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Speaker 2My name is Shannon Maldonado. I'm the founder of Yaoi, a gift shop from the lens of artists and handmade objects. I chose Shopify because when I was testing other platforms, it was definitely one of the most user-friendly. It was important to me to think about where we would be in the future. All of the tools for reading your sales, like planning inventory, they're just right there on your dashboard. For anyone starting a small business, the biggest thing I can tell you is it doesn't have to be perfect. Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on Shopify.com. Hello, and welcome to the How Not to
Speaker 3Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 42, and today I'm talking about how to parent the child we have and not the child we secretly wanted to have. You know that time? You know that time when you were expecting, and you were pregnant, and you were lost in those dreams of what your child would be like? You know, the interests you think that they are likely to have because of yours and your partner's interests and passions. The qualities you feel, maybe you get lost in those dreams about the qualities that you feel that they will inherit, and how they utilise them. Maybe you are both musical, and you imagine them growing up to have an appreciation of classical music, as you do. Or maybe you are super sporty, and you can imagine which sports they will choose to take up. Or maybe you're super creative, and you try and kind of get lost in that imagination about what form their creativity might take. Then they are born, grow up, and their natural interests could not be more out of alignment to your own, and you wonder, "What the hell happened?" It could be you have a girl when you wanted a boy, boys when you wanted girls, or anything else in between. Maybe you crave the closeness you had with one of your parents, which you simply don't have with your child. Or maybe you are super academic, and you have a child who struggles with lots of additional learning needs. Or your child has ADHD, autism, a physical disability, or something else which you just hadn't expected when you were in that dreamy stage of pregnancy. I want to have an honest conversation about maybe a taboo subject of being, well, disappointed, that you have a child. I haven't quite got the child you hoped you'd have. Now, some of you might be thinking, "That's an awful thing to say, Mary-Han." And maybe it is an awful thing to say out loud, but I know for sure there are lots of people listening to this thinking, "Actually, I do feel like that." It doesn't mean that you wish your child away, or you wish you hadn't had them. It's just simply being honest that things are not quite as you expected. Your child isn't quite as you expected. The life that you have as a parent isn't quite what you expected. And I'll be honest, my son was genetically blessed with a very sporty physique, which he inherited from my father. In fact, he is a mirror image of him in so many ways. Now, his father and I had both been really active in sports at school and had high hopes for our son. You know, when you're imagining, "What will he do?" And we had these high hopes, as did the games teachers, at each and every school he went to. And each and every school faced the same stark disappointment as we did as his parents. He just was not into sport. Not then, anyway. He had no drive, ambition, or a competitive streak in any way when it came to sports. Now, that's hardly anything to be super upset about. And in the grand scheme of things, he was a healthy, happy boy who was grown up to be a fine young man. But sometimes it does matter to us. Sometimes it does impact us. Sometimes we do feel disappointed. Sometimes we feel slightly resentful. So I'm not going to tackle this podcast episode in my usual way, with my usual top five tips. But instead, I'm going to talk you through a practical task I personally and genuinely work through each and every time I meet a child, when I start working with them, for the first time. It's nothing complicated, but it's about getting to really know the child you have, rather than the child you wish you had. First, I want to start with three health warnings. The first is, your child is uniquely their own person. Forcing them to be something or do something which is inherently out of line with who they really are will lead to resentment, at least, and poor mental health at worse. Accepting your child for who they are helps build strong relationships. Now, there may be an element, and maybe that sounds slightly dramatic, but when we are parenting a child that we have, maybe it differs to the child that we secretly wanted, there is a natural grieving process because parenting and that child, and that relationship have not been as we would expect. And so there may be a certain element of having to grieve the type of parenting that we thought we were going to have, the type of child we were going to have, the type of relationship we were going to have, the type of interests that we were going to have, the type of things that we were going to do it. But we need to remember that our children are uniquely their own person, and we need to accept them. If we cannot truly accept them as their parent, there is no hope of anyone else accepting them. And I mean this at a really deep level because of course, we accept our children in so many ways, but there's often that slightly niggling disappointment. There's those moments that we try and book them into a summer camp, or we really try and take them to that rugby match in the hope that they really will get involved, or we slightly force them to take up a musical instrument, even though it's really obvious that isn't where their talents lie, or we say to them that they need to do an