The Time I Listened To My Child Instead Of Jumping To Conclusions

Parenting is hard

Motherhood has its ups and downs, fun moments and painful moments, times when we want to call it quits and times when we can't get enough.

We hear and share stories when we've felt the overwhelming pressure to do everything for those tiny humans. We joke about how tired we are and how much coffee it takes before we actually wake up. We normalize the stained clothes, permanent hair buns, sensible shoes and our love of elastic waistbands and pockets.

Yeah, parenting is hard. It takes its toll on you physically, mentally and emotionally. It challenges you to be selfless pretty much the second that kid comes into your life. It's like,

"You don't matter anymore and everything you used to care about seems like a far and distant memory."

Celebrate the proud moments

We don't expect awards, handouts, or an employee of the month recognition; we do the damn job and hope for the best. Your kid can't give you an accurate and reliable performance review. They're kids.

You don't know how they'll turn out. They don't either. You don't know what that extra hour of screen time you gave them does to their brains (if anything at all). You don't know if spending that time driving them to soccer practice and watching them chase a ball around for hours in the cold is going to make a difference.

And when they finally grow up and you get to see how you did, there's no turning back. In the meantime, it's up to us to tell ourselves we are doing a fine job. So here's a moment where I felt utterly proud of myself as a mother.

It's bedtime…

My 4-year-old and I have a sacred bedtime routine, no boys allowed, just me and her. We brush our teeth, put lip balm on, use the toilet, read a story, choose tomorrow's story, hug and kiss and then it is lights out.

One night, I tell her to go upstairs to get ready for bed while I finish doing some things in the kitchen. On this particular night, I was extra tired and irritated. The day was long as I had been alone with the kids for most of it. I just wanted to get her to sleep so I could have some time to myself.

I go upstairs and I find she's locked herself in the bathroom. She knows she isn't allowed to lock the doors and we've explained to her many times the reasons why. With my last ounce of patience, I gently knock and ask her to unlock the door. She refuses.

I'm furious so I bang on the door and raise my voice. I do the "count to 3" tactic but she still doesn't open the door. I rush downstairs to get the key and I unlock the door. She's standing there beside an open tub of moisturizing cream.

I start to scream, scolding her for locking the door. I reiterate the reasons why, how it's unsafe because I can't immediately get to her if something happened and so forth. She talks back to me, claiming those things won't happen, that she's careful and she won't get hurt.

I assume she's deliberately trying to piss me off

I ask her why she locked the door about a dozen times but I don't give her time to answer. Then she starts to cry and explains she wanted to put cream on her hands.

I don't believe her because it doesn't explain why she locked the door. I jump to conclusions, assuming she's deliberately trying to piss me off by playing a game to get my attention.

Then for a brief moment, I look at my daughter. Her face looks frustrated and hurt but mostly like she's misunderstood. She's trying to find the words to explain why she did what she did.

I pause and take a deep breath. I sit down beside her and stay silent. After a few minutes, she finally figures out what she's trying to say and tells me,

"I wanted to put cream on because my hand is dry and itchy but I didn't want you to find out because I was afraid you would get mad and yell at me."

I jump back to times when I was misunderstood, yelled at for doing nothing wrong, without given an opportunity to explain, too overwhelmed with frustration to utter even a single word, overpowered and silenced by an authority figure.

Sometimes, it takes silence to build trust

I calm down. My voice lowers and my face softens as I empathize with her. A grown-up (me, my husband or grandparents) has always been the one who puts cream on her. We purposely keep the jar in a place where she can easily reach, open and use it. However, we never explicitly told her that it was okay to do this herself.

Similar to how I assumed she was seeking attention, she assumed I would get mad if she used the cream herself. We both held assumptions about each other, creating the distrust that manifested as a locked door.

After explaining to her that she can use the cream as long as she's responsible (don't waste, play or eat the cream) and making sure she understood why she can't lock the door, we hug and make up. I breathe a sigh of relief and tell myself I did well today.

This was my first taste of my kid keeping something from me because they were scared of my reaction. There will be many more to come as they grow up. I don't expect the conversations to happen like this every time, especially when they reach the tricky teenage years.

However, I'm going to keep in mind that sometimes, sitting silently with my child gives them the time and space to find their voice. If I wait long enough, suppressing my urge to lecture and discipline, being present, listening without judgment, they might just share that voice with me. And that's how trust is built.

So Readers, when was the last time you had a proud parenting moment?

This was originally published on Medium on March 14, 2021.