When I had a kid I did my best, I really did... The kid was born with bulls horns and an uncanny ability to milk every weakness until the tears flowed... my tears that is. I. underestimated the extremes of sleep deprivation and the uncomtrollable rage that wells inside when your kid yells for you through the night repeatedly, exactly 15 minutes after you have finally and arm numbingly soothed her back to sleep. You see it's just long enough for mum to desperately slide into slumber...and then ....waaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh there she goes again.
So yes, I let her cry it out at times....don't lynch me... the alternative was unthinkable and involved either a straight jacket or hand cuffs. And you know what? It bloody worked, damn it. Tut tut all you like - the choice was either neither of us ever got a decent nights sleep again and went rapidly mad, or she cried it out once or twice and then slept through the night until sickness or such opened the door to her believing that mummy should be on tap and within arms reach all night or the world was ending. And no - bed sharing was not an option. She grunted like a randy pig and kicked like Beckam all night. Fail.
So I had a pretty happy well adjusted kid who thought the world of me and I was pretty firm and clear most of the time, used the dreaded cry-it-out and time-out techniques when I had to, and we all got along pretty well in life.
Then I stumbled across Positive Parenting literature... I read up and, just as it intends to do, it convinced me that time-out was tantamount to torture, parents who let their kids cry should be hung drawn and quartered in the town square, my home was no better than Guantanamo Bay, and of course I was destroying any chance of my kid ever being happy in life....
Ye gads.... So I wholeheartedly embraced the approach. I jumped on board with the ways of respecting your kid to within an inch of its life, soothing rather than setting limits, responding to the feelings behind the behaviour (I see by the fact that you just punched me in the face that you are feeling frustrated with me...do you need a hug?) NO consequences under any circumstances (punishment is child abuse) NO rewards (poison carrots!) NO saying "well done good job..." (teaches external praise seeking rather than internal self satisfaction), encouraging free and unlimited self expression at all times.....And basically your life must revolve around anticipating and meeting the needs of your child so that they never have to experience the harsh realities of the world... ("Don't prepare your child for society, change society to meet your child's inner needs").
But.... to my honest surprise... It failed miserably. My sweet angel descended into new and horrific depths of evil. Quickly working out that there were no longer any consequences to fear, her inner needs became expressed loudly and clearly and involved the world entirely revolving around her passing whims - oddly enough - or she screamed the house down. She cottoned on very quickly to exactly who was in charge here. Relying on my child's inner sense of self responsibility turned out to be a mission of futile frustration...and no-one was there to sooth my bloody anger! In vain did I turn to the Positive Parenting advice pages only to be confronted by the scores of other poor parents writing in with exactly the same experiences as me... Their children were monsters too.... And the answer, according to the hallowed gurus? Must be a food allergy.... Or just don't take your kid out in public.
Seriously.
The answer to the child who demands every piece of candy in the supermarket or they chuck an almighty lay down tantrum? Just don't take them to the supermarket - they are telling you they are not ready for that experience...
Holy crap what kind of fantasy land do these people live in??
Clearly this approach can only work if you are a privileged married/coupled middle class family who can afford to give up everything other than devoting yourself full time to meeting your little Hitler's every desire.
I struggled on, feeling more and more guilty and like a failure...I couldn't socialise or take my child out in public without living in fear of the next screaming fit. I dreaded bed time or bath time or any time when I had to convince her to do anything contrary to her inner self expression... And my friends started looking tense in the shoulders when ever she entered the room...
It took an old dear friend arriving to visit and informing me in no-uncertain-terms that I was breeding a demon to shake me out of my cycle of despair and denial. Oh I was cranky at her for it at the time, but it shook the veils from my eyes and I realised my kid was miserable, I was miserable, we were spending all our time fighting or avoiding fighting, and the future was looking bleak. It was around this time that I became very very sure that another child would be about as desirable as performing open heart surgery on myself without anaesthetics.
So...I stopped.... And I realised that the true art of parenting lies not in doing what you are told, but in listening to your kid and doing what works, what makes you both happy...In our case Positive Parenting could kiss my stress-expanding ass.
I am a single working mum. I work because I have to, but also because I passionately believe that what I do makes a difference in the world and I want my kid to be passionate about changing the world too... I want her to see that adults work, follow their dreams, have a balanced life of different commitments, and that she is a part of a big painting of life that is a populated landscape not a single pointed portrait. I also want her to understand that the world does not exist for her amusement, it is not always fair or the way we think it should be, and if she behaves like a selfish beast no-one will want to play with her.
So in case I ever forget again, in case I get sucked into someone else's theory, I thought I would write my own parenting tips. These are the some of the things I've worked out that work for me, for us... They may not be politically correct and they may or may not be found in any parenting book... they may even be just slightly tongue in cheek, but they work for us....for now... And if they stop working we will deny they ever did move right along...nothing to see here....
So - TOP TEN PARENTING TIPS FOR SINGLE WORKING MOTHERS :
1. Bribery is good. If I believed in such deities I would be tempted to say bribery is the god of single working parents... The deity would have many many arms full of lollipops, chocolate, new toys, star charts, ipads and ice cream.
2. All doors should have really really high handles... Anyone can slam a door but only a mummy can open them again. This is essential for mummy to have a few precious minutes to breath instead of exploding.
3. If in doubt, always lie. The correct answer to "Is that the ham I like?" is always "yes".
4. No-one is too big to beg...in fact, only big people are allowed to beg....Never let it work for the little people or you will want to scrape the word pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease out of your ears with a rusty nail...but a please please please get out of the car sometimes does the trick...maybe she misguidedly thinks that if she gives in to my pleases it will make me give in to hers... Sucker.
5. The match is over when the kid chucks. No matter what happened to cause the fight, vomiting always wins. Never give them the thing that was wanted of course, never that, but at least a whole lot of hugs and kindness....I have an easy chucker... It's like playing the joker card... Trumps all.
6. The joys of FFT...flexible follow through... Some days you need a LOT of last chances up your sleeve if you are going to walk the fine balance between world war three and anarchy.
7. Love love love the good stuff.... Total positive reinforcement... I do not care if my kid runs the risk of growing up needing external reinforcement to feel good about herself... I will NOT stop telling her she has done a fantastic amazing job, she is hugely talented and a superstar, and she will one day rule the world - at least until bedtime.
8. Toddler Tennis Tips... parenting a toddler is a game, never forget it. Its a tennis rally in which both the little person and the big person are dancing around trying to get a ball past their opponent. You may rally around deuce for a time, but at the end of the day whoever hits the better curve ball wins. I am a good enough sport to admit this.
9. Parenting is a battle of wits. I've never stretched my imagination, innovation, creativity and inventiveness this far before - and trust me, I'm pretty inventive in life. Its a constant process of trail and error to find a win. Celebrate the wins and high five yourself... you earned it!
10. Ask for help when you need it but don't expect to get it. Ask the kid to cut you some slack on a bad day. Sometimes it works.. .and if it doesn't - they were warned!
11. Its ok to have the shits. Kids are not stupid - they know you love them and think they are incredibly amazing, if you have told them a million times (see 7). They can cope when mummy gets pissed off. Mostly they know they deserved it. Seriously. By 4 years old - my kid knows when she is pushing my buttons or leapfrogging over the boudaries of common decency... and she knows that when she does that I get C-R-A-N-K-Y... such is the nature of it. She makes the choice... self responsibility and all that - love may be unconditional but happy smiling faces are not.
Ok so that is 11... get over it. Mums are inherently unfathomably amazing and utterly imperfect. Deal.
Oh and one more... iPads rule. Full stop.
