A Typical Situation
One day I was out with my five-year-old daughter, Sequoia, playing with a friend at the beach. Finally, it was time to go, but Sequoia didn’t want to leave. I sat with her and talked about why we needed to go – I had several errands to run before the shops close, and I wanted to get home before dark. Not to mention I was tired and had enough of being on the beach.
I explained to Sequoia that she’d been playing with her friend all day, and she could see the friend another day again, but that we needed to go. After talking about it, we negotiated for five more minutes.
At the end of the five minutes, I stood up to leave, this time I wasn’t willing to argue about it any more – it was important for me to run my errands and if I didn’t leave right then, it would be too late. While I do my best to work with what Sequoia wants to do, and make a lot of compromises, in this moment, the option of not completing my errands that day wasn’t worth considering and it was important to me to stick to our earlier agreement of five more minutes.
So I picked up my bag, took Sequoia’s hand firmly and said goodbye to our friends. Sequoia protested, saying that she wanted to stay. I started walking towards the car, reminding her calmly that I needed to get somewhere and she’d had a long time playing already.
Here Comes Trouble
Sequoia started shouting at me, and before we’d gone one hundred metres, she descended into a full-blown tantrum, screaming, and hitting me.
I looked at my daughter transformed into a spitting, red-faced terror, and took a deep breath. My initial reaction was to get angry. After all, I’d already stayed at the beach an hour longer than I’d initially planned, I was going to have to hurry to get my errands done before 5pm, and I didn’t like the thought of either skipping them or dragging a screaming child around town.
Thoughts of shouting at her, angrily dragging her to the car and punishing her for her behaviour flitted through my mind, but I also knew that such extreme tantrums weren’t usual for her, so there must be something deeper triggering the emotions.
Rather than giving in to that first spark of anger, I thought about how Sequoia was feeling. Obviously, she wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her friend, but I didn’t believe that was enough to trigger such an extreme reaction. I realised there must be something more.
If I were to take my frustration out at her, it would only exacerbate the problem; we would be just shouting at each other and I might never get to the bottom of why she was so upset.
I took another deep breath, and stopped walking. I looked into Sequoia’s eyes and said, “I love you”. An instant change came over her. She stopped kicking and screaming, looked up at me and hugged me. “I love you too”, she said, calming right down.
After that she calmly walked to the car and got into her seat. Just as I was clicking in her seatbelt, she said “I’m sorry mama. I’m sorry for hitting you and shouting.” I hugged her and told her that I forgave her.
Loving Our Children
In this instance, it would have been very easy to react to Sequoia’s anger and frustration, but what she really needed was to feel loved and supported, unconditionally.
I want my child to know, and feel that I love her unconditionally, even when she expresses negative emotions.
I want her to feel confident in herself and in my love for her to show me, honestly, what she is feeling, and that I’m always there for her.
If I were to punish her in some way for having a tantrum, it would send a clear message that I only love her and treat her well if she expresses positive emotions and does what she’s told.
Children who are told off or punished for showing their emotions, often feel the need to be constantly bending over backwards to get approval, or hiding their feelings for fear or retribution.
I believe that kind of attitude can often set children up to feel like they need to repress negative emotions, and that they will only be accepted if they act how they think they are expected to. That would probably be fine if my goals were for my child to grow up following the crowd, bowing before authority and not thinking for herself, but my aim is to raise a child who is confident in herself, able to express her feelings honestly and healthily and to trust in her own judgements.
I have witnessed other children who play with Sequoia become very sneaky when they think they might be doing something I would say ‘no’ to, regardless of whether I would actually say ‘no’ or not. Rather than becoming obedient, these children who have been punished for ‘misbehaviour’ resort to lying about it.
In our family there are no punishments, and no rewards. Sequoia has never been in a time-out because I want her to be honest with me, and I don’t want her to fear me. When we can honestly talk to each other, and let go of fear, judgements and punishments, there’s more room for love.
What I aim for is to be a parent that my child wants to follow, rather than one she is afraid to run away from.