do give it, and learning a lot about the world and how to live well in it.