Trusting your child. Could anything else be more important?

Setting Free

Someone wise once told me “In any relationship, the essence of trust is not in its bind, but in its bond. So hold the hand of the person whom you love rather than expecting them to hold yours …”

Ernest Hemingway said “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody, is to trust them first!”

A caged bird never sings – a childhood ditty that I struggled to understand, freeing every caged bird I could find (and there were many in the city of Calcutta where I was growing up), only to lose them forever. Not one came back to sing on my window sill. Or maybe even if it did, I did not have the maturity and intuitiveness to recognize it.

In this blog I want to make a case for trusting your children. In my experience trusting one’s child is a powerful and most enduring way to make sure that your child adheres to your values and takes on board your life’s learning. Just like the caged bird who never dances or sings if caged, so too children lose their luster and interest in life, if they do not have control over it. Children need to be empowered to be and do and achieve and self-actualize.

How can parents give this amazing gift to their own children?

Disclaimer: applying this parenting style is not easy! This will not work if parents trust blindly. This will not work if parents do not respect their child’s thoughts and views. This will not work if parents do not really believe that this will work. You have to trust TRUST for it to work 🙂 I am serious, parents need to be sensible about this and not expect their 4-year-old not to eat a candy lying near her plate of lunch, when they go to fetch some drinking water (real experience with my 4-year-old son). And most importantly, parents must inculcate an attitude of trust at home – deliver on your own promises as much as possible, apologize if you lax up one time, constantly communicate your expectations and trust, no matter how many times you feel disappointment. I promise you, that moment of “eureka” will come.  

Looking back at my own life, I now believe that the single most important gift my mother ever gave me was her TRUST in me. This trust that she gave to me, so completely and so wholeheartedly, acted like the a magic wand at times, the sword of Damocles at other times, a good omen mantra sometimes, a kala jaadu totka potka (and Indian black magic spell) in other more trying times, an evil eye warder off-er many times and all of the time my mother’s trust ALWAYS MADE ME MAKE AN EFFORT TO RISE UP TO HER EXPECTATIONS OF ME. It was my Laxman rekha (an Indian ancient tale tells this story of a magical line drawn by a brother-in-law (called Laxman) to protect his brother’s dear wife (named Sita), as he goes to rescue his brother (named Ram) in trouble. Nothing evil would ever happen to Sita if she remained within the area defined by that line! As a teenager and even as a young adult, if I was ever tempted to try out the dangerous fruits of freedom, my mother’s trust either hung above my head as the sword of Damocles or acted as my Laxman rekha, beyond which I could not step. My mother was evil like that 🙂 But what a very smart woman she continues to be. Intuitively knowing that her trust would do all the work that no amount of lectures, coaxing and cajoling could do.

To be honest, I do not think that my mother ever really (had the time) to think this one through. She was a single mother in the late 60s and thus the main caregiver and bread earner combined. As my mother reads every single one of my blogs (not once but many times over), I am sure she will correct me if I have deduced this wrong. Thus I now believe that she had no other option but to trust her children. Moreover, I also do not think that she realized what a powerful tool she had in her hands, to make her children adhere to her values – till much later I think. Nevertheless, she never once doubted our word, when we spoke it. And this was the main reason that I never lied to her. I was sure that she would not lay it into me, even if I told her that I was to blame for the happening. And so she made it easy for me to tell the truth. It was not as though I did not face the consequences of doing the wrong that I confessed to. I remember at least one time of being grounded for a week from playing footie with my building mates! Now that was tough. But now, looking back, I think the toughest punishment of wrong-doing was her disappointment in me, her loss of faith in me. This consequence was so much more powerful a corrector than any amount of reproaches and scoldings from her, could ever have been. I am sure, I would have tuned this out and continued on my reprehensible path, if such had been her parenting style. I was and continue to be a very strong personality and it is amazing how she learned early on that to tame me was better than to try to control me. I will always be eternally grateful to her and love her so much more than I have ever before (if that were possible) now that I do understand her parenting style of always believing me and believing in me.

