The World Doesn't Need More Well-Behaved Kids
We need more adults who can tolerate a little bit of chaos.
We need more adults who embrace the messy and vulnerable side of childhood.
We need to understand this truly and deeply.
A shiny happy classroom, a shiny happy family, is often anything but.
To the outside it looks perfect, but each one of us contains the complexity of the ocean: the dark, still waters, the depths and shallows, the surges and storms.
We don't ask the ocean to be anything but the ocean.
Asking children to be well-behaved, always helpful, or always choose the bright side is harmful.
To then, to our relationship with them, to the future of our world.
I want to see kids who take against injustice, who know how to ride the waves of their feelings instead of trying to contain them.
I want to see kids who push the envelope.
Which means I have to be comfortable with a little bit of chaos.
I have to be okay with the adult world judging me and thinking I don't know what I'm doing because I don't stifle loud and I let kids opt out of activities that they have no interest in or don't feel safe to them.
And I have to be willing to be present through their emotions, to hold space for them, to resist trying to talk them out of them, even when I start to feel overwhelmed by the depth.
I'm afraid of sharks, y'all. This metaphor? The depths of the ocean? It's terrifying for me to swim in water that contains more than what I can see.
It's hard to stay present as a storm rages inside your child, too.
This is the real work of parenthood. None of us are immune or above it.
I am living and walking this path.
I will not teach you to have well -behaved kids, and I won't promise you no more meltdowns.
But I can promise that in our time together your capacity for chaos will expand, and your ability to stay present through those big emotions will improve.
You won't give in to what you're "supposed to" do as often, opting instead for genuine curiosity about their experience and their needs.
And when that happens?
You start to see other shifts, too.
You don't have to walk this path alone.
Had a discussion with my fellow HSP parents last night, and this was a WHOLE MOOD. As highly sensitive parents, we are complicated beings -- we can be deeply kind when we're resourced, or deeply frustrated and frustrating when we're not. At the same time, we seek to smooth out our children's experiences, sometimes in ways that aren't all that helpful to their development, because we struggle with their tantrums, and with other people's reactions to them. It's quite a tangle. But every word of this resonated. To have the courage to allow our children to be like the ocean, we desperately need these timely reminders that we don't have to ride the waves alone. Grateful for this.
THIS!!!!!
Especially for those of us with sweet and sensitive neurodivergent kids. Our culture's message of being kind only lands on the ears of the most sensitive kids already primed to meet the needs of others and self introspect.
The child who cares for their siblings like a mother. The child who gets a job at 10 and gives their earnings back to the family does not come out of the family better for it. They get eaten alive when they hit adulthood in our narcissist cultivating culture.
Let me very clear, all this does is make them into echoists (people pleasers), who then end up in relationships care taking of the narcissists. They serve narcissistic bosses, spouses, children, while thinking if they do enough internal work to fix themselves it will fix the issues.
Spoiler alert for all of you out there like this, YOU ARE NOT THE ISSUE.
We must allow our most sensitive children to be whom they are naturally supposed to be. This is a key part to finding and reaching their full potential.
My parents think I have done a horrible job because my kids don't seek to serve their emotional needs.
I think my grandparents did a horrible parenting job and then saddled me with their coddled, immature narcissistic grown a** children. I AM DONE WITH THAT. I did more than my fair share of serving up. I learned my lesson and it is I am not passing that down.