Mamaste Village

on Friday we celebrated.

you may remember me sharing a while back about Henry’s soother.

in mostly following respectful parenting we decided that what aligned best with our values, was to let him decide when he didn’t need it anymore.

we set boundaries around it only being for sleep, but were flexible when he needed it other times as well.

last week his final soother went missing.

I expected an epic meltdown and hellish bedtime, but when I told him I couldn’t find it he didn’t really react. He instead just went to sleep.

the next night he asked again and I reminded him we couldn’t find it, and again he went to sleep.

when I acknowledged it after a few days, I said ‘maybe you don’t need it anymore?’

and he agreed.

we didn’t need to ‘do anything’, we simply trusted him.

so on the weekend we celebrated his decision.

this wasn’t a reward (in fact he didn’t even know I was doing this) but rather recognition, for doing something hard, for being brave and for listening and trusting himself to make a choice.

learning to trust my children and let go of the need to control or do things a certain way, has been a freeing experience - sometimes you just have to ‘drop the rope’ and trust these little humans to do what’s best for them.

we have a 30 mins of tv a day rule, I’ve talked about how screen time just doesn’t work for Henry - so this is a boundary we have set and stick to most days.

last month he had croup, and I was so stuck on holding the tv boundary, forcing play time, time outside, time for activities.
he was telling me in his own way it wasn’t working, but I didn’t listen.
then something happened and I blew up on him - why was he acting like this?

he 👏🏻 was 👏🏻 sick.

when I spoke to my therapist that week, riddled with guilt for yelling at him she said ‘what do you want to do when you’re sick?’ - lay on the couch and watch tv.

she helped me recognize (although it was glaringly obvious at that point), that by being so rigid about my ‘rule’ I was setting us up for failure.

Henry has croup again, so guess where we’ve been all day today?