I’m a parent, a parent of two girls growing up fast. I remember very clearly when they handed over my eldest daughter and discharged my wife from hospital, as that was the moment I suddenly realised I had no idea how to be a parent. The reality of parenting is that you go into it understanding very little. You might know lots, you may have even read countless books on the subject, but true insight only comes with experience. And as the psychiatrist John Bowlby puts it in his book A Secure Base, ‘Engaging in parenthood…is playing for high stakes…because successful parenting is a principal key to the mental health of the next generation’. No pressure there then!
So, after a decade of parenting here are key lessons I have learnt.
You need patience
Children don’t think like adults, how could they. Their expectations are vastly different, they have no concept of time, and they don’t understand the difference between what they want and want they need. On the other hand, you, as an adult, are well aware that the world runs to timetables and people will expect you to be places at certain times. You also know that although you may really want to find out who is the tallest person in the world via the internet, doing so at 8:30am when you should be leaving for the school run is not the best idea. So, as a parent you are going to have to dedicate time and effort to dealing with that and helping them understand.
That means taking a deep breath, doing whatever keeps you calm, and…
Adjust your expectations
For me, becoming more patient took practice, because it meant adjusting my expectations. As adults we get stuck living the adult world, and that simply clashes head on with childhood. There is a wonderful line in the book The Little Prince, by Antione De Saint-Exupéry, that says ‘Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves and it is rather tedious for children to have to explain things to them time and again’. You have to learn to empathise with your child in that moment when they are having a meltdown about something seemingly of no consequence. Once you understand their motivation you can start to make sense of their behaviour.
Which is why you have to…
Parent the feeling not the behaviour
The fact that they really say they want the blue one and nothing else will do is not the point. The point is they are dealing with, what is for them at least, strong emotions of want and disappointment that they can’t in that moment handle. But recognition of that fact, from you as a parent, takes a lot of the sting out of it. They learn that emotions are ok and normal, and now you can start to talk to them about what we do with those emotions.
And finally…
Look after yourself
For all of the above, the greatest gift you can give your children is to look after yourself. Seems perverse, right, but it’s true. It’s often referred to via the oxygen mask analogy, the idea that when the time comes you get your oxygen mask on first so that you are better placed to help others. Make sure you do the things that help your own mental health and wellbeing, because guess what? If you are happy, calm and feel confident as a parent, it’ll rub off on your children too. Or as Phillippa Perry puts it, in The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, ‘…children do what we do rather than what we say’.