additional language or anything that we do that, you know, on the surface level, we're saying we're accepting our child, but we're still chipping away. So let's remember that our children are uniquely their own person, and it's really important that we accept that. And that is different to encouraging and promoting our children to broaden their horizons and take on different challenges and new experiences. But you know, whilst it sounds like there's a slightly blurred line there, there isn't. We know really when we're slightly forcing our child to do something that we know doesn't sit with them, and is actually much more to do with where we want to steer them, rather than something that is inherently there. So that's my first health warning. My second health warning is about the danger of us living vicariously through our children. It's a recipe for disaster. Maybe you wished your parents had been more supportive of your desire to be a ballet dancer. And you want to be there and make sure that your child, who's already showing quite a bit of interest and a reasonable amount of talent in ballet, you want to make sure that they get given every opportunity that you didn't. But it may well be that your child enjoys their ballet, but doesn't want to take it any further. And that goes, that's the same for any other. Maybe your child is really interested in football and they love going to the football club, but they don't actually show any competitive streak. They're not bothered if they don't win. They're not bothered about kicking the ball around and practicing. We have to be really careful about this vicarious living. And again, I think sometimes we might say to ourselves, well, I'm simply following through my child's dreams. They're clearly really interested in this and I'm trying to facilitate it. I'm being a great parent. This is not me trying to live vicariously. I would say, and obviously I say this with love, sit with it for a bit. You know whether you are being there and encouraging and helping and supporting and facilitating and when you are actually trying to sort of create a path, guide your child down a particular route, which may not actually be the route, the best route for them. So let's be mindful that we are not living vicariously. Of course, we want our children to fulfill their potential and be their best selves, but their best selves is their best selves, not what we believe is their best selves because, as the adult, we feel it's in a different direction. And that leads me quite neatly to my third health warning, which is remembering our role as parents is to scaffold our children's rising structure and not to manipulate the build. If your child wants to build a warehouse conversion, let them build it. Trying to manipulate a Georgia mansion will inevitably mean you get some ugly monstrosity of a build that no one wants to live in. Our role as parents is to provide the scaffolding that rises around the structure that our children pre-determine based on their interests their passions and how they grow in their personality and their interests the scaffolding we provide is not this is the structure that we want you to build your home around that we want you to inhabit and live in because that is not a great recipe for a happy resilient well-adjusted positively mental health adult so we must remember so three health warnings your child is uniquely their own person let's not live vicariously through our children or even pretend to ourselves that we're doing things in the interest of our children and let's remember that our role as parents is to scaffold our children's rising build and allowing them to choose and not us so let me help you get to know yourself and your child more with my all about me exercise so you will be able to download this template as a resource but in essence what it is it's an introduction to yourself and it always starts with you and then we ask our children to do the same so you will notice when you download the resource that in essence it basically is a template for a head and what you're going to do is you are going to have two copies one for you one for your child if you have multiple children i suggest that you do this i would think it would be better to do one at a time because then you've got their undivided time and attention and you can talk and explore and you can discuss things at great length now this particular exercise i will say because this is about getting to look to sort of know your child their personality and their natural interests isn't an exercise that is suitable for younger children so this really is an exercise for children five and above it doesn't mean you can't do a similar exercise with younger children you just can't do it to the level of detail of really getting to know some of that nitty-gritty and obviously the older the child the more we're able to dig and probe so by all means you can use this exercise with much younger children you can do this with preschool children but you're not going to get the level of depth and insight as you would do with an older child so in essence you've got two pieces of paper one for your child one for you and lots of colouring pens so you are basically going to complete the face temperature test and you're going to complete and make it look like you now i'm going to tell you now that even in the process of your child drawing themselves their eyes their hair their nose their ears their mouth they'll be telling you things because they will either just draw it happily or in my experience they'll make some comment maybe they'll make a comment about how they're not particularly good at drawing maybe they're not very good at noses maybe they don't like their hair or they're finding it particularly difficult to get their eye colour right or whatever it might be there's commentary when your child is completing that what seems like a very simple task which is quite telling in itself it tells you a lot already about how your child views their ability for example so we've drawn our picture it looks comically like us or beautifully like us it doesn't matter the whole point is we're having a conversation as we're drawing our picture most women have been
