On Parenting: Why Must We Insist On Being Right?

In December last year, I joined a 12-Step Programme, where someone said,

“God (or any Higher Power we put faith in) doesn’t speak to us directly but through the people that we meet in our lives.”

This statement resonated with me incredibly and tonight, my Higher Power spoke to me through my son (something that happens quite frequently).

It was the end of an amazingly productive day. I had risen out of bed at 5 AM and spent the entire day in choices and activities that would support my recovery and well-being. I suppose I wanted another win when I got home, admittedly quite tired from the 16 hours of nonstop productivity.

As a mother, I decided that this win would be getting my four-year-old to start finishing his homework before bed. The minute I reached home, I rushed to my little one, greeted him, and got him excited to finish his tasks with me.

In retrospect, I am able to identify a trigger, which I was blind to during this process. The previous day, I had seen a note from his teacher in one of his notebooks that said, “do this again at home as he is not interested in doing it in class.”

Next to the note, I saw that he had attempted to write the alphabet in cursive but the teacher’s red pen showed her dissatisfaction with several letters.

Today, when I opened another notebook, I saw perfectly written letters that indicated his teacher had held his hand and physically made him write the correct way.

The trigger was so inconspicuous that I didn’t even realise how seeing that hit my occasionally fragile self-esteem. While that happened inside me, my overt behaviour became more stern and aggressive, just like a lot of grown-ups behaved with me when I was a pupil.

Unfortunately, that approach doesn’t work with my son at all. Partly because of his neurodivergence, and partly because I have raised him to be quite autonomous and vocal about it.

Each time he did something that I either didn’t have the patience for or I assumed other grown-ups would disapprove of, I became firmer and more dysregulated.

Being a trauma survivor, my son is very vigilant about the emotional states of people around him, especially me. His attempt to deal with such situations is to try harder to put his point across and convince me.

Normally, in a regulated state, I am receptive to this and can shift gears. But today, the trigger had already pinched a deeply seated insecurity in me about being a bad mother. You see, for the two and a half years I lived with his father, I was being constantly gaslit to believe that.

Though I have come a long way to overcome that emotional abuse, it’s still a sensitive point. And tonight, it felt very important for me to “correct” my son and be proven as an efficient mother.

My self-doubt was activated and I wondered if I had taken a much too soft approach in dealing with my child’s whims and fancies. So, I replicated what I had grown up seeing (and to a very large extent still do).

My volume raised, his volume raised. I started to threaten him, he started to protest. I started to get violent, he became more and more dysregulated. The next twenty minutes were pure torture for anyone to witness. Though I don’t usually hit my child, when dysregulated, he does get an odd spank or ear twist.

But more than the pain, it’s the humiliation that hurts the child. The helplessness and the confusion of unconditional love for someone mistreating you.

Consequently, my kiddo couldn’t hold his tears back. The biggest offence was repeating what his teacher did and forcing his hand to write instead of letting him independently try as many times as needed. After that, he could not recover.

This nasty approach did make him do about 70% of the tasks assigned but it left us both so out of sync. That makes us feel terrible as we’re the best of friends.

Finally, after having had enough, I decided that this was not how I wanted to spend time with my dearest. So, I put the books away and asked him to lie down gently. Simultaneously, I implemented my training in interoception and relaxation to switch off my fight or flight response.

I returned my nervous system to a regulated state. (Drop a comment if you want me to write more on that).

Then, with a much milder voice and loving body language, I made my tense and crying toddler open up his arms and rest his legs in a straight position. I began to gently massage his tight abdomen and used touch and intimacy to co-regulate.

As I saw him relax more and more, I prompted him to talk about how he was feeling. Feeling safe enough, he opened up about everything that offended him. Our main conflict was about the way he was writing the letter ‘f’.

He was more comfortable writing it his way, which to most adults will seem wrong (even his teacher had corrected all his ‘f’s with that wretched red pen) and I wanted him to learn the acceptable way.

We were both stubborn about it and refused to agree that the other could be right too. Now let’s just put that into context. He is four and it’s expected for him to be pigheaded. I’m the adult here.

There is no way he can calm himself down unless I do as children need to observe and develop this skill from the people in their environment.

I started remembering all these facts each minute I spent back in a regulated state. With both of us now calm, we were able to resolve our conflict.

It started with me taking accountability for being violent. At first, we agreed that the next time I’m that angry, he’ll remind me that I said I don’t want to behave like that. Then, we both realised together that why should that onus be on him?

Our next resolve was that that too is my responsibility, being the adult here and that I will do a better job of remembering. Finally, we came to the conclusion that doing homework at night is a bad idea as we are both too tired. In my son’s words, “I don’t have enough energy to do it at night time.”

After deciding that, we were both back to normal and full of hope for the future. Making up with each other involved a lot of cuddling, kissing, and kidding around. As he was talking to me, I realised just how brilliant and intelligent my baby was. How does it even matter if he gets a couple of school things wrong today? He will correct himself if and when he is meant to.

As I was brimming with gratitude for this lesson and my good fortune, my Natkhat Nand Gopal (a childhood name for Lord Krishna) said very lovingly, “Mamma, today you learned a lesson. Please don’t forget it till you’re five hundred years old!”

Hence, here I am, writing it all down and confessing to the internet to hold myself accountable. Thank you for reading!