My son has fat little hands — the kind where the knuckles sink in instead of stick out. Seamus Philip is coming up on seven months old and is learning to use his hands to grab and pull and caress and play. He’s not going to be operating machinery or doing intricate bead work any time soon, but every day his adeptness grows and he adds fine motor skills.
I look at his hands sometimes and try to imagine what they will be like years and decades from now. These impossibly small and pudgy fingers: Will they grow up and wear a wedding ring? Play the piano? Fill beakers with bright chemicals and noxious compounds? Tickle a new generation of chubby children?
Will his hands know how to tie knots on the high seas? Pump a heart that has stopped beating? Load, aim and fire a gun? Will those hands point that gun at a target, or a deer, or an enemy? Will his hands learn how to paint beautiful nature scenes like Grandmother Liz? Wield a hammer to build a house or an armoire or a bomb shelter? Will his hands grow vegetables? Prune trees? Harden into fists? Weave tapestries? Click computer keys (or will computers even have keys in the future or will they be inside our brains)?
Some of what I can imagine his hands doing makes me happy and misty-eyed and other possibilities terrify me. How do I ensure one outcome and not the other? Can I do that? As a mother, can I write the script of his life? Is Seamus my very own Choose Your Own Adventure tale come to life? No way, man!
That is the worst possible thing to attempt. The harder I tried, the more I would fail.
Can we make him a nonviolent person? His father and I could take a hard line. We could try and control what he is exposed to, shape what he likes, police his interests and make sure nothing we disapprove of gets through. Modern dance instead of football? Contact improv not kung fu? Sesame Street not Transformers? That would be hard, for lots of reasons, not the least of which would be that we would have to come to some sort of agreement about all those things (a whole other layer of nonviolent parenting).
What do we do? We will encourage him to play with blocks and trains instead of Battletanx: Global Assault (that should not be so hard), and make sure that no GI Joes march into our house. But what about cowboys and Indians and pirates and policemen? They could all be violent too, right? We’ll shoo him outside and run around in the woods and fields with him as much as possible. We’ll show him how to love nature and living things. But exploring nature could include pulling the legs off daddy-long-legs and throwing rocks at squirrels (I did both of those mean things when I was little). We will expose him to music, instruments, melodies, encouraging him to hear and make and feel beauty with his ears and voice and rhythms. But what if the music he ends up loving or making is loud and endless and bone-shaking and teeth splitting? We’ll feed his imagination with books and stories and make believe. But what if he heads in a dark direction; dreaming up twisted, strange, magical plots and sharing them endlessly? It made J.K. Rowling and Philip Pullman and the Brothers Grimm rich and famous. Would we try and nudge him down safer and brighter brain paths?
What if, what if, what if?
As I try and imagine (and fight the urge to shape) my son’s future, a refrain keeps surfacing, a line from a Sweet Honey in the Rock song. “Your children are not your children, they are the sons and the daughters of life’s longing for itself.” It is a line from a poem by Kahlil Gibran and it is heavy duty wisdom for parents like me — controlling, egotistical, quite sure I am right. It is worth quoting at length. As you read, imagine Sweet Honey in the Rock’s rich harmonies and subtle syncopations.
They come through you but they are not from you, and though they are with you, they belong not to you.
You can give them your love but not your thoughts. They have their own thoughts. You can house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in a place of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You can strive to be like them, but you cannot make them just like you.
Eureka! That is it, right? Strive to be like them! Seamus is warm, loving and expresses what he needs and wants. He is free of artifice, guile and hidden agendas. He has no ego or baggage or insecurity. If I can work to be like him, wouldn’t I be a better person? Rather than trying to shape him in my image (good grief, Charlie Brown!), why don’t I embrace his boundless wonder and inexhaustible curiosity and hearty appetite for life! That is the answer, or at least part of it. He does have his limitations, though — don’t get me wrong. He’s not perfect. He spits up a lot, poops in his pants and can’t even say please or thank you, yet. So I am not striving for total regression, believe me!
Strive to be like him (in some ways) and try to do what my parents did: provide the tools, impart the wisdom, love and protect the person and let go of the rest. Oh, and never lie.
That is a tall order. But maybe it adds up to a recipe for nonviolent parenting.
Wonderful, Khalil Gibran (a Maronite, by the way) is a always a good read. And thanks for the reminder (my daughters are 2 yrs. and 7 months old)
What heart. What wisdom. And and a parenting style to which we should all aspire. Beautiful. Thank you.
I am the overjoyed (and sometimes scared) father of an almost-one-year-old, and I think every day about what kind of world she will face, and wonder who she will be in it. I found this piece warm, thoughtful, and wise; thank you so much!
Readers interested in nonviolent parenting might be interested to read ‘Why Violence?’: http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence
Robert J. Burrowes
Thanks Frida, great advice – in some of the time I spent with your mom I enjoyed picking-her-brain about parenting….ours are 7 & 6 – I find the hardest thing being the Choices that we do make for them (Which school, home school, which of the various activities we choose to expose them to … hoping that ultimately we let them make their own choice …. when they want to stop piano, soccer, modern dance or football knowing when they have made a choice about preference and when they need to know how persist and honor commitments. How much exposure and immersion in poverty (or for that matter wealth and privilege) is healthy and beneficial? Anyway, thanks for the great article
I was a frustrated mom with a strong willed child. I tried everything to get relief and to be the best mom I could be. I finally found an interactive parenting app at happyfacetokens.com. It is a discipline program that helps chidren give happy, first time obedience while learning to think of others, build moral character and learn educational concepts. I like it for many reasons, but it is fabulous using it strong willed children. It gives balance and fairness to the discipline of children and helps unite parenting and family togetherness. It is guaranteed for 30 days too. I don’t know of too many books and parenting programs that are. It is really an amazing program that comes jam-packed with ideas and an outlined program with guaranteed success for happy parenting experiences. It also outlines a Christian parenting discipline program solidly based on the scriptures using the Garden of Eden as the beginning point for building a happy family garden. The author asks what the difference is between a bribe, blessing and reward. I used to say, Why should I bribe my child to do what I say? I am the mother-I ask, they do. But I learned something very important at biblebasedparenting101.com that changed my whole thought process. Now I bless and reward I feel so much better about myself and my parenting skills. The children thank me and tell me I am the best mom in the world while theyhappily do what I ask.
Dear Frida,
Thanks for this open and loving invitation to look with you, through
your eyes at the future – for young Seamus PHILIP!! Your parents have always been my heros, and you kids, too, along with Dan – and Jerry and Carol. Thanks for this lovely adult “lullaby”… I do love
the way you write/sing!! Cheers! Love/JUSTICE, Elizabeth Sarfaty