With all due respect

One thing my mother said to me many times when I was a young mother myself was, “Never let them think they are the center of the universe.”    I used to nod my head, and filed that advice away with the other things she’d taught me.  But this morning, after I fed the horses, when I was weeding the front planter and fighting off West Nile bearing mosquitoes, I realized that I disagree with her on this.  So I’m thinking out loud here about it for a moment.

I actually think every child should believe he is the center of the universe.  Or at least, your universe.  And he should be right.  Because children who truly believe this—know this—do not, it seems to me, constantly have to prove it.  And beyond that, a person who truly is the center of something tends to want to be responsible for it keeping it healthy.

            Okay, yeah – I know what she meant to say.  She meant, “Don’t spoil your children.”  But even that had an old spin on it, a fifties spin.  The idea here is that children need hardship; they need to get on board with the requirements of real life right from the beginning, because life is hard, and if you don’t work, you don’t eat.  Do a little research on the theory of childhood; it’s very interesting.

            You’re born on the farm—you gotta contribute as soon as you possibly can.

            But I once read a study that said, babies who are picked up and comforted when they cry are far more patient in the rest of their lives; they learn to share more easily, they can wait in line patiently, they don’t stress about being left out.  In other words, they don’t start life with a hole in their hearts.  They know they are the center of the universe, and that confidence and sense of wholeness colors everything else they live through.

            Same with propping bottles.  A child who is held and loved and nursed, bottle or not, is going to have a head start on a sense of peace.   I know I’m speaking in absolute phrases – like I say, I’m just thinking this through.  But as a mother and a teacher, I have to say, the problems I have seen in so many kids, the acting out, the snatching of attention, the worry, the stress—so much of it comes because these children don’t seem to have an anchor; their hearts are not grounded, and so most of their survival energy is given over to trying to secure a place, any place that gives them even the illusion of safety and security.

            So what about spoiling?  Spoiling is the flip side of the neglect coin, I think.  Just another way of not dealing intimately with a child.  You say yes because it’s easier than dealing with the consequences of no.  And the resultant high handed behavior?  Just another manifestation of the need for ascendancy, the need to establish a safe place.

            I think that bringing up a center of the universe child is a cocktail of love, coddling, discipline, truth, example.  You teach the child to work to show him that he is useful and effective as a human being.  You teach him that he is smart because God gives us gifts so that we can do something about the world, serving others with them.  You teach him that he has two eyes that are made to look out – not in.  You teach him to be the quiet hero.  You teach him that we go to church even when we don’t want to because it’s good, and we need to learn obedience.  The same with all good things – weeding, studying, establishing order – you may not enjoy the process, but you are capable of working through that to achieve something.

            You spend time with your kids so that you actually know them.  You don’t reduce them to formulas you can deal with easily.  You look outside of your own patterns.  G and I – our brains work very, very differently.  And our kids each has his or her own discrete and unique operating system.  I learned that early on.  If you’ve got a PC, you can’t go through life trying to run it as though it were a MAC and expect to get any kind of useful result.  And yet so many do that, and end up saying, “I can’t wait to get the kids out of the house.”

             Kids come as themselves.  We discover that on the way, if we are paying attention, if we are open to the idea that the kids are not us, are not sent to right our own failures or follow our successes.  We have to talk to them like they’re people.  We have to explain the very basic things: this is how pride feels, this is what you want to do right now, isn’t it?  How you feel?  Well, this is how you need to try to deal with this.   We are the tour guides, the teachers.  But when you ride a horse, you have to listen (which I still do very badly) with your hands and your eyes and your legs and your sense of rhythm.  How much more complex a dance is it with children?

            And yet, when a child knows that he is the center of your universe, he wants to give you gifts; he’s responsible to you, for you, and sometimes, in spite of you.  He feels like he has, and so he can give.  He can afford to be honest.  He can afford real generosity, both of spirit and of resource, because he is not hovering protectively over his own tiny little, hard won cache.  He isn’t constantly, desperately, trying to steal more.

            The word, “No,” figures prominently in all of this.  But so does praise.  Both have to be used liberally, and with complete honesty and vigor.

            So in the end, yeah – I guess what I’m saying is,with all due respect,  I disagree with my mom about this.