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Speaker 3and then what you're going to do is at the top of the picture you're going to give some basic facts about yourself and obviously your child is going to know a lot of this already but it's an exercise that is helping us connect you're introducing yourself and you're also getting to know your child a little bit more so maybe at the top you might want to give them some sort of rudimentary basic facts about maybe pets that you had when you grew up as a child or maybe you didn't have any pets maybe pets that you had always secretly wanted to have and then you're going to give them talk about your siblings what the age difference is and what your relationship was like with your siblings when you were younger did you get on with them did you argue with them did you not talk about the schools that you went to were they mixed schools were they single sex schools how much did you enjoy them have you got any friends still from them and then what i always like to do is draw a little picture or you can write but a little picture about the town city or that you were born in because again this is just setting some context so what's happening with this particular task is that we are telling our children a little bit about the basic facts about who we are these are facts really rather than anything else and then once you've done that bit at the top you're going to ask your child to do the same now what's really important again here is that your child may tell you something they may say that their handwriting isn't particularly good or they might tell you that their spelling isn't very good or they might say i don't want to write i don't want to do that again that is that's telling that's giving you a little bit more information you're having a bit of an introduction a little glimpse into your child's world but what's important when you're doing this particular exercise is it is not about their spellings we don't care what the spelling is and if your child is of an age that they're happy to chat about these things but they don't want to write it down then that is fine too but start with the premise of them writing it because that will tell you a lot about if you've got a seven or eight year old that doesn't want to do the writing because they're worried about their spelling you now know that for your child that that's something that that is something that worries them that bothers them that they don't feel particularly confident about and that can be something that you would address or talk about at another time this exercise is about learning about your child it is not a teachable moment it is not about correcting your child's spelling it is not about that the neatness of their handwriting and talking to the teacher about how if they held the pen in a slightly different way it would work more neatly we are trying to get to know our child we are not using this as a teachable moment so your child does that they either write it or they tell you about it so we've got that now we want to ask our child to describe themselves and their qualities using 10 words now what i will say is younger children will find it more difficult to come up with 10 words so obviously we want to give them a little bit of an easier task so we might ask them for four or five words but we're simply asking them to describe themselves and when i mean describe themselves they are not describing the way that they physically look they're describing things about themselves now this exercise always works on the basis that we model first so we give our children the words that we would use to describe ourselves and you might want to give them this a little bit of thought before you do this particular exercise but you want to be honest you really want to think about actually if i was going to describe myself to somebody what words would i use so the words that i would typically use and these are genuine you know aspects of who i am so i would say that i am loud because i am i'm often in fact i can still remember my teacher from when i was in third form at my secondary school saying that my voice was always the voice of the teacher that she could hear in a room full of people yeah but you didn't know that but anyway so i am loud i am also very chatty that's a natural part of my personality my poor children have had to put up for years of me having random conversations with people because i like to chat so i would say that i was loud i'm very chatty i would say that i'm quite bossy i like things done in a particular way so i would say that i'm also bossy then i would also say that i was kind i'm loyal i'm trustworthy i probably say i'm a bit of a fidget i find it difficult to sit still but i'm very determined i'd say that i'm probably quite sensitive so i can be sensitive to comments that are made by people and that i can be quite emotional so that means probably i often cry at films and i would say that i'm active and that i am confident but i would say and in fact i do actually say this when i'm working with children for the first time and families is that my confidence was not there in my teenage years in fact oh my goodness me was i an awkward angst ridden teen i was tall for my age incredibly awkward about having frizzy hair when it was much more fashionable to have hair that could be flicked so i wasn't particularly confident but i would describe myself as confident now so you can see