I had lunch with a friend a couple of weeks ago. She just had a baby girl three months prior and I wanted to meet her little bundle of joy. So we met at a café for a quick bite (we need to optimize for quick when dining with a three month old…).
My friend looked great and at ease with her daughter. This is her second child, and you can immediately tell that she’s gone through it before. As we were both chatting and munching on our salads, I saw how she was having a hard time getting through her food as she juggled her salad, soup and little baby girl in her arms. Having been through moments like that myself, I tried to speed up my eating so I could hold her daughter and give her a chance to eat in peace (or at least, with her two hands).
We switched places and I stood up doing the mommy dance while she ate and we both talked. And she asked about my kids, particularly about my 12 year old daughter, who she is a big fan of. She asked me in a very frank and direct way: “how did you do it? MJ (that’s my daughter) is such a poised, confident, well-mannered girl. What did you do so she’d turn out so great and can I please have the secret formula?” It is one of the nicest compliments anyone has ever given me and one that I’ll always think of with pride.
I really didn’t have a clear answer. I couldn’t say, “Ok, here’s what you do…” Her comment made me smile, and then it made me think, become introspective and I actually asked myself, “How DID I do it?” Because I agree, my daughter is absolutely great. She is a joy to be around; she’s smart, confident, outgoing, polite, and compassionate. But she’s a typical pre-teen, and has and is facing challenges that will make her stronger or weaker. As I pondered my friend’s question, three things came to mind. I didn’t immediately give an answer to my friend, but these are things that I think have contributed to the person my daughter is today.
1. Respect. I have always regarded my kids as people, not just children. And as any other human being, they deserve respect from me. It is easy to lose that perspective when you are dealing with young people who have yet to mature. It is easy to lose sight of this fact and treat a child in a condescending way, with the infamous “because I said so”, with no care for explanation, the yelling, the not-seen-a-lot-these-days, but still-occasional spanking… In a way that, if you were to put a grown adult in the place of that child, it would be seen as disrespectful. Can you imagine making a decision at work, and when a co-worker asks for the business reason for it, you simply say “because I say so?” That would be wrong on so many levels - but with your child, it is ok? My children deserve the same level of reasoning and respect any adult would deserve from me. Why wouldn’t they? Because they’re little? Because I have the authority? Because I’m in charge? I have had the intention to be respectful to my children by not abusing my level of authority with them.
I have always disciplined my kids, they know who is in charge and they respond to my “1, 2, 3…” very quickly. But I have always been very conscientious of two things: one, they are little people, deserving of the same amount of respect I give to any other adult in my life – if not more. And two, someday, they will be adults, and if I continue to do my motherly job right, self-sufficient, independent adults who will have the choice to be respectful or disrespectful to me and anyone else around them. I want to make sure that I respect them today in a way that they will respect me tomorrow.
I feel my children have immense respect for me. The honest to God, “look up to,” loving kind of respect, not one born out of fear. The fact that I have gained that kind of respect makes me think that they are reciprocating what I give them. And that makes me feel really good about how things will turn out in the future.
2. Support. I remember MJ’s third grade teacher referring to her as an “old soul” when she was being awarded a courage award at school. If you look up the definition of old soul, it defines it as “a person who is wise beyond their years.” That definitely sounds like my daughter. And with that unexpected wisdom, comes confidence and independence. My daughter has never been a needy and insecure girl, but she has gone through stages in her young life where she’s needed me in ways that she and I didn’t expect.
Her pre-puberty years were a bit of a surprise in how she started developing physically. She started gaining weight and the cute, little girl people knew wasn’t so little anymore. I myself went through a chubby stage when I was young, but this stage hit me after puberty, not before, so her development was unexpected. Somehow, because I had gone through a similar stage as a girl, I knew to identify the signs when it happened to my daughter and felt prepared to tackle this with her. I decided to create an after school routine for her, so she’d keep active and exercising. I put her in tennis lessons, something she now loves and has become passionate about. I talked to her about the fact that the word “diet” shouldn’t be part of her lifestyle, that at her growth stage, you don’t focus on losing weight, but in eating right, controlling portions and keeping active. And we did just that, as a team. Sometimes after finishing her dinner, she’d tell me she wanted an extra helping, and I’d ask her “do you want more because you’re still hungry or because the food is so good?” Most of the time she’d realize she wasn’t really hungry and it was ok to stop. But not once did I make that decision for her. She felt in control, because she was. It was a beautiful stage in both of our lives and in our mother/daughter relationship.
This is an example of a life stage, a life experience that you don’t necessarily always think you need to be there for. This could have been something that went right through my head and I could have addressed with a “you’ve had enough to eat, put down your plate”. My support wasn’t in being there to make her breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was being there as a coach and guide, teaching her how to make good decisions in a way that is completely personalized to her individual personality and needs. I don’t think my daughter thinks of this time of her life as a crucial one, as one that marked her. But maybe it did, in a really wonderful way.
3. Teach by example. It’s very simple: If you want your children to be compassionate towards others, let them see you being compassionate. You want your kids to say please and thank you? Let them see you saying please and thank you. You want your children to be giving with people in their lives? Let them see you be giving. Who you are, they will most likely turn out to be. This might be obvious, but it is not trivial. I see how we adults act or react to moments our kids might witness, like when a driver cuts in front of us on the road, or how we respond to someone who is rude to us (or nice to us!) at the grocery store, or even how we approach the day ahead of us, optimizing for happiness or dreading the chores ahead. The way you face these things, react to them, work through tough emotions and difficult times, that’s how your kids will handle them as well. Heck, even the public figures that we admire or disapprove of, what they stand for and why we like/dislike them, they will take something away from that as well. We parents are non-stop teachers. Our children will emulate our reactions, our opinions, our beliefs.
The line between being a daughter and being a mother intertwine for me as my daughter grows. With each new life experience I see my daughter going through, I have seen my childhood flash before me. I try to be sympathetic of how she feels, remembering how I felt when I was her age. When she gets in trouble, I think of the times that I did, why I did, what I learned from it and how I learned it. And I try to teach her similar lessons, with the understanding that sometimes you have to get in trouble (sometimes more than once) to get the lesson and how the lesson is better grasped. It’s a really good exercise that has helped me endure and understand things from my childhood, while at the same time be the mother my daughter has needed me to be for her. We are both learning and growing up as we go. Together.
My daughter is only twelve years old. I have a long way to go before she is independent, and even after that, as I know motherhood is a never ending job – and how blessed I am for that. But I am very pleased with how things are going, and consider myself lucky that I’ve had such a great pupil to get started with.
Now, I know that gender and personality play a part, but I’m hoping for similar results with my son… Same mom, same intent, same huge amount of love. On we go, with lots of faith.
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