V's Version

Play that funky music, white boy! Pk is celebrating the completion of cleaning his room with a bit of Wild Cherry disco.

It is so difficult to remain patient in the face of pressure to coerce / shame / insist that Pk clean his room. I truly believe that self-motivated habits are more empowering, a better experience overall and ultimately the best path to long lasting life lessons learned. (Not that it was easy to see how chaotic it had become. I said more than once that I was not comfortable being in his room.)

Yeah - sure - I could pull rank and say "Clean it - because I said so." I wouldn't like that. He wouldn't like that. It would be reason to chaffe and rail and for what? A construct of power? No way.

So this morning, he said, "Mama? When I am done doing my laundry - would you be willing to help me clean my room?" I said (without fanfare), "Sure."

I sat in his room and kept the music flowing, offered ideas on how to organize and break down the overwhelming task of "cleaning" and generally encouraged him to keep going. He is proud and happy. Dani is relieved. I (battling the headache) kind of want a nap.


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Labels: attachment parenting communicating children lesbian family non violent unconditional love reward, cancer writing positive poetry family nonviolent communication NVC

Day 16 of the headache....

I am trying to move slowly, drink lots of water, eat well and stay calm. I am taking care of some paperwork that has piled up on my desk and am reading "Unconditional Parenting" by Alfie Kohn with Dani.

The sense that I get is mostly positive. I feel like it is autumn in New England in my mind right now. School is about to start or has just started... the leaves are brilliant orange and red, the sky is a glorious contrasting blue, the air is crisp and moving. It is the feeling that I am starting something new. I am entering into PHASE 3 of my parenting.

The first phase was attachment parenting and I was totally confident that I was doing the right thing. I studied and used a combination of my intuition, research and my own values to formulate my parenting style. Many people questioned what I did and why I did it. "Why not just let the baby cry?" (My heart says not to, I thought, and looked for science to back me up.) "He will learn to soothe himself", they said. (He'll learn something alright. He'll learn that his needs do not matter and that communicating directly is pointless.) "Babies have a way of tugging on your heartstrings. He is just trying to manipulate you." (They do have a way of touching our hearts. And I am in it for as long as the connection lasts....my faith says that we are all born good and that babies do not know how to manipulate until we, the world, teach them how to manipulate.) "He'll have to learn to be independent at some point, you know. You are just sheltering him." (He will learn to be independent, but as he is ready to become so - it is a long process that starts with birth. It is my job to be the shelter he needs.) And "Why give him a choice between the red shirt and the blue? He is only two years old! Just give him a shirt and tell him to get dressed!" (I want a child, despite the difficulty it will be for me, who can question authority and make his own decisions. Today it's the red shirt or the blue shirt. Tomorrow it's soda or beer.) "Children should be seen and not heard." (no comment.)

Then came PHASE 2 - when I was sick and then the divorce and then the moving and then a new relationship. I was not confident. I was scared. I was surviving and holding it all together as best as I could. I did not have the energy to study parenting. I did not have the focus to learn how to transition from attachment parenting of a preschooler to unconditional parenting of a school age child. I had to give up home schooling because I was too sick too often. I let myself be influenced by the parents in my immediate surroundings - most of whom have mainstream values and would have asked most of the questions (in one way or another) posed in PHASE 1. I fell prey to the "Have you tried..." syndrome. I began the horrible slippery slope of rewards - even when it felt somehow wrong.

I forgot about how much I dislike what I have studied of BF Skinner's work and behaviorism. I forgot the anguish I witnessed with my own eyes in the kids at The Learning Center (a school where I worked) where rewards and consequences were the name of the game. I could feel something was wrong with all the stickers and the bribes - but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Don't all kids get allowances and have to do chores for it? Don't all kids eat dinner just to get the dessert? What about paying for grades? What about saying sorry just to say it? What about all the criticism? Appropriate / inappropriate, good / bad, right / wrong, my way or the highway. I could tell that I was not going down the path that felt true to my values any more. I could tell that I was being pulled by the mainstream.

PHASE 3 is now. I am bumbling through a thicket of information, learning a new way to communicate and trying to get back to the path I was on when I practiced attachment parenting. I know it is not the well-trodden road of popular advice columns. I know that it is more new - school than old - school. I realize that I will be making my job a lot harder. It will mean modeling respect rather than gaining it from fear. It will mean doing the right thing just because it is the right thing to do - not for approval. It means that I am making a commitment to communicate why I am feeling the way that I am, why I am doing what I do...there is no "because I said so."<----- very tempting. Utterly ineffective in the long run.

OK - I am off to get Pk at school (school is another idea whose time has past, in my opinion.) Then we are off to celebrate Earth Day by watching the work of naturalist photographers originally from the local University of California at Santa Cruz. We also planted dozens of sunflower seedlings. I love the smell of the earth.
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Labels: attachment parenting communicating children lesbian family non violent unconditional love reward