An Open Palm
Thoughts on Not Controlling My Child
When my oldest son was 7 years old, he used to lick his hands -- all day, every day. I was a young mom, chronically short of sleep and stressed out and his teacher was pressuring me to make him stop. So I tried to make him stop. And the harder I tried, the more frustrated I got. I began to up the stakes and the pressure and punishment.
One day, I decided that my attempts to control my child had crossed some threshold and become abusive. I decided that I did not know how to stop him from licking his hands and I no longer cared: his hand licking couldn't possibly be worse than what I was doing to him. I decided that I did not know the right answer but I sure as hell knew THIS was not it and, in fact, this was very much the wrong answer. And I concluded that if he licked his hands for the rest of his life, it would be the lesser evil.
So I swore to myself that I would never again try to force him to stop. I instituted a complete and total moratorium on the topic: from then on, I said not one word, and did not give him so much as a dirty look.
About a year went by. One day, we were walking home from school and he began licking his hands. Completely out of curiosity and with no agenda whatsoever, I asked him "Why do you do that?" I had asked him that before and been unable to get an answer, I suppose because he knew it was "bad" behavior and I was trying desperately to force him to stop. But it was no longer a source of conflict and he replied simply "Well, my hands get dry."
In utter astonishment at the simplicity of the answer, I began to explain to him that licking his hands on a cold, windy winter's day was the worst possible solution to dry hands and that is why he kept having to lick them all day: once he licked them, he dissolved the protective oils and then the wind wicked the moisture away and it was a downward spiral from there. I told him better methods to deal with dry hands, including stuffing his hands in his pockets and wearing mittens. Over the next few weeks, if I saw him licking his hands, I reminded him to put his hands in his pockets or I got him his mittens. I did it purely to help him, not to control him, and he knew the difference. I think I only had to remind him about 5 or 6 times what the better methods were to break him completely of this bad habit that had been such a source of conflict for so long.
When you don't know what the right answer is but you do know that what you are doing is NOT working, it is usually better to stop what you are doing than to continue trying to desperately force it to work. Then, let go of all attempts to control the situation. "An open palm holds more water than a closed fist": Some things can not be captured, only received.
Michele
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On Manners
An Open Palm...
When One Door Closes...
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