Why is My Child REALLY Acting Up?
An egregious misreading of my child’s behavior forced me to rethink how I approach my parenting.
He was being so damn stubborn. Rejecting everything on his plate. Smashing his food. Turning it away, even when it arrived via airplane. So after his second day of not eating, my parental neurosis kicked into overdrive. I fully own it.
His grandmother insisted it was normal. His nanny dismissed it as common. His great-grandmother said not to worry. But I became a full-on spazz. It was one of those moments that exposed a Shakespearean flaw in my parenting.
The combination of my love of cooking and my small, two-year-old, 20th percentile child has created an obsession. If he doesn’t eat well, I take it personally, knowing that during my 50% of custody, he’s eating much better, and more, than while at my ex’s house (at least according to the nanny we share). So to watch him not eat — even snubbing his go-to favorites — really knocked me for a loop.
“Maybe his teeth hurt. Why don’t you try a pouch?”, my nanny offered, seeing my distress. My son has never liked pouches, so I have dozens of them waiting to expire on the top shelf of my fridge. And yet when I handed him one, he sucked it down like a milkshake. Then he immediately had a second one. And two days later, his lower canines finally pierced through his gums.
He wasn’t being stubborn, he was suffering, and my firm agenda to “get my child to eat” blinded me to the larger picture.
Agenda vs. Curiosity: A Paradigm Shift
It’s incredibly difficult for me as a parent to not get caught up in milestones. My son, born near-premature, has been delayed in almost everything: walking, talking, polysyllabic words. A speech pathologist diagnosed him with apraxia early on, but he seems to be speaking more and more in recent months, albeit with an adorable impediment. All of this translates to an unspoken internal agenda I have for my son, and when that agenda goes awry, I start to vibrate.
I’m a designer by training, and though so much of my career has been rooted in research and aesthetics, my work is fueled by curiosity. It’s one of my defining characteristics — a passionate voraciousness that is always seeking to explore new possibilities. For my clients, I excel at “the pivot.” New parameters call for new solutions, and I thrive in those situations. And yet, the very skill that has provided my salary for almost 20 years has failed to translate into my parenting skill set. Could you imagine how different the interaction with my son would have unfolded if I approached his lack of appetite with curiosity rather than a “you-must-eat” agenda?
Later that week, I had a chance to unpack the episode with my life coach, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, and I recognized this dichotomy: Agenda vs. Curiosity. It was such a fundamental breakthrough — a moment of clarity — that it has since reframed all of my interactions with my son. Whenever he starts veering left, I catch myself and ask, “Am I looking at this with my agenda or with curiosity?” It has become such a gift.
“The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.”
— Carl Jung, founder of Analytical Psychology
This dichotomy — curiosity vs. agenda — liberates me from the milestone trap, and frees me to interact with my son without my previous anxieties. It also ensures that I’m letting him evolve into his own person, rather than my aspirations. It’s my best chance to not pass along my generational trauma, and it’s also my son’s best hope for living a fully integrated life.
He’s recently grown more physical, and consequently rougher, with his toys. It feels like some days I must say “gentle” 700 times. Recently, while I was fixing breakfast, he decided to slide down — and then swat — all of the alphabet magnets off of my refrigerator. “Boom!”, he joyously exclaimed. “Why?! Gentle, gentle—you know you have to be gentle.” Immediately I felt my internal agenda kick-in — this boy needs to understand the rules. He needs to learn to be more respectful of things. And yet his reply, “Chicka Chicka — book, book! Boom!” revealed that he was merely reenacting his bedtime story from the night before. For him, it was perfectly logical for letters to fall onto the floor. The comment triggered the curiosity section of my brain, and I was reminded that I had prematurely closed my mind before leading with openness. His explanation unlocked my compassion, and it allowed me to speak to my son in a much warmer and supportive tone. He hasn’t knocked off the letters since.
Developing an Internal Scan
If you find yourself stressed by your child’s behavior, scan your thoughts before responding. Is this about me, or is this about them? Am I seeing this situation through my agenda, or staying open and curious about what’s actually happening? Keeping that simple question at the forefront of my mind has made parenting so much less stressful—and so much more successful.
