sgmwife1
08-29-2006, 03:26 PM
This is a really good article that I found to be VERY helpful. What do you think?
When advocacy becomes debilitating
Dana Loesch
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
08/21/2006
Dana Loesch
A couple of weeks ago I had a disagreement with a friend in which she told me that she was acting as her son’s “advocate.” In my mind, she was totally overacting to an issue which no one intended or had the ability to predict. In her mind, she was serving as her son’s mother bear. During our exchange I felt as though tiny archers were shooting at me from the dark of her eyes.
I begrudgingly took the heat to stop the fire from spreading to others involved in the situation, which left me a little angry. I wondered if it would alter our friendship. I thought to myself that too many mothers confuse the word “advocate” with “nurse maid.” Boy, I thought, I am so not like that.
That was before Liam’s play-date wherein I spied on him and his friends through the blinds in Ewan’s room just to make sure that everyone was playing nicely.
Still, I wasn’t hovering! Merely spying! Two completely different things! A couple of boys in the group were older and I was merely acting as an advocate in case they got too rough.
When Liam walked into his first preschool class a year prior I stayed in the building with him for the initial three classes. I intervened and corrected him when he needed correcting (because I was listening at the door like a psycho) instead of allowing the teachers to do it. Maybe you could classify that as behaving as a nurse maid, but still! It was his first experience with preschool and I wanted it to be successful. I was his advocate.
Once, while Liam was waiting his turn for the big slide at the playground, an older boy shoved ahead of him.
“Excuse me,” I shouted from the park bench. “That wasn’t very nice. You should wait your turn like everyone else.” I was acting like his advocate. I was smug.
Liam rolled his eyes at me and slapped his forehead.
For the first two years of Liam’s life I approached issues with this smothering, mother bear attitude and justified it by saying it was advocacy.
I overlooked one tiny flaw in my brilliant plan to advocate/suffocate the world into compliance with my standards for my son: I wasn’t teaching him anything. Well, I was, I was teaching him how to use me as his crutch and robbing him of his chance to figure out his own problems. Here I thought I was a totally brilliant parent and very hands-on.
I was trying to change the world for my son instead of teaching my son to cope with the world.
This did not jibe with my master plan of raising children who would leave their mother in peace and behave like self-sufficient adults. I was approaching this advocate thing wrong.
There isn’t anything wrong with wanting to change the world for your children; it’s just not entirely practical. You waste your time on changing other people instead of raising your children up to be impenetrable forces of strong character and hard resolve. As parents, we’re supposed to provide them the tools they need to compassionately resolve their own problems. That, and be able to erect a pup tent. I knocked a whole in the wall over the weekend while fighting to put up Liam’s tent. He gave me a sad look, a look a dad gives his son when he realizes that his son sucks at sports.
Since this realization, I’ve knocked the advocating back a notch. I let Liam figure out his own problems and show him how to cope with the world, intervening only when necessary, even if I have to tie myself to playground equipment so as to stop from hovering. I use the things I can’t change as lessons about the world around him. I hope that my friend will one day realize what I did: at some point, you have to teach kids how to act as their own advocates.
When advocacy becomes debilitating
Dana Loesch
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
08/21/2006
Dana Loesch
A couple of weeks ago I had a disagreement with a friend in which she told me that she was acting as her son’s “advocate.” In my mind, she was totally overacting to an issue which no one intended or had the ability to predict. In her mind, she was serving as her son’s mother bear. During our exchange I felt as though tiny archers were shooting at me from the dark of her eyes.
I begrudgingly took the heat to stop the fire from spreading to others involved in the situation, which left me a little angry. I wondered if it would alter our friendship. I thought to myself that too many mothers confuse the word “advocate” with “nurse maid.” Boy, I thought, I am so not like that.
That was before Liam’s play-date wherein I spied on him and his friends through the blinds in Ewan’s room just to make sure that everyone was playing nicely.
Still, I wasn’t hovering! Merely spying! Two completely different things! A couple of boys in the group were older and I was merely acting as an advocate in case they got too rough.
When Liam walked into his first preschool class a year prior I stayed in the building with him for the initial three classes. I intervened and corrected him when he needed correcting (because I was listening at the door like a psycho) instead of allowing the teachers to do it. Maybe you could classify that as behaving as a nurse maid, but still! It was his first experience with preschool and I wanted it to be successful. I was his advocate.
Once, while Liam was waiting his turn for the big slide at the playground, an older boy shoved ahead of him.
“Excuse me,” I shouted from the park bench. “That wasn’t very nice. You should wait your turn like everyone else.” I was acting like his advocate. I was smug.
Liam rolled his eyes at me and slapped his forehead.
For the first two years of Liam’s life I approached issues with this smothering, mother bear attitude and justified it by saying it was advocacy.
I overlooked one tiny flaw in my brilliant plan to advocate/suffocate the world into compliance with my standards for my son: I wasn’t teaching him anything. Well, I was, I was teaching him how to use me as his crutch and robbing him of his chance to figure out his own problems. Here I thought I was a totally brilliant parent and very hands-on.
I was trying to change the world for my son instead of teaching my son to cope with the world.
This did not jibe with my master plan of raising children who would leave their mother in peace and behave like self-sufficient adults. I was approaching this advocate thing wrong.
There isn’t anything wrong with wanting to change the world for your children; it’s just not entirely practical. You waste your time on changing other people instead of raising your children up to be impenetrable forces of strong character and hard resolve. As parents, we’re supposed to provide them the tools they need to compassionately resolve their own problems. That, and be able to erect a pup tent. I knocked a whole in the wall over the weekend while fighting to put up Liam’s tent. He gave me a sad look, a look a dad gives his son when he realizes that his son sucks at sports.
Since this realization, I’ve knocked the advocating back a notch. I let Liam figure out his own problems and show him how to cope with the world, intervening only when necessary, even if I have to tie myself to playground equipment so as to stop from hovering. I use the things I can’t change as lessons about the world around him. I hope that my friend will one day realize what I did: at some point, you have to teach kids how to act as their own advocates.