“My three year old is in a remarkable new stage; she gets so excited about what she’s doing that she forgets to stop to eat, or go to the bathroom. When we stop her, she gets frustrated with us.”
I heard the “bathroom” part, and my mind was already imagining what this young dad soon shared. His daughter had urinated in her bedroom. It took a bit of work to return the toys, books, and carpeting to their pre-accident state.
I delighted in his calm, describing his daughter’s “stage”, her first date with enthusiasm. Because he understood her and respected her, the accident was understandable too. How many parents would demean the child? How common would scolding be, mild or severe, in an effort to discourage a repeat of the behavior? How easy would it to ask the rhetorical question, “What’s wrong with you?”
What are the ways we as adult parents (or bosses or “guiding” family members) fail to be this understanding of the person and focus instead on the behavior? This young Dad helps me aspire to my own fatherhood, understanding and appreciating my wife, my adult kids, finding their lives “remarkable” enough to wonder and take them in. I aspire to do as he did with his leaky daughter, to be able to put behavior in context of the gestalt, the life-space or context, of their remarkableness.
I suspect that in his understanding the why of her behavior, he helped her understand it too, and not demean herself. All of us deserve to grow to embrace what's right with us.
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