that we're already beginning to our children that notion of actually if I was to describe myself what words would i use to describe myself and again we're not looking for fabulous vocabulary here if you would describe yourself as funny interesting a bookworm whatever it might be we're just trying to describe ourselves to our children and then we ask them to describe themselves and this is not going to be easy i will be honest with you our children are not necessarily going to find it easy but the fact that we've modeled it first means that if your child is struggling a little bit initially you can say well have a look at the words that i've written how would you sort of describe yourself and i often find when i'm doing this exercise with a child for the first time i might say oh i'm loud and they might say oh i'm not very loud or i'm very shy i don't like um talking to people i don't know or i might say i'm really bossy and then they might say oh yes i'm really bossy and my sister tells me i'm so bossy i'm always telling her what to do or they might say i'm not bossy at all but my big brother is so you're trying you're often get some commentary already from your children as you're doing that but you're really asking them and i think this is even if your children find this task particularly difficult persevere with it don't kind of make them feel awkward you want to sort of maybe give them a bit of time and you might go away from the task and you might come back to it again but it's such an incredibly important thing to be doing because how often do we say or do we encourage our children to kind of become self-aware and when we're talking about confidence and resilience and being able to pick ourselves up when we have setbacks and positive mental health so much of that is about knowing who we really are and part of this as well is for us it's that introduction what child do i have really getting to know our children in ways that we might not ordinarily get to know them in just day-to-day life so this is such a brilliant exercise and i think it's a really important exercise and i think it's a really important exercise for doing that so persevere if your children find it difficult see as many words as you can get get there maybe you might say to them how do you think your brother or sister might describe you that can be quite telling how would your teacher describe you how would your sports teacher describe you or anything like that would just how do you think i would describe you as your mummy or how would i describe you as your daddy so i think that it's such a telling exercise it's really really helpful to do so i think you do that what you then and so you'd have the details about pets and siblings and schools at the top you would have the quote you know the words to describe themselves would be along the left hand side running down vertically and on the right hand side vertically you're then of the of the head outline you're then going to write down what you like to do and and again be really honest what are your hobbies what are your interests and i think for me i would i know that i'm going to write down what i like to do and and again be really honest what are your normally write down that i love to read i love watching films i love gardening i love being outdoors i love walking i used to put running but got off that a bit now so it's those sorts of things and obviously i love food i'm a big foodie i love food and particularly pudding anything i can pour custard or cream onto that's for me but the idea is here again your child is getting to know what are your interests what are your passions what do you enjoy doing when you have spare time how do you spend it and then asking your children this now obviously you you know a certain element of this but one of the really good questions to ask your children is if you were allowed to be in charge for a whole day and you could do whatever you wanted what would you do and again this is really telling because we're trying to understand our child what are the things that really interest them what do they really enjoy and then that could be a really useful discussion about what are your interests what are your interests what do you for that because again you'll be surprised when you talk about some of the things that you enjoy it then raises that whole discussion point about you know your children you might say that you really like being outside in the countryside or you might say you like going out for a walk as i do and your child might say oh i hate it when we go on a family walk it's so boring and that gives you an in to well what what is it about being outside because when i see you outside you always look like you're having so much fun is it getting up and getting out and putting our wellies on that makes it feel really boring or is it that we always do it on a sunday and all you want to do is relax whatever it might be it helps open up a bit of a natural discussion so this is telling you a little bit about your child what are their natural interests what are some the glimpse into a little bit of their world about how do they see themselves how would they describe themselves now you have a slight glimmer what i would then do i then talk about how do they see themselves how would they describe themselves now you have a slight glimmer three qualities or three words that your child and you because it always starts with you would love people to describe them as that they don't at the moment and this is really beginning to capitalize and get a glimpse of your child's aspirations who do they want to be what are their hopes and dreams for themselves but we're not doing that in that traditional sense and can use what are your hopes your dreams your aspirations what would you like in the future that's different but generally