In two years of parenting my daughter, what's the number one thing I've learned and how might this be useful for us today?
The number one thing I've learned with parenting my daughter is that I teach by example as an equal.
This means that I'm not better than her because I'm more grown up. In fact, we're equals, she is better at many things than I am, and I have skills that she doesn't have yet. We work together as equals, and I may learn from her as much as she learns from me.
This makes parenting such a joy, because instead of me looking at her all the time and trying to make her a certain way, I look at her and say what can I learn from her?
When my daughter's not around, I look at how I'm being and say, "What am I doing now that may assist with my teaching of my daughter?"
What I've learned is that my daughter learns from me completely by what I do. What I say is almost irrelevant.
I remember having my mouth washed out with soap when I was five or six years old because I was cussing. I think my parents used some liquid soap, and I remember the experience being very traumatic.
What were they doing?
They punished me for learning from them and this is what many of us has been raised with and it hurts.
It's painful.
I share this with you, I pray that I remember that my daughter learns what she sees. If she sees me cussing, then how could I expect her not to cuss?
I saw my parents cussing. My dad would get drunk and come home and "F" this and "F" that, and cuss my mother out. My mom would respond in kind, and then they'd tell me not to use those words, the words that they used, and then I get in trouble for learning from them, for doing as they did.
Every little kid really just wants to grow up like their parents from what I've seen. They just want to be loved and accepted by their parents and they see their parents as a role model. What I teach my child is a function of what I do.
You might think that at almost two years old, what you say doesn't matter much. That doesn't change. You see, if I tell my daughter to do one thing and I do the opposite, the real lesson I teach her is hypocrisy. That's the true thing she gets.
I learned a lot of that. My parents would say to be like this and they would be a different way. They'd tell me not to cuss, and then they'd cuss. What I learned is that you could say things and do something different. I learned that you could have two different sides of yourself. You could have a side of yourself that says, "Well, I'm going to be a good person sometimes and when this happens, I'm going to forget everything else and be a bad person." That's what I learned.
I learned how to have a split personality. I learned how to act a certain way in front of some people, and act a different way in front of others, and that motivates me today as a parent. I realize that what I do is what I teach. That helps me teaching online, what I do is what I teach. If I do different from what I say, you will learn the split, "Oh, he said that, and then he did this." That's what's really taught.
Today I see that for parenting my daughter, anything I hope for her to do better than me, I must do that myself. This has motivated me in so many different ways. I've had a lot of addictions and things I've struggled with in my life. Just like my family, I believe you learn addictions from your family. Now, sometimes you can learn it in an opposite way. My dad was an alcoholic and I learned to stay away from alcohol because of him, until I wasn't near him anymore.
Another thing that's difficult with parenting, is that your child learns from everyone they're around. Anyone that my child has around can teach my child. That means my daughter learns from my wife. She learns from me, and she learns from the dogs. When she's across the street, she learns from my wife's family, she learns from her grandmother and grandfather. She learns from her aunts and her uncles. She can learn things if she's in a babysitter with a babysitter, she can learn from day care. She can learn from other children on the playground. She does not discriminate, she will learn from anyone and anything she sees. That helps me because most of my life, I was very defensive and close-minded.
My daughter helps me to see that everyone has something to teach me because she learns from everyone she's around.
That means as a parent, it's up to me to consider what environment I'm going to put her in because wherever I put her, she learns. If my wife and I don't cuss at home, but we put her in day care where the day care lady cusses, then who's to be surprised if my daughter comes home and cusses, and how could I fault her from learning?
I pray that I have unconditional love with my daughter because sometimes she does things and it hurts.
One of the things she's been into that hurts over the last few months is that she'll slap. She'll walk up to you and just slap you. Sure, you'll get a little upset, you'll be holding her, she'll cock back and slap. It's tricky then as a parent.
Do I respond with force?
Do I say, "No that was bad don't do that?"
What I like to do is just show her how it makes me feel. "Ow," she's slapped me really good, let her see the pain of it. I could see even that done too much, I realized that I didn't know how to play nice. That's a humbling realization at 32 years old to honestly realize that I don't know how to play nice with my child.
I don't know if no one taught me or if I forgot, but I really don't know how to play nice, and I better learn how to play nice. I better figure out and watch my wife or kids on the playground, or other parents. I better watch someone and find out how to play nice.
One day, my daughter did something, I don't know if it was slap me or throw something at me, it hurt, and I retaliated mentally. I showed more emotion than I felt and I essentially mentally wanted to make her feel bad and she instantly received that communication.
I feel that children are telepathic. Not only do they read your body language, but they can literally feel what you are thinking. This is why children when parents are all putting on this nice faces and acting like everything's fine when really they're a mess inside, the children then act up.
"Wow, that child's just wild."
No, the child is perceiving and acting out what the parent is attempting to suppress. My daughter feels my emotions and if I'm all upset, then she's likely to act out. When I am peaceful, she is generally peaceful.
She actually seeks to help, "Oh you're having a hard time expressing this here, let me show you what it looks like."
One day when I was playing with my daughter and I retaliated just mentally with her. I did nothing physically, I simply sat there and I cried a little bit or I overacted whatever she did.
