Other People’s Kids

In your BK days (Before Kids) you may have watched your friends and relatives parenting their children, perhaps forming judgements and inwardly determining to “do it just like she did” or to “never tolerate such behaviour from my child”. We did. You can hear yourself say “I mean really, how diffi cult can it be to control a 3-year-old in a clothing store? That kind of behaviour from my child will never be tolerated by me!” You may even have come up with mental lists of numerous do’s and don’ts that you planned to follow once your own precious bundles arrived.

We were comparing our BK days and remembered things like. “I would NEVER
let my children walk barefoot in the mall.” Famous last words! And another
absolute was to never let my children eat something that had fallen on the fl oor. How unhealthy, we thought. They grew up despite the fact that they had eaten worse than things that have fallen on the floor.

Reality kicks in
We all set out to be perfect parents, to always do the very best for our children, to have these well behaved, obedient children that we can take anywhere and always be proud of. That photograph that comes with the frame in the décor department is what we had in mind. Those photographs that our friends have on social media of their perfect, lovely, well-behaved family. Yeah right! Then reality kicked in. Your probably said more than once that it was all about being fi rm and strict, letting them know who’s the boss. Then one day you discovered that your twoyear- old is a strong willed, defi ant child that makes you pull your hair out and repent about all those times, in your BK days, that you criticised other parents. You start reading books on how to handle strong willed children, and form this whole new strategy, and then just when you think you’re winning, their beautiful little personalities change and a whole new set of challenges pop out of the woodwork.

Rewrite the book for each child
If you have more than one child, you have probably discovered that you had
to rewrite the entire book for the second child because what you did, all the ‘stuff’ you learned with the fi rst, was just not working on the second.
If any of this sounds like you and your children, welcome to the family! Perfect
parenting is a myth. There are no easy answers or fi xes just as there are no perfect parents. Yet you may often feel the pressure to be like those other parents who seem to “have it all altogether.” For example, in the grocery store, you see parents whose children hold hands, walk right beside their parents, stay next to them in the checkout line, and don’t nag for all the enticing ‘child-eye-level’ sweets and goodies. Where did these kids come from? How do these parents do it? It’s ok if you go home pacifying yourself with thoughts that they have probably tranquilised the children before leaving home, or threatened them with the orphanage down the road, should they have put one foot out of line. They probably did! Or perhaps their children where just having a rare ‘quiet’ day; that kind of ‘perfect’ behaviour is not normal all the time. There simply is NO one size fits all! Every child is different and needs to be treated and handled differently. If you have not
experienced this for yourself yet, and are starting to feel terrifi ed of ever having a child or a second one, don’t despair, its really not as bad as it sounds.