Enough With the “Just Wait” Warnings, Moms

Friends, I want to warn you. I want to warn you about warnings of every kind. Before the baby comes, they say, “Sleep now while you can, because afterward you'll never sleep again.” They say, “Just wait until she's walking.” “Just wait until she's two, that's when the terrible twos hit,” which is now called the autonomy phase. “Just wait until she's in the 'loose-tooth puberty' (that's the German name for the moody stretch around age six when kids start losing teeth), until she's REALLY a teenager. And oh my God, it's so much worse with girls than with boys” (or the other way around!).

Do We Hand Out Warnings at Weddings, Too?

Imagine if we handed out all these warnings at a wedding. What would people say? “Take a good look at him now, because soon he'll be conked out on the couch with his mouth hanging open, burping and patting his little married-guy belly”?! Is that what we want to hear?

Is that the world we want to live in? Who does it help when we look into the future with such a sour, skeptical eye? Can't we just hope, cheerfully, that it'll all be okay? Wouldn't that also give kids a more positive outlook? I can't even count how many times moms have told me, kind of astonished, that the teen years with their kids have been totally harmless so far. Why should that surprise anyone?

Because it's been drilled into us how hard all of this is. And then, when things are fine, we're caught off guard and don't quite trust it, waiting for the other shoe to drop. But the teen years can go along totally calmly! Just like a pregnancy can be lovely for some women while others throw up the whole time.

More Optimism About What's Ahead

Blanket warnings definitely don't help. All they do is make the happy, uncomplicated cases feel even rarer… And then there are those lines: “If you don't stay on top of this or that, you'll never get it back under control. YOU HAVE TO CRACK DOWN.” What that does, more than anything, is scare us into thinking we could break something for good.

But what we need is encouragement! It doesn't matter who it comes from: a girlfriend, another mom, the daycare teacher, our partner, the neighbor… We need to hear that it's okay to be clear, because everything else falls into place around that, as long as we stay in relationship and keep the trust between us intact.

Standing Firm

Funnily enough, I'm noticing this right now with my horse, too. At the barn there are people who take more of a needs-based approach. There are people who train through punishment (not at our barn, but I've seen plenty of it in the past). And there are people who simply count on giving the animal clarity:

“THIS is okay.” That earns praise. “THIS is not okay, so let's try that again and do it better.” When animals know where they stand, they feel safe. People aren't any different. If threats are constantly swirling around us, we don't stand firmly anymore and we wobble. The living beings around us notice. They can feel it. And they might use the gaps to their advantage.

Carrying Rock-Solid Conviction

That's why it starts with our own stance. With our rock-solid conviction. Then we can handle not just the occasional meltdown, but threats of every kind. Because we get to have the confidence to be clear. To be a rock. Something others can push against without it toppling over, because we know what we want and what we stand for.

A “No, there are no punishments in my house,” say, to someone more authoritarian. A “No, you're not just taking off at a gallop” to the horse. And an “I know you want to run ahead, but we stop at the red light” to the child. When it comes from deep conviction, we get that across, and people take us seriously. Or what do you think?