I Love You No Matter What
The other night I left Birch and Willow for 2 hours with a new babysitter. When I returned the babysitter told me that Birch had hit Willow three times. Three times! I was surprised to hear this. Yes, he used to take swipes at Willow, but he hadn’t done that in a month. We walked the babysitter to the door to say goodbye. She turned to Willow, whom I was holding, and gave her lots of kisses and warm caresses, whispering “you are so sweet” in her ear. It was really over the top too much and too long and I began to feel uncomfortable. Yech! Then she turned to Birch, and with a frowning, disapproving look from across the room, said, “Bye Birch.” She turned around and left.
Oh, oh. My heart felt so sad. I knelt down to Birch and gave him a huge hug and said, “I love you and missed you.”
What had happened while I was gone? I will never know. What I do know is the reaction that he got for his hitting. It was, “I like you when you’re a good boy, and when you’re bad, I don’t.” The babysitter let him know that. She let me know that.
She was there for only a bit, but she taught me a lot. I don’t want Birch to think I love him only when he’s good. I want him to know that I love him no matter what. The hitting is an act, a temporary transgression, it doesn’t mean he’s a “bad” kid. Of course, I tell him not to hit at ALL. He knows that I disapprove of that and that there can be consequences for hitting (having a toy taken away, time out, etc). But, what I didn’t like was that this babysitter had completely shunned him for one bad act, hours after he had done it.
What if one of the reasons a child misbehaves is for him to confirm that we love him no matter what? What if it is a test to reassure himself that we aren’t going to abandon him? Author Alfie Kohn suspects “that most kids are acting in unacceptable ways to see if we’ll stop accepting them.” If you believe this, he says, then we have to “refuse to take the bait. We must reassure them: ‘No matter what you do, no matter how frustrated I get, I will never, never, never stop loving you.’” He says, “it doesn’t hurt to say that in so many words, but we have to say it through our actions too.”
Kohn goes on to show how a genuine show of unconditional love works in education too:
“One teacher dealt with a particularly challenging student by sitting down with him and saying, ‘You know what? I really, really like you. You can keep doing all this stuff and it’s not going to change my mind. It seems to me that you are trying to get me to dislike you, but it’s not going to work. I’m never going to do that.’ This teacher added: ‘It was soon after that, and I’m not saying immediately, that his disruptive behaviours started to decrease.’”
“If we want our students to trust that we care for them, “[Marilyn Watson, an educational psychologist] concludes, “then we need to display our affection without demanding that they behave or perform in certain ways in return. It’s not that we don’t want and expect certain behaviours; we do. But our concern or affection does not depend on it.”
I remember visiting our friends who have 5 children. Yes, 5. The twins were having a meltdown when I arrived. One was sitting in her tutu with a dejected, tear-stained face and the other was on the couch in a full body tantrum. My friend was calmly talking to me. She said, “they will get through this in a minute, I’m just sorry you have come when it is so chaotic.” Sure enough, a few minutes passed and all the wailing had stopped. My friend said, “Girls, would you like a hug now?” They came right over and hugged her for a long time. I was struck how they went from howling to hugging. There it was. Unconditional love.
It is powerful to think how unconditional love can instill confidence, trust and security in a child. And the opposite, conditional love based on their actions, might encourage a child to continually test you with their misbehaviours. They may just want to know that you love them no matter what.
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- iphones, blackberries? Why the parent in you should put them down (April 28th, 2010)
- How to help your kid have healthy self esteem (March 25th, 2010)
- How To Help Siblings Get Along (November 11th, 2009)
- 2 Montessori toys that I love (September 12th, 2007)
Thanks Sue- I still remember that whole setup with the sitter and how strange it was. Well, thankfully it gave me a reason to try and figure out what that all meant to me and to try and isolate how I felt and what I could do as a parent.
i will share this post … love th way you explain it all…thanx Karen
Excellent post Karen.
I think you’re way overthinking this. Your son hit your daughter. Your babysitter didn’t tolerate that. There’s nothing wrong with that!!
As a product of the last wave of free to be you and me child-rearing processes, I have to say, there’s nothing wrong with discipline.
Hi Rebekah,
I have friends who send their child there too and absolutely adore it. I missed their open house last year so I will try and go this year. Interesting to hear that some of the other parents like Kohn’s book- I am finding it endlessly helpful. I keep going back to it to reread sections as I come up against some walls.Thanks for writing!
Karen
Thank you so much for posting this. I’ve been reading Alfie Kohn’s book Unconditional Parenting and he is so right on. My younger child has been particularly challenging these last few months and I started scrambling to find good advice through books. Friends have offered advice usually involving methods of getting control, or some sort of punitive measures to reach desired behavior. That just doesn’t resonate with me. I find that sitting with my own emotional reaction BEFORE doing anything really helps, and that I can approach the situation with love and warmth and ease once I’ve collected myself.
My kids attend the Brooklyn Free School in Park Slope. I hope you’ll look into it and write about it here sometime (if you haven’t already!). It goes so far beyond the carrot and stick measures of education we are so used to, beyond labeling kids with ADD and ODD (don’t they all have a healthy bit of defiance?), and supports the children for who they are, respecting them unconditionally, which in turn allows them to develop as individuals that can check their own behavior out of a deep self respect, and respect for the group as a whole. Alfie Kohn has inspired quite a few of the families that have chosen the free school, because that very conditionality that you speak of is so prevalent in regular schools.
It’s really wonderful that you can go through this with your family, and then share it with the rest of us!
Rebekah