She broke down hysterically crying because she felt what happened in my mind immediately, and it hurt. She felt essentially that cruelty of applying the shame, the same shame that I was given. "Here, wash your mouth out with soap for cussing." I essentially communicated that exact same thing to her telepathically, directly with the slightest little body language, by direct communication and she felt it immediately.
I learned a great lesson that day, "Don't go overboard with stuff, be very gentle because she can read straight through me." She doesn't need for me to go drop an anvil on her, she notices the smallest pin drop in my emotions. She notices the most subtle change in my body because she's not thinking about all these other things, because she doesn't have all these other things to focus on.
You might say babies are enlightened. Most babies embody everything you would think of a spiritual master. They're present, they're happy, they're joyous, they pay attention, they learn fast, and they don't hold on the things for long. Most babies embody the image of what we think of as a guru or some spiritual leader. A baby has nearly all of those characteristics. A baby has immense power.
I realized while I'm dealing with my daughter that I'm dealing with an equal and every little thing I do, teaches her. This encourages me to be responsible with my use of power because I have physical power over her. If I pick her up while she's in the middle of doing something, then how can I judge her for being a little upset about it? Is it fair?
How would I like it if I was in the middle of my podcast and I got just picked up? I would probably flail around for a minute. Then, my daughter is to appreciate, I see how amazing she is, that she's in the middle of doing something she cares about. I come along, not thinking of her because I have some plan that we need to do, "Well, you're going to go do this with Dad who wants to go to the store now."
I'm going to take her to the store and I pick her up right in the middle of something she's doing. She has a brief moment of letting go or she doesn't want to let it go.
Where did she learn that from?
Dad.
She definitely learned how to not let go off things from me.
My wife walks in and I'm in the middle of doing some work. She asks, "Are you ready to go?" and I respond hesitantly, "In a minute."
Why do I have a hard time letting go off stuff?
Where's my daughter learned that?
What a lot of us seem to experience with parenting is the things we deny about ourselves are shown to us in our children. The ideas of how we are don't match with our children's behavior, and then we don't like the discrepancy because the child is telling the truth about us.
Anything I don't like in my daughter is a reflection of the truth being shown to me about myself.
My daughter has helped me fantastically. People refer to me as "smiling Jerry, happy Jerry." You frequently see me happy. I'm very happy today.
Why?
Because I learned from my daughter how to be happy.
She's happy, she runs around, she smiles, she plays with things, and she doesn't go on condemning herself when something goes wrong. She falls down, as soon as it stops hurting, she moves on.
My daughter is a powerful teacher of how to live at almost two years old. You could say that she's as close to the truth with less distractions than me. The way I look at it, when she was born, she came straight down from God essentially, and she can remember completely on every level of her being to being connected with God, and that she is presented to me to teach me as much as I'm to teach her.
This encourages me to continue to be what I want to teach, that if I don't want my daughter to cuss, then I better not be going around cussing, and if my daughter should cuss, then I ought to laugh at it the same way as if I would be laughing at someone else doing it.
If I don't want my daughter to go around, scream and struggle whenever it's time to switch activities, then maybe when my wife says it's time to go to bed and I'm in the middle of reading something, that's a good opportunity for me to practice the same thing.
Anything I hope for my daughter is really a hope for me. There's not separation. This helps me today to be a very loving parent, and yet there are always ways I can improve. It's humbling to see some of these things that I wasn't even aware of before. How thoughtless and careless I used to be with my daughter. How I wouldn't even think about what she might want. I wouldn't even consider what something might matter to her.
Now I try to think, "What is she doing right now?"
She's playing with her dolls. Maybe I'll wait until she's done with that to pick her up and go to the store. Maybe I'll have love and respect for what she wants to do.
I put her to bed the other night, which my wife usually does. I laid there with her on the floor holding her hand in the crib, it must have been for an hour, because I thought about, "She's in the dark by herself. I don't like going to sleep by myself."
She has her own room and she got a crib, which she's used to. I understand if she wants to fall asleep holding my hand though. My wife rocks her to sleep. I'm not as good at putting her down without waking her up, so I put her in her crib and I understand that she doesn't want to fall asleep alone. Instead of bustling out and saying, "I have work to do," which I had work to do, to stay with her the same way, to remember that that's me in that crib, and to remember with my parents, that's me. I essentially did that to myself. The same as I essentially do this more to myself with my daughter.
I'm grateful today that my parents loved me so much that I got to be here today, that I got to have a chance to have my own child, and then I could look at all the love my parents had and have for me, and then apply that to parenting my child. My parents taught me unconditional love. I'm grateful to have that to teach to my child today.
I hope this is useful for you in whatever it is you're doing today.
Thank you.
My exercise for today is to practice what I've shared here with you, to remember this as I have a chance to both parent my daughter and in everything else I do.
Remember, what I teach is who I am.
Thank you for reading this. If you prefer to watch, will you try the video on YouTube?
Thank you very much to @gmichelbkk for converting the transcription of the YouTube video from GoTranscript into this beautiful post for Steemit, which is much faster to read than the video and has beautiful illustrations!
If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because this will give you the same good feeling it gives me when I upvote posts?
Love,
Jerry Banfield