Wow! We are having such an amazingly wonderful week here in my household (touch wood - a lot of wood) Hubby and I were sitting down watching a movie this evening marvelling at our two gorgeous kiddies playing together on the floor, showing such compassion and consideration for each other, sharing, negotiating. And and we looked at each other smiling I know we were both thinking the same thing - PHEW!
Parenting is by far the hardest, most time consuming, energy absorbing, thought contemplating, gut retching thing I have ever attempted! It feels like I am constantly evaluating and second guessing every choice and decision I make. It's exhausting - and that's just the part after the kids have gone to bed :-)
Recently we came to a crisis point in our parenting journey where it really felt like the wheels had fallen off our wagon. Our darling miss 3, who, far from perfect, has always been a delightful girl. Yes we have had a LOT of Moments when things were not so rosey but in that midnight hour when your drifting off to sleep overall she was delightful. However for the last 6 mths things have been strained to say the least. Words that pop to mind disagreeable, irritable, moody, stubborn, tantrum queen... banshee???
I think the worst point was when the director of the kindy pulled me aside one day to 'have a chat' about Miss A. I was lost for words. I had nothing. I felt like a parenting failure! Worse than that I felt like an attachment parenting failure. I left the kindy that day head hanging low having apologised to the teachers involved with my little miss' 35min scream fest admitting that something wasn't working and hadn't been working for a little while now. Quite honestly even my assurances that it was simply the upheaval of moving and changing family circumstances were sounding feeble to me. I set the target at June and assured the kindy director if there had been no improvements by then we would look into something... what I didn't know.
At home with hubby we discussed our little princess and her behaviours at home and at kindy and he immediately jumped to the "this attachment thing isn't working". And it was those words that had my head reeling - because I had heard them before! I cast my mind back to a similar age when my son was three or four and we had exactly the same war conference.
Then, same as now his thoughts turned to a more authoritarian and corporal punishment plan of attack. We as a parenting couple have always struggled with this. As much as he supports and will sing the praises of natural and attachment parenting; he was raised in a different environment to myself, works in a different environment to myself and he often falls back on that, as we all do. The one issue that always has us at our battle stations is smacking: he believes in it, I don't.
Smacking; or rather not smacking is something that I am vehemently opposed to and although as a parenting team we agree not to interfere when one of us is disciplining an incident we both know smacking gets my mother bear genes out and it aint going to be pretty. The war council continued between hubby and I and I would be lying if I said we were in agreeance. One of the many good things to come out if it was the deep discussions we had about how we perceive parenting, our role in it and how it makes us feel; in particular hubby's POV that he often felt useless and out of control when our babies were younger! (explains so much - must blog about it another time!) But at the end of our many late night discussions we came to a truce.
I read my favourite books, searching blogs and online articles looking for what we had done wrong or missed! In amongst the angst I felt over being held responsible for "spoiling" my child - insert visions overwhelming me of what a bratty little demanding child she was going to grow into unless I toughened up on her. I couldn't fight my instincts which were screaming at me. Deep inside all I could feel was that I had to do more, love her more, be there more, make her feel more secure and at peace rather giving her ultimatums and more opportunities to fail.
I looked at her and I could see a little girl coming into her new independence and being both frustrated and scared by it. I could see in her what I see in so many of my students. That thought process that any attention is good attention. Daily as a teacher I am faced with children who have been brought up in households where attention deficient has a whole new meaning. Where they will do just about anything to receive some form of attention from an adult whether it be a time out, a stern talking to or a detention. I was determined not to go down that road.
So I decided to double my efforts at this attachment parenting thing. We started baby wearing again (or rather toddler wearing) around the house. Going about chores, shopping etc. It gave us lots of time to talk without me feeling like I was either constantly walking away from her or sitting with her frustrated that I couldn't get anything done. We coslept more often so she was getting a sounder sleep and wasn't as tired from waking in the night looking for us. But my secret weapon! The one I have always stood by in parenting and teaching is to give them many opportunities to succeed and few to fail. We made sure we kept the boundaries and rules enforced and had reasonable consequences and we spoke about how it made us sad or happy when she did things. But we kept the boundaries simple so we weren't constantly saying "no" or giving her opportunities to defy or rebel. We praised her when she played well, helped out, did things herself. We did a lot with her, guiding her so she has the opportunity to get praise. Simple things like helping her get dressed (when I knew she was capable of it) and praising her while we did it; building her confidence and lathering the attention while reinforcing the good things we wanted her to do.
I also wrote a long heartfelt letter to the kindy director and the staff and explained our parenting ideals and how important they were to us. It was extremely difficult to lay our parenting on the table like that, knowing that from their point of view it wasn't working but I really felt that they needed to know how we did things and how I would like it continued at kindy so that Miss A was receiving the same message thoughout her day. I nervously popped it in her lunch box one morning as I was too chicken to give it to them directly and waited nervously for the reply. Nothing! It was a day or two later that one of the carers approached me and thanked me for the letter. She was in 100% agreement with our ideas and offered to work with us.
The transformation was a slow one. One in fact I didn't see until just recently. June came and went without anymore "chats" with the director. My darling Miss A received the "star of the day" award 3 times! She is helping more, being more independent and generally delightful again. The greatest joy by far was her report card from her dance teacher at kindy who stated that she was "the most genuinely happy child she had ever met." And now hubby and I are sitting on lounge watching our happy contented children feeling a little chuffed that the those terrible tantrums are behind us - no doubt luring us into a false sense of security before the next parenting crisis hits.
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