My Child is a Blank Canvas
It took me a long time to become a parent. Not because I didn’t want to be a Mama, but because I was so fortunate to have all these amazing moms already in my tribe, who were always fantastically honest with me when it came to the struggles and pitfalls of parenting. And I listened to them. In my mind, they were (and still are) experts in their fields of parenting practice because they live the life of being involved and active parents.
So it took me awhile and I don’t regret it. I wanted to be young and selfishly enjoy sleeping in on a Sunday morning or watching movies all day on a rainy day when I could. I didn’t want to have the obligations of being a parent. I knew when I could be ok with giving up that sense of freedom for a sense of responsibility, then I could become a parent.
Along this journey, the one thing that always leaves me in awe is the tremendous amount of responsibility on so many different levels you take on when you become a parent. Your child is literally a blank canvas when it comes to everything in the world and everything they learn will be a result of you teaching it to them. That always really stuck with me. That her views on people, on right and wrong, on even how to cook an egg would be the result of me teaching her. For me, this was always a HUGE thing and while I wanted it, it also made me feel like this parenting thing isn’t for the faint of heart.
We’ve hit our major developmental milestones for her age and all of that with relative ease which I seriously thank God for everyday because I know not every parent has that experience, and now we’re starting to learn more abstract ideas. Yep. The hard to explain ones because they need to be explained to a 3 year old in a way that a 3 year old can understand, when let’s be honest, some of the things that happen in the world are still difficult for my adult brain to grasp.
Nonetheless, we truck along. And we approach the idea of stealing. Well specifically, taking something that isn’t yours without permission, thanks to a Lilo and Stitch book we borrowed from the library. She was very confused why Stitch could take a bike that wasn’t his, but she can’t take something from a store (for instance) if Mommy hasn’t paid for it. I swear she understood that taking something that’s not yours is wrong and it hurts people, blah blah, all those good moral things, blah blah.
I thought wow this is really sticking because every time we read the book, she could comment about how Stitch shouldn’t have taken the bike because it wasn’t his, and it belonged to this girl, and it was mean. I thought wow maybe this has potential to be a parenting win.
Then one day we’re at the pool, because that’s her favorite place in the summer, and she was playing with this toy boat that some kid left there, totally struggling as to why she couldn’t take said boat home to play with in her bathtub. Me, being the obvious genius I am, equated it back to the bike and Stitch and taking something that isn’t yours. I told her maybe the owner of the boat would come back to get their boat and they would be so sad if it wasn’t there because in their mind, it should still be there.
I felt like she was grasping the idea, she seemed on board, she was agreeing with me and said she understood why we needed to leave the boat there. So I thought well what the heck let’s see where she’s at with all this and I asked her, do you remember the fancy word for taking something that’s not yours? I didn’t expect her to know it, just so we’re clear…and she said “Of course Mama. Unfortunate. Because he left it and I got it.”
Oh geez. Back to the drawing board I guess…
