A Lesson in Letting Go
Letting go of control is extremely liberating. Perhaps especially when you didn’t even know you were holding on with all of your strength - once you let go, your strength can be put to better use.
I have lately been holding onto the idea of my children having a wonderful relationship together. I have found myself feeling triggered when my son, Critter, at 2.5 years, does not want to play with his baby sister, Little Miss. I have found myself feeling hurt, almost wanting to cry, when I see my son snatch a toy out of her hands, or push her away when she tries to join him in play, or hit her. I find myself feeling upset even when my daughter isn’t fazed or quickly moves onto another toy.
Almost every memory I have of being with my sister is colored by the knowledge that she didn’t really want me around her.One of my strongest such memories is of desperately wanting to play with her and her friend, and her absolutely refusing to let me in. I was so inconsolable that I actually scared her friend off; there then followed a procession of my sister’s friend walking home, followed by my sister trying to get her to stay, followed by me, crying and still trying to be included.
With that in my past, of course I feel hurt when my son pushes my daughter away. All those years of feeling hurt and excluded by my sister have been aching to get out and be released. My relationship with my sister, however, should be kept to just that - only between my sister and me. I have been letting our relationship get in the way of my children’s relationship.
More than that, though, is that I have been trying to control their relationship so that neither of them is hurt like I was. A noble endeavor, one could argue, but is it helping? On the contrary, I think I’m getting in their way. I’m getting frustrated, and showing my son that he should be, too; and I’m getting hurt, and showing my daughter that she should be, too. I’m not helping them have a good relationship - I’m setting them up to have a difficult one, one that I must always be trying to control.
I cannot force them to like each other. I cannot force my son to allow my daughter to play with him. I cannot constantly protect every toy from my daughter so she doesn’t chew it to bits (as my son seems to think she will, as one of his common phrases is, Don’t chew on that!). What I can do is step back, and let them play and learn how to be siblings. If that means they grow up to hate each other, at least they won’t hate each other because I taught them how. If they grow up to love each other, I’ll be proud to say their love is true and not coerced.
This is all well and good, in theory of course. What about in practice? Tonight, I sat with them in the living room. My son was watching videos on his tablet (that will be another post!), and my daughter was crawling around playing. At a certain point my son realized that my daughter was getting into all his toys, and left his tablet to take the toys from her. As soon as she got to one, he’d snatch it right out of her hands - sometimes rather roughly. It was hard not to intervene - especially at first - but the more I let them work it out, the easier it got.
Watching my son’s behavior, I was reminded of a post by one of my favorite blog authors, Teacher Tom, about a young boy who was hoarding all the play sand - see here for the article. In it, one young boy is hoarding most of the sand, but he looks absolutely miserable. The other children are sharing the little sand they have, and they’re having a blast. My son looked miserable, despite the fact that he’d hoarded all the toys on the living room table, while my daughter was having a blast trying to get any toy she could, and thought the whole thing was a game of keep-away.
To be clear, I didn’t just sit there as my son bullied my daughter. I blocked any particularly violent attempts as much as I could. I sportscast the events as they happened. You took the toy from Little Miss. Little Miss, you seem upset that Critter snatched that toy out of your hands. You really didn’t want her to play with that. But I did not ask him to give any toy back. I didn’t try to shame him. I didn’t prevent him from taking the toys. I did offer comfort to Little Miss when she was upset, and I offered comfort to Critter when he was also upset (though that was a little harder, as I was struggling with my own sense of fairness and desire for them to have a storybook sibling relationship that my sister and I never did). And after awhile, instead of taking toys from her, he started helping her play with toys. He righted the bead maze, he offered her a ring, etc. He eventually went back to his tablet to watch his shows and let her play on her own, both of them happy. If I’d intervened, I am sure I would have been frustrated and hurt and angry, and both my children would have been screaming - and since I would have been frustrated, I would have found it hard to comfort them.
Will this work every time? I don’t know. Will I be able to let them have their own relationship? I hope so. They’ve both had such a short amount of time being siblings. It’s only fair that I give them a chance to figure it out on their own.
