03/11/2024
Children should be….Good, Happy, Respectful, Kind, Quiet, Clean, Polite, Well-intended.
The aspirations seem innocuous enough. Except.
When we carry these (unexamined and unquestioned) expectations around, we set everyone up for a fall.
When we expect children to BE a certain way, we tie their actions to their worthiness/essence in a way that doesn’t allow for them to ACT in ways that might be contrary to expectations.
In other words, if we expect a child to BE Good, there’s no room for them to act “bad”. If we expect them to BE Happy, there’s no room for them to feel sad.
Children are LEARNING how to be Functioning Humans, and this means that they will make (frequent) mistakes. They will choose something Unkind on occasion. They will be Disrespectful sometimes. They will often feel Sad.
And when that happens, if we make it mean that something has gone wrong, we’re adding a bunch of garbage to a dumpster fire.
If we constantly think "We’re Not Doing Our Job to Turn Our Kids Into Good Humans", we will actually fulfill that prophecy. We will turn them into unhappy, disrespectful, anxious humans.
The process of parenting can feel especially triggering for who are , who are already deviating from an ‘expected’ path of development. Because Orchid Kids are already different, maybe it seems especially important that they comply with The Rules for Children.
But Orchid Kids did not get the memo.
Orchid Kids are the ones who feel least compelled to follow the rules.
Orchid Kids are often the ones who expose The Rules for the fraud that they are.
Orchid Kids often have a hard time appearing respectful even when they are trying to BE respectful.
Orchid Kids have a hard time ‘behaving’ (acting ‘good’) even when they are trying to BE Good.
What would it look like to have expectations that were more like this?
My (already worthy) child is learning how to act with kindness.
My (already worthy) child is learning how to act with respect.
My (already worthy) child is learning how to experience happiness.
You see where this is going?
Do you feel how these statements are different from The Rules?
We are used to equating actions with worthiness. We are used to thinking that if we do Kind Things that means we Are Kind.
But it’s not true. We can do Kind Things in a spirit of selfishness or we can do Kind Things in a spirit of true kindness. The difference is an internal one.
And so, when we are teaching our children how to show up in the world, the best thing we can do is .
Model kindness toward ourselves and toward others.
Model happiness and delight in our lives, our work and our relationships.
Model respect in the way we speak to ourselves, our children and those around us.
But in order to model what we want, we have to be aware of (and then throw away) The Rules. Are you willing to do that?