My mother did not want latch key children, so we had full-time help whom we called amma (mother in the colloquial language). This esteemed lady was herself a single mother of four children. So it was kind of quid pro quo. However, our amma left for greener pastures (and who could blame her, least of all my mother) when I turned 10 years old. Thus we did become latch key kids, much against all my mother’s endeavors. So how did my mother parent? My mother never ever curtailed my freedom, intruded on my privacy or poked her nose into my diary or my private thoughts and ideas. Even today it amazes me how my mother could be such a progressive and open-minded woman during that time – especially when she had NO ROLE MODEL IN PARENTING AT ALL. All Indian parents (starting from her own) of her time were conclusively possessive, intrusive, controlling and demanded absolute obedience without any questioning always, of their children.  However, my mother did not question, preach, lecture, teach, coax / cajole or anything like that. I just had to tell her where I was, whether I was safe, what time I would be back and so on. And that was it. I remember many an occasion when she was told by the doyens of the Calcutta society that we were surrounded with, that she would rue her parenting style when (note it was when and not if) her daughter was ruined (implying unwed pregnancy, single mother hood, no marriage proposal, spinsterhood – and any other number of ills that could befall any unprotected adolescent and teenager. In a day and age where mothers monitored every single reading material that daughters laid their hands on, so that no idea of rebelling against the status quo (of societal norms and mores) could ever even dream of appearing, my mother was “allowing” me to read every single book / magazine / paper I could lay my hands on, travel around India on my own, study in a co-ed college, go back-packing around Europe and UK and even do part-time jobs in the city to fund my shopping / traveling / educational expeditions. This when almost all of my friends were never venturing out on their own anywhere and being obedient (and brain washed) daughters. Now I do not want to spend much time here in this blog blaring my own trumpet, but I do believe that I have not turned out badly at all after all. Never gave my mother any cause to regret ever giving me her trust. Right ma?

Cut to the present now. Imagine this situation: you tell your child to go do her homework. Then after 10 minutes you go into her room and see that instead of doing her homework, she is watching TV. You scold her and tell her that you expected her to listen to her parents and here she was not obeying. Next time you tell her to do the same, you make it a point to go into her room to check up on her, to check whether she was being obedient or not. And thus a pattern is formed. A pattern of distrust. Is that too harsh? Okay then let us say a pattern of not having faith in your child, that she will do the right thing for her. A pattern of disbelieving.

Now be honest, how many of you have been in this situation? I know that I have. Often.

This is an insidious behavioral pattern that stems from the best of intentions and wants to teach a child to make the right choices of behavior for herself. But in turn what happens is that a pattern of disbelief begins. This grows with accusations of how the child is disobedient and that nothing good will come of it, pleas to the child reform for her own good, incantations to believe. Only – more disbelief is engendered. Parents are bewildered and beleaguered. They complain in family forums and society living rooms of how good they are, how much they are (oh woe is me) ‘sacrificing’ for their child, but that ingrate child will have none of it!

But the disbelief is never stemmed. The communication of expectations is obstructed by the surge of recriminations. Remember negativity only begets more negative behavior.

So then, what goes wrong? After all, we are all loving parents. And all that we want is for our children to achieve their potential, to be the best they can be.

Here is my analysis of this situation and how I course corrected and freed myself from being enslaved by my own fears of “not being a good enough parent” and thus moved from being a jailer parent to a more trusting one.

There are a few simple truths about human beings that if a parent is aware of, then parenting becomes so much more intuitive and sensitive. Some of these are:

• If you can get “buy in” to your way of thinking from the people you want to influence, then you do not ever have to push, cajole, plead anymore. ‘Buy in’ means the person you want to influence believes that if they do behave in the way you want them to , then this will be good for them in the end. They believe that the behavior / attitude / action that you espouse is the right one in that situation.
• When you trust someone before you distrust them, there is a positive endorsement of good values and generally the chances of a bad grape turning sweet rather than sour are far greater.
• Moreover, a trusting person has far greater chances of you making friends and influencing people.
• When you trust, you are taking away the responsibility of influencing a particular expected behavior from yourself and shifting the onus to the one you trust. Thus the person you are trusting will feel a strong need not to break your trust in her. As this will reflect badly on her and not on you. And no human being wants to look and appear not good enough. 
• When you communicate your values and expectations to you child, and trust your child to rise to those expectations, it is quite unlikely that your child will ever want to fall in your eyes, the eyes of her most important role model. This is how trust works always in favor of the one giving it.
• Freedom has always worked to create the best innovators. When you trust a person, you free the person from your CONTROL. You let the person be, to try to earn your respect and goodwill and love. Then and only then will this person try to be the best they can be. 

