By Mama-Om
When I was pregnant with my first child, a friend asked me, “Do you ever think about what your kid might be when they grow up? Like, what if they’re the president?”
The president? Uh… But mainly what struck me was that I had never given a single thought to what my child might be. Not one. I was spending the whole pregnancy just hoping I could let the kid be. What if I bossed them around all the time? Overburdened them with my own desires, ultimately corroding their sense of self? What if I tried to control them and we ended up in never-ending power struggles our entire lives?
I know, maybe I should have focused more on the normal pregnancy stuff, like buying dozens of onsies or figuring out what kind of cloth diapers to use. Instead, I went straight from tadpole to teenager. I was getting ahead of myself, right?
Well, as it turned out, not really. Once my son born, I learned that they pretty much come out as teenagers. And I mean teenager in the best possible way: autonomous, honest, with a healthy dose of counterwill.
The vague notions I had when my son was in utero — about what it might mean to be ultimately responsible for someone without controlling them, to live intimately with another person without coercion, to respect someone’s autonomy completely, even if they were only two feet tall — were quickly put to the test.
Throughout my son’s first year, we see-sawed back and forth on the control continuum.
He’s going to bed at the same time every night! Score one for the parents.
His schedule is blown and he’s back to sleeping whenever. Score one for the little man!
The older Orlando got, the more I saw (in myself and most everyone around me) the desire to control. I heard talk of “manipulation” and “willful behavior.” It didn’t sound right to me, and I found that keeping score didn’t feel good.
So I stopped. I remember the day very clearly. Orlando was about fifteen months old and I had spent the entire day feeling commandeered by him — a person whose only word was “kitty”! I realized right then that I could let go, completely, of the idea of who was controlling who. That giving up control didn’t mean giving in; it meant giving up on the idea of control itself.
After I hopped off the control see-saw, I found myself in a new land. I started thinking of my body, and my heart, as in service to my child. Every single day, many times a day, I started to see how his childhood and my motherhood was the long, slow unraveling and re-cording of our mutual needs. I began to to understand the importance of being clear inside. I began to understand the complexity of being in charge while staying out of the way.
My kids are now four years old and one year old. I don’t think about what they’ll be when they grow up. I’m spending all my time trying to be the parent I want to be so I can keep letting my kids be who they already are.
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Mama-Om writes about about peaceful parenting, how cute and funny her kids are, how irritating and crazy-making her kids are, and about what she learns from her many mistakes. In other words, come meet Mama-Om, Mama-Yay!, Mama-Ack, and Mama-Oops… There’s lots of room at our messy house for ya!
Well said. Your message is an important reminder that we can all get what we want, without there being winners and losers.
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