Parenting 101: I Cannot Fix Them

Although I would like to pretend it’s not true, there are hard things in this world...people, hard circumstances and sometimes our kids are hard. The thing is, there are kids that have a harder time in the world because the world is hard. Some kids are harder than others because they come from a hard place. Karyn Purvis defines children from hard places as “children that have experienced some type of abuse, neglect or trauma during their lives (including prenatal exposure to substances or high levels of stress, difficult labor or birth before or medical trauma).”

If you have a kid from a hard place in your care, you know the struggle. Kids from hard places trigger us. They push on our tender places. They reveal something in us, something we don’t like.

I wonder if we struggle to respond well to hard kids because of our PRIDE. It might look something like this -
I would never act like that.
No kid of mine is going to act like that.
This makes me look REALLY bad.

OR when dealing with kids we don’t parent like a teacher or other caregiver...
my kid wouldn’t act like that.
What is wrong with their parents?
What is wrong with me that I can’t handle this?

I wish I could look you in the eye right now and speak these words to you -
It is hard, there is an ugliness that wells up inside us that we wish would go away. We, the strong safe adults, feel anger when we are hurt physically or emotionally. We, the strong safe adult feel frustration deep within when we are trying as hard as we can and nothing we try works. We, the strong safe adults, are not perfect and sometimes we have control issues and that butts up against the kiddos control issues.

When we look in the mirror, we find our own small child inside us, hurt and alone choosing its own coping mechanisms like escape, control, anger, laziness, overly helpful, blaming, so much blaming, shaming, overwork, or being super needy. I spent the majority of the first couple years of loving kids from hard places trying to fix them. Trying so hard that I was shaming myself when every technique in the book didn’t work.. I did not have the longview in mind because the short term was so overwhelming.

There has been a slow steady shift in my mind-set to, I CANNOT FIX THEM! 

I can provide interactions and environment that provide the structure that healing can happen in. I can work on me and shift my perspective. 

But I CANNOT FIX THEM! 

I was surprised when one of our last interventions did not work. I really thought it was going to be the key to my life becoming easier. The problem was that my son was not interested in participating. He had no desire, he shutdown and get this,

I COULD NOT MAKE HIM.

He reminded me daily that he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to. My pride was bruised, my desire to control was driving the truck and we were not liking each other.

Over the summer as I started to think about this differently. I realized, I can be in control of only me and my responses (I know we teach this to first graders but seriously, if you have a kid from a hard place you know they reveal the first grader in you). I can be in control of creating an environment for healing. I can be in control of the boundaries surrounding me. I can be in control of taking care of my own heart. I can be in control of my own expectations.  I am learning to let go of what I cannot control.

Over the next few posts I am going to dive a little deeper and show you how I have worked to make this shift in my own life.  I invite you to make this slow and steady shift from controlling our kids to guiding them.