I am sure that some of you reading this are now wondering how to obtain this “buy in”? So what can we as parents do to get “buy in” from our children? In my experience, getting another person to believe that what you are saying is actually the right for them (and not for you) and right for that situation, is a matter of using reason / logic, discussing various actions and outcomes, the cause and effect of various different courses of actions – without using emotion as the main trigger. Thus here below are some of the things that worked for me. And believe you me, this was not at all easy for me. Being Punjabi by ethnicity, my DNA did not support this way of behavior 🙂 Moreover, my personality type is also hard-wired in my ethnicity – coming as Punjabis do from the warrior class of people, we tend to use loud bombastic language to put the fear of God into the people we want to influence 🙂 🙂 Suffice to say that I strove, because I bought into this parenting style to be the most suitable one to be able to achieve the goals we wanted to achieve as parents for our children, I persevered and I achieved (barely) by the skin of my teeth. These below are my learnings after a lot of sweat and blood and gore:

Trust is not really trust when you can control the situation.

1. Never tell a child that “she will not understand” the reasons why you ask her to do something. Think about how ironical it is that you ask your child to obey you, basing her obedience on unconditional trust and no questions asked and no reasons given, YET YOU CANNOT DO THE SAME by listening to your child’s point of view and TRUSTING her reasoning in return! Something to think about, don’t you think? How can you ask your child for something that you yourself cannot / are not willing to give? Are you setting for her the right example? In the end if you parent from the seat of your pants, then your child will just ape you. Remember that whenever you get a sense of deja vu when dealing with your children!
2. Try giving your child the benefit of the doubt, for her sake if not for your own. Pretend (if you cannot bring yourself to really believe her reasoning) and go with it and see what happens? You may be pleasantly surprised.
3. Always clarify and endorse the rules of the game. Be it going out with friends, activities at school, homework, grades at school, activities with friends, hanging out at home, food habits etc. Set clear boundaries so that there is no confusion. And you follow those rules first yourself before expecting your child to go first. If you do not want your child to question your every move, then do not question your child’s every move. Trust her on the little things and you will never have any issues with the bigger ones. For example you want to have a say on how she wears her hair, the clothes she chooses, the activities she wants to participate in and so on. You give your point of view rationally, state the expected consequences even more clearly and AND THEN LET YOUR CHILD BE THE ONE TO DECIDE. Thereafter, if she does not listen to you with regard to say what she wears, does her hair, color of school bag she carries, let it go. Focus on the other bigger issues like physical hygiene, clean language (without swear words after every two words), politeness (Ps & Qs) and when the expected consequences do occur, follow through. Let your child face those consequences (both at home and in school).
4. Encourage your child to negotiate with you. Negotiating is an art, a science, a life skill. Your child needs to learn this well. So start negotiating with her. Give one, get two has always been my starting point with negotiating 🙂 Try it. And after you have “successfully” negotiated (no matter how much or how little success you feel you have), you must then let your child deliver on her part of the bargain, without your checking every second if she is going to keep her end of it. If your child does not deliver on her side of the bargain, show your disappointment. And leave it there. Do not keep rubbing it in every time there is an argument.  But you must always keep your side of the bargain.
5. Trust your child’s judgement of a situation BEFORE you impart to her your “experienced judgement”. This last has been the most difficult one for me. My maternal instinct is just to jump in and protect. When I can see, from a mother’s seeing eyes, where the situation is headed and how it will end, to listen to my child deduce, guess, estimate and judge (and especially when I know it is off the mark) … oh boy, is it hard? Yet I have learned to state my “assessment” of the situation, only when asked. Then in a mild oh I just think this manner and leave my words their to sit, jell, internalize (if I am lucky) and hopefully (and if I am really lucky) used to guide my child’s reaction to / action on that situation. Of course it does not work all the time, mother’s words are ignored and then there are consequences which have to be faced. And this, in my experience, is the biggest teacher of jurisprudence.
6. Consistency. Keep going. No matter how any times you may be disappointed in the meantime. You have to believe that it will work for it to actually start working.
7. And when you notice the first glimmer of it working, recognize it, celebrate it. Communicate how much you appreciate it and show how much you love her for being so trustworthy.

I have noted that over the years, as I learn to trust, (ah ma, how did this come to you so easily?) my children are taking better / more intuitive decisions, act on their own, take ownership for their own learning and future and save me all that energy that could have potentially been expended chasing them to do / think / be and which they would never have followed in any case. I am a believer now. Here’s hoping that you all of you find that trust in your own children too, so that your children become self motivated and self-propelled individuals, to be the best they can be.