inquiring parent

It had been one of those days. Husband was ill, had been for well over a week, LB was ill, had been for well over a week. Lolo wasn’t ill (okay, I guess I can’t add that to my list of moans then) – the house was a mess and I  hadn’t had enough sleep to muster the energy to clean or tidy. Everything was piling on top of me: the garden that had been neglected all winter, the kitchen door that still needed painting months after the builders had finished, the clothes that needed washing, and as for all the bits of paper lying around the house… does everybody with children have bits of paper lying all over the house, or is that just mine? And socks? And batteries Lolo has removed from one toy that doesn’t work to put into another toy that doesn’t work. 

Right now I smile fondly as I think of Lolo’s habit of dismantling toys, torches or her dad’s laptop, but that day it was just one more thing to grind me into the carpet with the dirt. The girls were getting at each other all day long. “She’s got my Tamagotchi.” “Well she’s taken all the Littlest Pets, and they’re mine!” “She bit me.” “She scratched me.” 

You know the sort of thing. Mostly it degenerates into “Aaaaaah! It’snotfair!” Aaaaaahhh!! Muummmm!!” (And that’s just me.)

I was trying, trying hard, so I thought, doing what I was supposed to do. I didn’t take sides, I told them to sort it out, told them I knew they could work it out. (That’s supposed to work, the experts say it does. So why isn’t it working…?Muummmm!!!) Mostly I just wanted them to stop fighting, and I wanted me to stop feeling grumpy and tired and fed up. 

The day dragged on, and all that seemed appealing was getting them into bed, getting time to sit by myself and stare into space. I’d gone from quietly telling them I trusted them to work it out between themselves, to yelling that their fighting was giving me a headache. (No, it definitely wasn’t my shouting that gave me the headache!) 

As I headed upstairs after doing the evening dishes, my heart sank as I heard them argue yet again. Then something hit me. All day long I’d been trying to stop their fights and to rationalize away my own anger. All day long I’d been believing that there was something wrong with us because they kept fighting and I couldn’t sort it. Maybe there was nothing wrong, maybe instead there was a lesson for us in this. What if instead of trying to get everything happy and peaceful,  we needed to face the anger, get everything out in the open? I remembered reading on Bryon Katie’s blog about a  Conflict Resolution process where two people fill out Judge-Your-Neighbor worksheets on each other and take turns to read them out. I had also seen a video clip of a mother listening while her son read his worksheet out. The person being ‘judged’ simply answers, “Thank you.” (They can also notice whether the statement they have just heard seems true to them, and can notice any desire to justify or defend, but in this process, would not act on that desire.) 

I explained this to my daughters and asked if they were willing to give it a go. They were, so long as they didn’t have to write anything down, they would just say all that needed to be said. Lolo went first, telling LB, “You took my Tamagotchi.”

“Thank you.”

“She kicked me when I tried to get it back.”

“Tell her,” I said. “Not me.”

She did. There were several more moments like this, when the girl sharing her experience wanted to tell me instead. (And with that she usually started to whine.) Each time I asked her to tell her sister, not me. 

As I’ve seen this process described, the participants would usually then go on to do The Work, questioning the statements on their worksheets, but  I didn’t remember that at the time, so we didn’t do that bit. It didn’t matter, by the time the girls had both aired their grievances and listened to each other the animosity had gone. I then suggested they tell me all they were angry at me about. I expected a torrent. 

Instead LB said, “Nothing.” 

“What, even after I’ve snapped and been grumpy all day?” I asked.

She said, “Yes. I forgive you. You’re my mum and I forgive you.”

Lolo agreed. 

This astonished me at the time. Later, I began to see that by accepting that their anger needed expression and by providing a way for them to safely express it, what I had done in essence was to say, “You’ve done nothing wrong. You are not wrong.” Without realising it, I had forgiven them (and myself.) This made it easy for them to forgive me. I recently read (in Radical Forgiveness by Colin Tipping) about a study done at Seattle University into forgiveness. The participants reported that the more they tried to forgive the harder it became. Those who came to feel empty of resentment did so not by an act of will, but by the sudden discovery that they had forgiven. What I found particularly interesting was that this discovery came after they had experienced being forgiven themselves – not necessarily by the person they subsequently forgave.

Having written this yesterday, I wasn’t sure how to finish this post. School had finished for the day and my husband had collected the girls and taken them to the leisure centre where Lolo was about to have a swimming lesson. When I met her she said,  “I’m in a bad mood.”  

“Are you?” I said, and hugged her. 

“She is,” LB confirmed. 

“Poor you,” her dad said, and hugged her.

I took Lolo  to get changed for her lesson, and for the rest the day not a trace of that bad mood remained. I guess that’s what happens to feelings when we don’t try to resist.