So along with my naive notions of
only having to teach manners once, I also thought that parenting would get easier as kids got older. True, I had been warned by friends with older children that it only gets harder, but I just couldn't believe this. Surely my efforts, my determined efforts, through the terrible twos and torturous threes would bring us a carefree, rosy period of well-mannered, delightful, easy-to-parent children, at least until adolescence hit?
Téo is now older, usually delightful, and lately even mostly well-mannered, but I am not feeling quite as carefree as I thought I would. Or rosy. Instead, I can't shake a feeling of... not ever-present worry, but certainly fairly regularly recurring unease. And also intense exasperation.
The problem is the
previously mentioned inability to follow rules. For example, Monday last week Téo 1) played on the road, even though this is forbidden; 2) went off to get water out of a fountain without asking first, even though leaving our property like this is also forbidden; and 3) not 2 minutes after I ordered him to stay in our garden, went back out onto the road.
This came after a Wednesday when he and his cousins went missing for a bit, and then were found playing with poisonous berries. And many, many prior instances of taking off on his own, and ignoring prohibitions we had just given.
For the next week I didn't felt uneasy at all, or exasperated - he was grounded, inside. But keeping him under house arrest is not really a solution.
The problem is not just that he forgets to follow our rules (even though they are essentially the same as the school's, which he has no problem remembering), it's that he dismisses them - and sometimes for very silly reasons. For example, here's a conversation from a few weeks ago, after he failed, once again, to follow a rule I had very clearly set:
- Téo, do you know why we set rules for you?
- No.
- Because we want you to grow up safely and do things the right way.
- I don't want to grow up safely or do things the right way. You know mummy, I'm going to cross the road without looking and then I'll be squashed by a car and dead and nobody will annoy me any more.
This is not the first time he's indicated he'd rather be dead and, in his words, peaceful.
I'm not really worried he'll deliberately kill himself at 5 (and anyway, he told me the next day that my body thought about dying and decided it didn't want that) - but I am worried that he doesn't take what we say seriously.
I don't feel I'm navigating his current course very well. I want him to have some freedom and independence. I don't want to keep him inside and lock away every potentially dangerous thing to ensure he stays safe. But how can I ensure he follows rules set up for his safety? How can I convince him not just that certain things are deadly, but that deadly is very very bad? How can I stop him from doing something stupid, just to defy me?
These questions have only grown as I've followed the
story of an 18-year old boy who died last week because of the choices he made. It's an extreme case, I know. I also know that kids need to make their own choices and live with the consequences. But at the same time, I want to prevent the worst consequences. It scares me that like this boy's mother - who I relate to, who I think handled things as I probably would have too - I won't be able to. That despite doing my best, things won't be OK.
And it makes me wonder whether "my best" is actually "the best". Sometimes I think it would be easier to control kids with fear - of me, of god, of Santa Claus not coming. But I just don't think I can do this. Neither does C. And isn't it better to teach kids to make good choices in the face of temptation? And that there are boundaries that, while they can be questioned, must still be respected? These seem like better life skills than blind following. But then fear has served its purpose for generations, so who are we to take another path? And if this path leads to Téo making poor choices, is that ultimately our bad choice of path?
Last week, after Téo and his cousins were found, I asked C's mother how she managed to get her kids to follow basic rules and stay safe. She said she prayed a lot. Needless to say, I didn't find this very reassuring.
I'm not sure if this kind of worrying, this not knowing how to instill basic - essential - ideas as our kids become more independent, is what my friends meant when they said parenting gets harder. But I do know that as much as I struggled with the
various challenges of a toddler, they were much, much easier than the unease I sometimes have now. Then, I knew that eventually everything would be OK. Now, I can only have faith that this will be so.
