Give Your Child Space

Bahar: I do notice sometimes when we are rushing, or my son is playing and I need him to switch what he is doing, he will get an attitude or roll his eyes. It is not all the time, and I do not really know if that is something I need to intervene on. I don’t know where that line is, I do want to give him the space to be himself, but I don’t know when it is disrespectful or if it is just a mood he is in that I can allow him to stay in. Can You help me? (Luca, her son is 9)
Sat laughs and says: Listen, give him space, definitely! If he rolls his eyes, why is he not allowed to? You are his mother, who else is he going to roll his eyes at? If he has some sentiment, if he does not agree with rushing out the door, why can’t he express it? Would you not express it if Kavi kept hurrying you? Would you not roll your eyes? We want to have a perfect child, and we forget that the personality and the body of the child is irrelevant to who the child is! Again, we go back to the spiritual work that we do with our children, meaning that they have some quiet time, that is all we can do. We cannot control every movement that they may have.
Believe Me, when they grow up, they will be critical of you, they will call you out on everything you do, because that is a part of being a human. Do not think that because you gave your child love as a mother, which any good mother does, that your child has to behave perfectly at all times. If we think this way, we are going to be shocked. Particularly, with boys.
I told you, when a child cannot express itself, it is a problem because they have been shutting it down as a human. So when he rolls eyes, you can roll yours. Or just say, “Listen, it doesn’t matter, we still have to go to where we are supposed to go.” Or just ignore it.
As a child grows up bigger and bigger, it will have a different type of display of his personality, so I want all the new mothers to get used to the idea that they will [do that]. But the most important is that their foundation is fantastic.
I went through so many phases with My two boys and what I did was just give them understanding. If they
wanted space, I gave it to them, plentiful! When they get mad, they shut down, I would back off. If they are angry, I back off.
Then another good thing to do is whenever you see a display of something that your child does, look at yourself and say, “Am I doing the same thing in a situation that angers me, or brings up a feeling?” And then you come to the conclusion, “Yes I also have this problem.” So we don’t go into details with our kids, we always know that, “Oh … this is another phase … I am going to support you in this phase.”
But if there is bad language, if there is something harmful, by all means, snap it, cut it. Besides that, I would leave everything alone. Again, I have to emphasize on something very important for parents: giving understanding to the child is better than wanting your child to be perfect. And that is because without the understanding, pressing the child to be perfect, somewhere else it will pop out, it will snap. Again, it is good to put yourself at that age for a moment and just by doing that, you will have a much better understanding.
When we take our role very seriously as a mother, as a grown up, as someone who has lived longer, then we cannot relate to our kids, we cannot understand our child. In any situation, if for a few seconds we can say to ourselves, “I am at that age and my mother is saying that.” Then as a mother you can act better than your mother did.

Parenting Call
Give Your Child Space
August 6, 2022