I used to be a fretful mother. I constantly worried that I wasn’t doing enough stuff with my kids. In my mind, an idle minute in my kids’ lives was bad, to be rectified immediately with some kind of activity. They had to be either eating, right-brain stimulated, entertained, reading or answering a call of nature. Fretful mother equals tired and stressed-out mother.
As they grew from year to year, this fretfulness subsided little by little, and today, I can even let a couple of hours pass by without doing anything with the kids. Talk about letting ’em run wild! Part of this more relaxed attitude is growing up (on my part) and part of it is laziness. It’s just easier to not have to think up stimulating activities every minute.
I also think that while I do want to stimulate my kids, the flip side of being constantly given stuff to do is that they learn to wait for you to give them stuff to do! Before you know it, I’ll be bringing up kids who have no idea what to do with themselves if they’re not told what to do.
They’ll be doing a jigsaw puzzle, finishing it, and going: “Uh-oh, here’s a spare minute. What are we to do? Let’s yell for that woman who gave birth to us. She’ll know. She’s always juggling balls and turning cartwheels to awaken our right brain.”
You laugh now. Try looking at your kids. You’re probably their clown too.
Recently, I read a book that confirmed all my suspicions. In French Children Don’t Throw Food, American author Pamela Druckerman extols the virtues of French parenting, and one of the points that flashed neon signs in my head is how French kids are taught to be joyfully compliant. They are not coddled every second, rather delayed gratification is inculcated from infanthood.
They are obedient and well-behaved, but not sullen for it. They learn to be independent and self-controlled, so whilst listening to instructions of “be quiet” or “wait,” they know how to keep themselves entertained and stave off boredom. How very wonderful!
So, validated by an entire nation of sophisticated and stylish people, I set out to make my kids joyfully compliant. When I got home from work after that, instead of carting out all their toys and trying to build the world’s tallest tower while staging a four-act finger puppet show, I just sat there and decompressed from the day. When my kids came at me, I told them to back off; this was some serious me-time.
In the beginning, they would protest, and I ended up spending me-time with my three-year-old trying to braid my hair (I have really short hair) and my six-year-old reading knock-knock jokes at the top of her voice.
Ah-ha! But it was working. I wasn’t doing anything with them. They were the ones entertaining themselves and torturing me.
You see, other than practising non-fretful parenting, I am also big on denial parenting. I totally deny any flaws in my course of action.
Things do get better. Now, when I’m home from work, my kids know to leave me alone. Once I’m ready for them, I call them into my studio (my little work space at home) and tell them they are free to join me there, and they can do whatever they want. By now, they know that we’re each doing our own thing, but doing that together in the same space.
It’s working well, this working-together-but-alone thing. To further help their independence, I set up a writing centre for them, which is a little space to put all the supplies they could possibly need – pencils, erasers, glue, scissors, Sharpie pens, paper and more.
Sometimes they’ll be doodling and drawing, or one of them will be reading and the other trying to build a house with books. They do still try to make me do things with them, especially my younger one, and I give in occasionally. And I reserve a couple of nights a week where I help my elder with schoolwork. But mainly they love it; it makes them feel grown up to be “working” in my studio with me.
I relish my newfound freedom, and my kids’ newly-discovered independence. This is the stuff dreams are made of. When you’re a young girl, you dream of falling in love, and being happy. When you become a mother, you have a different dream. You dream of a peaceful lunch without the kids, five whole minutes in the shower without someone yelling “Mummy!” and making the kids’ bedtime 7pm instead of 10pm. You dream of getting your life back. This is me, daring to dream big!
Elaine Dong thinks all freedom is engineered, particularly the parenting kind. She blogs at www.angelolli.com.
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