It's Not About Us

Parenting.  It’s not about us.

Well before I had a child, there was a sermon in church that for some reason really resonated with me.  The point of it was that in order to effectively raise a child, you had to learn the “language” of your child, and that language would not necessarily be the same among all of your children.  That language, that is the thing that should guide you in how you talk to, discipline, and even love your child.  That language is how THEIR brain works, what they think, what is important to them, how they react to things.

I was blessed with a wonderful, funny, intelligent, strong willed child.  However, that blessing came with some issues, issues that caused friction, distress, and even pain in him that I was unaware of, that were the source of some frustrating behavioral issues.  I was so sure all I needed to do was be strict, to demand he behave in a certain matter, to punish him when he didn’t meet my expectations.  I completely ignored the message of the sermon that had really touched me a couple of years before.  I was sure that I knew how to make a child grow up to be the perfect adult.

I was wrong.  So terribly wrong.

I see some other parents or caretakers make the same mistake, and it breaks my heart.  It actually brings me to tears reading some posts online.

Our kids, the majority of the time, they aren’t being “bad” just for the sake of being bad, to hurt us, or to try to make our lives difficult, yet that is usually our first response.  So, we go into the situation concerned about ourselves, we take it personally, our focus is on our feelings of anger or disrespect.  I know this well, because this was me.

The result of my parenting choices the first 9 or 10 years of my son’s life was that I had a child who didn’t fully trust me, lied to me, hid things from me, hit or bit me, was afraid of me, was destructive with his belongings, got in trouble at school, and if he did what I wanted him to do, it was out of fear.  Something obviously wasn’t working.

Around that time, he also started failing in school.  He always had some struggles, but they intensified greatly.  Though I had previously brought up behavior issues to his pediatrician before, they were now taken seriously.  After extensive testing, he was then diagnosed with several disorders better known by their acronyms, and it was then that the sermon from so many years earlier smacked me upside the head.  This wasn’t about me, it was about my son.  Had I only realized that earlier.

I let go of everything I thought was right about parenting, and relearned it all.  I have learned not to react to things as if they are an assault on me, but to find out the WHY, and to deal with the underlying cause.  I don’t automatically punish, I approach everything with as a teaching moment.  I realized that as a parent, I am here to guide and teach, not to scare into compliance.

Right now, I’ve got a teenager who has above a 3.0 GPA at a private college prep school, who plays for his school baseball team, who has some incredible friends, who volunteers in the community, and, the next time he leaves his room to go get a snack or use the bathroom and sees the light on here in my office, will pop his head in just to tell me he loves me.  I can’t tell you the last time I disciplined him.  I’ve had to ask him to repeat himself in a more respectful manner, or to point out that something he said was rude, but that is normal teenage boy stuff, and I recognize that.

It's not about us.  It is about our kids, and I will tell you from experience, it is the most rewarding thing you will ever do to accept that.  This isn't limited to parents of kids with disabilities, this is relevant for everyone.

That’s why they have wine, a toast to the parents who all work so hard to have great kids!