On Parenting: Mamma Doesn’t Always Know Best

Lately, I have been feeling a lot of pressure to shift gears with my child and be more stern. You see, being a neurodivergent child with several sensory and emotional triggers, my little one is prone to having meltdowns. In these moments of reactivity, he tends to start raising his volume, kicking things, and, on occasion, acting violently. 

Most schools have a no-tolerance policy for such “unruly” behaviour. My son’s school, too, despite being very accommodating of many things, is quick to label him as disruptive and defiant. So much so that he isn’t allowed to be present in the school unless I am present, available for emotional firefighting. 

The most recent development is that his class teacher has given up on him. He is to sit separately in a different room, and whichever teacher has a free period is supposed to give him one-on-one attention.

I keep getting feedback from my parents, the principal, and other adults observing his behaviour that I am allowing him to “get away” with this disrespectful behaviour. These recurrent messages, along with my own upbringing that involved an intolerance for inconvenient emotions from children, are making it particularly challenging for me to stick to the gentle parenting that I want to give my child.

Sadly, what my well-wishers don’t understand is that gentle parenting isn’t the same as being a pushover/doormat for the child’s whims and tantrums. Rather, it is a value-based system of child-rearing that doesn’t want to scare the tiny human into good behaviour while being watched (to be followed with all sorts of naughtiness/rebellion when not being watched). Instead, this practice aims to equip the child with the necessary tools for emotional regulation. 

I don’t want him to feel like anger is an unacceptable emotion. I don’t want him to think that he has to choose between being aggressive and losing affection versus suppressing inner chaos to keep the grown-ups pleased with him. I want him to have the option of understanding the message behind his unpleasant feelings and dealing with them in an authentic yet non-violent way.

Why should any child have to bear the burden of keeping the adults’ emotions in check by ignoring their own? That’s precisely how we force people to become covertly depressed people-pleasers.

But since there isn’t much access to or awareness about alternatives to what else can be done when your kid is having a tantrum, I’m currently having to figure things out on the job. This is possible only if I maintain an honest relationship with my conscience, centred around the values of accountability and compassion.

Like most days, today involved considerable emotional labour to unlearn my conditioning and provide my son with the emotional care he needed. It was 2 p.m., and I needed to reach my office by 3:15 for a session with a client. Several tasks needed to be done before I got there. 

I needed to give Kiddo a bath, take a bath myself, feed us both lunch, feed the dog, set Baby up with tasks to keep him occupied in my absence and navigate public transport efficiently to reach on time. I also had to show up in an emotionally neutral state so that I could act professionally when my client opened up about their challenges.

Naturally, my working memory snapped into action, and I started dividing the next 75 minutes into tasks on a checklist. As if executive functioning isn’t hard enough when you live with chronic mental illnesses, things became harder because my son started having some inconvenient feelings exactly then.

He was probably hungry because it was time for lunch, which would make any human reactive, let alone my 6-year-old with special needs. He was also dealing with the emotions of knowing that Mamma was going to be at the office for the next several hours. When people feel big feelings, we tend to deal with them by latching on to our surroundings for a sense of control. At this moment, my son tried that by controlling the menu for lunch. 

The thing he wanted to eat would have taken more time, which was not possible considering my limited window. So, no matter how well put his logic of why he should be given that dish, the answer would have been no.

Our argument seemed to increase his distress visibly. He organically expressed that with a higher volume and some leg restlessness. Within a few minutes, two things added pressure to the already demanding situation. 

Firstly, every movement I made to complete other tasks on my list seemed like a stab of abandonment to my child. Without wanting to, I was showing him that these chores mattered more than listening to him with my full attention and attunement.

Secondly, our house cleaning helper, Om Pal ji, who has a lot of affection for my kid, came to say hello to him before starting his work, as he does every day. 

But for my child, who already finds social interaction challenging, this innocent gesture of love was a distraction, making it harder for him to concentrate on the strenuous task of articulating his needs despite his neurodevelopmental obstacles. Let me break it down for you. 

Let’s say his battery was already at 70% because he needed food to fuel him. Seeing that Mamma was going to leave triggered the anticipation of loneliness and feelings of abandonment. Consequently, his charge was reduced to 60%. 

Now, he knows that Mamma has to go because she’s a single parent and needs to earn money. Doing the emotional labour of making peace with that fact at that moment probably brought it down to 50%. 

Then, the effort of trying to articulate his desire for something delicious took away another 5%. Bear in mind that he’s just a kid, and at such a young age, it takes plenty of effort to know what you want and then communicate it with words. At 45%, your systems don’t work as efficiently as they would have at a higher percentage. So, he struggled to regulate his aggression and let out a few shouts and kicks.

At this point, considering my own empty stomach and pressing timeline, with a lot at stake, including financial security, professional impression, and self-worth, I started feeling more reactive. Seeing him lose his cool made me lose my cool, too. I latched on to my surroundings for a sense of control. All the feedback running in the back of my mind for being stern encouraged me to assert my power over him.

I told him firmly not to shout or kick the bottle under his feet. Seeing his primary caregiver start withdrawing affection, his anticipation of abandonment became very real very quickly. Then, when Om Pal Ji came to greet him, Baby just lost his shit and let out a full-volume scream like a banshee.

My years of conditioning brought out the internalised intolerance for insubordination and “disobedience” from children, and I marched closer to my son with a motor memory of showing him who’s boss with aggression. But seeing his fear and thanks to my growing awareness of my behaviour, I reeled it in and promised him I wouldn’t hit him. That helped. He came closer to me and told me that he was not actually trying to kick things but that moving his leg was helping him stay calm.

I was so proud of his increasing self-awareness and self-regulation skills that I internally decided to surrender to the situation. My biggest priority became staying calm for my kiddo, regardless of the cost. If I did end up being late, if my tasks were pending, if I lost the client and their money, it would be less expensive than losing out on the opportunity to make my son feel safe.

In his book Self Reg, Stuart Shanker talks about the concept of “interbrain”. I’ve been reading this remarkable text to improve my relationship as a parent. According to Shanker, interbrain is the term representing the shared neural relationship between two people, especially a child and caregiver. When one is feeling insecure, so does the other. Similarly, when one relaxes, so does the other. It’s a concept that breaks down co-regulation beautifully in an easy-to-apply form.

My son and my interbrain felt calmer because I was able to relax my muscles. My son started feeling safer, and we began to synchronise. We were able to negotiate and come to a mutually convenient solution.

Again, within minutes, my son was feeling secure enough to assist me in getting all my tasks done. All the aggression between us vanished as if it never happened. He ate the lunch that was served with gratitude and bid me goodbye with love and affection. I arrived on time and had an amazing session with my client. 

From the outside perspective, it might look like I am allowing my child to act aggressively and not teaching him to respect authority. And maybe that is what is actually happening. But I don’t want to teach my child to conform and suppress himself to keep a power dynamic going. 

School and other areas of his life can do that. But my job is only to help him feel safe and secure enough to learn how to navigate those spaces from a value-based life. I want him to do the right thing because it’s right and not because a scary grown-up told him to. I want him to nurture an authentic relationship with himself and his emotions. For him to learn how to work with them and not against them. Clearly, there is no way I can do that if I don’t break this pattern of intergenerational trauma. Of asking our kids to reject their own emotions because we don’t know how to deal with ours.

So, it’s okay. I will keep listening to everyone’s feedback because I could learn something from it. But when it comes to application, I will do what feels right to my own conscience because I am no longer that people-pleaser who harbours internal chaos to keep the grown-ups around me pleased.