with younger children instead it's so much easier to introduce it as well these are the words that you describe yourself as now if you could choose three words that you would love people to be saying about you to be describing you as what words would those be and again we're talking about words to describe our character and our personality not the way that we look so modeling at first so you might say i think mine i usually would say something like i would love people to say that i'm calm and it's not that i'm not calm but i don't feel i'm calm all of the time i'm someone who naturally loves to be at a slight level of adrenaline and always having maybe one task too many to do so i'd love people to describe me as calm all of the time i would love people to describe me as super organized so what we're trying to do is help our children see it might be that that we are sometimes described as that word but it's not part of that those sort of the core qualities those core traits and attributes or things that are the true essence of who we are so start with your three and children in my experience might say things like that they want to be popular that tells you something about your child they might say that they want to be clever maybe they say they might want to be more sporty so it's you're getting a good idea of who you are and you're getting a good idea of who you are and you're getting a glimpse again you're getting to know your child how do they describe themselves what are the qualities that are important to them who is the person they want to be what are their interests what do they love and certainly when we're looking at the interests and you know what would they do if they were allowed to be in charge for a whole day probe around that why why why would you like to maybe actually a lot of children might say i want to watch television all day and eat i want to be on my xbox i want to be on my ipad oh my gosh okay great if that's what you want to do and me when you're a grown-up i'm sure that is you're just that's what you're going to do all of the time why that why not something else what is it about that and again you don't have to agree or disagree but you're getting a glimpse into why things are important for your child why they value it why they want to do that and that helps you get to know your child in a context and in a way that you would just never understand why they want to do that and that helps you get to know your child in any other way i cannot you could probably sense my enthusiasm for this task but it is such a brilliant brilliant exercise now some of you and that is in essence what what the task is and some of you might be listening to this and saying gosh you know what mary hann that sounds like a really great exercise but have you met my children trying to get them to sit down for five minutes and do something like this how am i going to do that well i think what i would say is now this is i obviously do it in a much more formalized way because i've arranged a session with a child they come with their pen and paper they know they're going to be doing something like this with me now that's the format of the way that i would do it that's the structure of how i would do it but it doesn't mean you necessarily need to sit down with a pen and paper and my head template you can be doing stuff like this when you're having conversations with your children when you might naturally come up when you're out walking the dog or when you might be cooking something together or you might be playing a game or walking to school or driving to school it doesn't have to be contrived but it is giving you a glimpse into a way that you can begin to have those conversations to really know how your child views themselves what is the child that you have as opposed to the child that you secretly wanted so you may be walking to school and you may say i was listening to something really interesting the other day that was talking about how would we describe ourselves and it got me thinking if i had only five words to describe myself as boom boom boom what do you think you would describe yourself as and then you ask them you know the idea of this is i'm introducing you to a task that when you have children who love to do these things great sit down do those amazing but if they don't there are other ways to gently get these the knowledge and the information but just doing it in slightly different ways and i would really genuinely truly love to hear how you've got on with this So do please, please feed back to us. because it's really it matters to me that the tasks and the activities and the advice and the strategies that I give I love to get feedback I love to know how you've implemented it how did it work even if you've had a complete and utter disaster let me know because we can kind of share this and I can kind of address some of the problems if they come out later there will be a follow-up podcast episode for this because I think it's quite a big topic and there are other areas that we really haven't touched on in this particular episode so do look out for a second part to this so I have one give for you this week and it is going to be my all about me face template which you can complete with your child and see what you learn about each other so as usual you have to head over to my free resource library drmaryhand.com forward slash library where you'll find the link to download the resource all you need to do is pop in your email address and you'll get instant access not only to this week's resource but all the other free resources across all my podcast episodes as ever if you have enjoyed this episode I would so dearly love it if you could follow and review the podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time
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