Cook, clothes washer, chauffeur, nurse, counsellor, mediator.....and today hair stylist. I cut the boys hair this morning. I usually cut their hair but sometimes feel uncertain about my abilities and take them into to get their haircut by a professional. The outcome is the same as when I do it and I realize that I can do all that for free and we go back to home hair cuts.
Our hair clipper set is on it's way out. The boys were troopers to sit through the first bit having to listen to the roar of the clippers in their ears. It was hard for me to deal with the sound and it wasn't right against my head. Thankfully Papa picked up a new one today while in town to use for the next round of hair cuts. The first cut today was successful. Eoin although hesitant about how much I was cutting, likes his hair and thinks it makes him look "English"???? The third cut was also successful. Seamus is happy and as usual thinks he looks great. Liam's haircut was a disaster. He looks quite nice and it is actually one of the nicest haircuts I have given him. He does not agree. Liam is very particular about his hair. I can relate, my hair is important to me. He didn't say much to me after the cut but Gramma told me how much he didn't like it and when I went back to fix a few places after it dried he expressed his distaste for it quite strongly. He was teary in the mirror and visibly stressed that his locks were lessened. I was almost in tears myself. Liam had enough of me and went off to his room.
I did some dishes and put on a kettle to make us a hot drink to bring up to his room. With a hot chocolate in hand for Liam and a French Vanilla for me I knocked on his door and he invited me in. He was pretty sad and had covered himself completely with blankets. It was heartbreaking. I apologized for cutting his hair without getting his thoughts on it clear beforehand and let him know that I had brought a hot drink for us to chat it over. It lifted his spirits some. We had a nice chat and played rubix revolution. He still doesn't like his hair any better but it was nice to reconnect with him.
The hot drink didn't make it all go away. He still has to live with his haircut, as he sees it, until it grows out. Whether or not everyone else likes it or that it really isn't short doesn't matter to him. His power was taken from him. He saw his hair as an extension of who he was. It may seem like a small thing to some but for Liam it was important. It would be hard to imagine living life again from the seemingly helpless place of childhood. There is a prevailing thought that children cannot or should not make decisions for themselves, for example the choice to eat fish or chicken.
Making decisions for oneself is a critical part of development. Getting the choice to eat a vegetable and get dessert or not eat the vegetable and miss out on dessert is not really choice. It may allow the parent to feel better about forcing the child to finish their veggies but it certainly goes no where to giving the child a sense of power over their own lives. We all want to feel in control of our own lives. It feels bad to feel helpless.
In parenting it is a challenge. Giving a child power over their own lives in part takes some of our power away. For example the boys are upstairs right now giggling away. It is long past the time we ask them to turn out the lights and we would certainly prefer the quiet of sleeping children (although giggling children is not hard to stomach). We feel powerless in a away in not being able to do anything about it aside from using punishment or threats. And those two things only work for the moment and don't give satisfaction to either of us. It can be difficult to let somethings go. In our case the boys can sleep in so it doesn't really matter if they stay up later sometimes. It doesn't mean that it is not something that hits a nerve at times. There are nights when Chris and I may really want to be alone and that may be in contrast to the boys late night deep conversations.
We are encouraged in our culture to make sure to be what is often mislabeled as consistent but is instead the expectation to be unbending once a rule is set like bedtimes. It is hard not to give into the idea though that to give a child an inch and they take a mile. It is like if you give them some power over their own lives they will run wild with it and be uncontrollable. However in families where the children aren't given even an inch that is often blamed as the cause when a child begins to rebel.
The idea that parents and children are adversaries is prominent in our culture. My children have gotten much of that idea from the media exposure in their lives. On almost every child oriented show they watch parents and adults are against children somehow. Adults are portrayed as barriers to what children want and the adults who aren't are too often portrayed as irresponsible and immature. It is something that has been irritating me more and more. I am not going to limit their television any more than it is but we will certainly begin talking more about the idea that parents are not the bad guys as is perpetuated in what they are watching.
When one party holds so much more power over another it is difficult not to see it as adversarial. There are going to be times when as a parent I have to make a decision for my child. I cannot stand by and let them hurt someone or put themselves in serious danger. There are also times when I need to ask myself if I am just simply taking the power from them to preserve my own.
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