Keeping healthy expectations of your children

Since I wrote this post about accepting my child for who he is, I’ve been thinking about the expectations I have of myself and my kids.

Where expectations are concerned, there are basic ones that help us plan and structure our lives. These include: the expectation that my mother will come around on certain days to help out. That the husband and I will set aside time to spend together as a family on weekends. That the school bus will arrive on time.

These expectations help us to function as a family unit. They are also explicitly said, agreed upon and understood by everyone involved. Healthy expectations drive us towards a shared ideal; they help us move towards meaningful goals.

Then there are unhealthy expectations. The ones that carry unseen weight.

The unhealthy ones tend to place too much responsibility on someone else’s shoulders or depend on circumstances that are beyond our control. For instance, that the baby will sleep through the night all of the time, or that we’ll never see any more pee/poop accidents once the kids are potty-trained.

I guess a good indicator of how unhealthy or healthy an expectation is, is how we react when the expectation is not met. Do we get upset if the husband doesn’t come home with a gift on Valentine’s Day? Do we blame the older sibling when the younger child she’s supposed to be looking after suffers a fall?

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We’ve recently been re-learning from ground zero how best to parent JJ. We’ve also discovered a few things about him, such as he loves order and perfection, to the point where he sometimes throws a fit when things fall out of order.

I’m starting to see that loving order isn’t a disorder. It’s a personality trait that can be positive if managed well.

Because of his personality, we are mindful to not impose expectations that certain things need to be done in a certain way. (We try to encourage flexibility rather than rigid-ness.) For instance, we try not to say you must paint the fire engine red.

As far as possible (and where it doesn’t cause harm), we let him do things his way. We allow him room to be the artist, the story-teller, the builder. It doesn’t matter if the story he tells isn’t absolutely logical. We just let him run with his imaginations.

Coping with disappointments

When he accidentally wets his pants, we try not to make a big deal of it. We remind him to go earlier next time and ask him to change his pants.

We didn’t use to be like this. There was a time when we thought he was potty trained, but he went through some regression and started to poop in his diaper. As we didn’t understand the whys, we scolded and even used the cane, thinking that he was acting out of defiance. But we read the situation wrongly. Our expectations of him were haywire. He simply wasn’t ready at the time, and the best reaction from us is to have no reaction as all. (Of course now we have the benefit of hindsight. At the time I remember being really frustrated at all the pee/poop accidents.)

Now when he loses control and throws a tantrum, we try to remain calm, sit by him and calm him down. I don’t entertain lofty expectations of him being able to control his emotions all of the time. I understand he’s still learning to cope. He is after all just 3 and a half. This helps me to appreciate (and affirm him for) the times he does show us he can control his temper.

In a sense, I’m keeping my expectations of my children realistic.

This mindset helps me to look out for the bright spots. For one, JJ’s been learning to cope with unwanted interruptions (usually from baby Josh) by stopping his play activity altogether. Say he’s been building his blocks halfway and they get toppled over. He’ll just pack them up and do something else for a little while. Of course, he’ll still get upset. But if he expresses his emotions in a controlled manner, we think it’s okay for him to “let it out” - as long as he does not spiral out of control, and no one is harmed.

I take heart that he’s learning to cope with life’s little disappointments. (We can’t shield him from these. We can’t make every single thing go his way - that would be setting ourselves up for a bigger disaster.)

I take heart that as we encourage him to keep trying, and remind him that he can do it with God’s help, he’s slowly but surely making small steps.

I don’t expect parenting him (or any of his siblings) to be a breeze. I expect curve balls and shocks and surprises, and tears, fears and disappointments. I expect failures, multiple times, my own and theirs.

But I do hold on to hope.

I hope that as we take to this new way of parenting him, he will be freed from the weight of expectations.

I hope that he’ll enjoy being him, and that we’ll enjoy him as he is.

With young children, letting go of some of our expectations (especially the unhealthy / unrealistic ones) can help to minimise the frustrations felt by both parent and child. It can help us become calmer, happier parents.”

Have you experienced this in your own parenting journey?