Take Care of Yourself – That’s an Order!

I was talking to my friend Butterfly the other day about parenting, conscious parenting in particular which is basically a fancy way of saying “thinking about what I do,” rather than just automatically doing stuff with respect to my kid. I recounted this time when Ax had a few friends over after school, and it had been a long day, and he hadn’t eaten well, and everyone was playing and fabulous and everything and running around and then one of Ax’s friends came and found me in the kitchen and said, “Ax locked himself in his room and he won’t talk to us.”

“Oh,” I said, buying time. “Hmmm, shall we go see what’s up?” Which was not what my default response might have been. My default response probably would have used potty language. Just sayin.

So little Pumpkina and I mosey down the hall to Ax’s room and I knock on the door and at first he doesn’t answer. “Sweetie,” I say, again not what I necessarily want to be saying, but I’m thinking my boy is probably feeling tender in some way to be locking himself in his room and so yelling at him, making demands of him, terrorizing him, is not the way to play it.

In fact I pretty much NEVER think those tactics are the way to play it, even though that’s where I want to go A LOT of the time. So maybe I am particularly hotheaded, but that’s why I need to THINK before I act, with respect to my kid, and everyone else as well, and myself, but that’s another story. Yelling, demanding, demeaning, overpowering – Out. Reasoning, responding, curiously questioning – In.

So anyway Pumpkina and I are standing outside Ax’s door curiously questioning him, “Sweetie, are you ok? We love you and your friends want to know if you are ok? If you need some quiet time that’s ok but it’s not ok to take off without telling everyone what you’re doing. They think you are upset or mad at them. Are you mad?”

And he came out, hanging his head, and mumbled, “I just want to be quiet.” And Pumpkina gave him a hug and they went into his room together and silently built Legos while Pumpkina’s sister Tornado continued to bounce on the trampoline outside while playing tambourine and singing loudly.

I recounted this story to my friend Butterfly as an example of conscious parenting triumph in a tough situation and she said, “Is it ok for him to go play on his own when friends are over?” And I thought about it, and decided, yes, it is ok. It’s ok if he tells them what’s going on first so that no one takes it personally. That’s our values anyway. They might be different from other people’s.

My values are basically kindness rules, kindness to self and to others. Taking care of himself is fine, as long as he does it in a way that is not damaging to his friends. He can’t just run off and not communicate about it. He can tell everyone, “I need to play quietly now so I’m going in my room.” And then do that.

There are and will be some moments where I ask him to rally, to suck it up, to put his desires after whatever social norm is called for. In those moments I want it to be obvious that we are making a choice to do that, for this particular situation or special occasion. That we’re not just creating a lifestyle or habit of putting other people’s imagined desires and demands of us first without thinking about whether or not it’s desirable or necessary for us to do so.

I’m passionate about this particular lesson because of course it’s one I’ve been working on learning for a while now – that it’s not only ok, permitted, to take care of myself, but it’s kind of job #1. It’s an order, a divine order, to honor myself as I am, and to learn how to do that in the context of living with and honoring others as they are. I’m gonna keep going.