Shoulds, ifs and buts...

should | sh oŏd|- modal verb
should have, could have, BUT you didn't
 1) Used as a judgment about your behavior and the guilt associated with it OR the judgment of your child's behavior based on your opinion of how you believe they should navigate inside your belief system
 2) a window into judgment

Seriously.  I have looked at this word for many years now.  I have decided it is a dirty, dirty word.  You should not use it... ain't that irony?!?

I heard a mom recently say, "I should have put him back in his bed but instead I snuggled with him and now I've created a need where there should not have been."

Hmmmm.... allow me to unpack that incredibly weighted statement...or are you already ahead of me?  Can you HEAR the judgment?  And the bitch of it is this: it's not all her own judgment.  She is adhering to the judgment of others and how THEY think she should parent.

After Christmas I thought: "I should write thank you letters".  Ew.  That feels like I'm totally trying to convince myself to do a social nicety that often feels like such a chore to do.

I actually NEVER write thank you letters.  Not because I'm all against "the man" and trying to revolt against social niceties.  I simply hate writing thank you letters. My dear friends who are reading this, now you know why I have never written you a gosh darn thank you letter.  I abhore writing them.  I would much rather call you and thank you, and talk to you and find out how you are doing.  Why, oh why, must we gauge our level of thankfulness on a letter that was a real pain in our ass to find the time to sit down and write in the first place?  Can I get an "Amen"?!?

When we parent from the place of judgment, be it our own judgment or outside influences, we have completely disconnected from ourselves and our children.  We have begun to fall down the guilt rabbit hole that was created by other people and their opinion of how we should act.

I could go on and on, however, I do fear beating a dead horse...which is a completely grotesque colloquialism.

If.  Here's my beef with "if": it's not the word itself so much as the power we give it when we try to somehow influence our child's behavior.

"If you don't eat your vegetables then you won't get dessert!"  or
"If you hit your brother again, then no more TV for a week!"

Right?

Nonviolent parenting has the awful task of making you aware of... pretty much everything.  There's science of the brain and stuff that I will get to someday.  There's the awareness about our own past when we unconsciously say something that our parents used to say to us (usually something that we swore we would never say to our own children). And then there's the awareness of the impact of the words we use. To say the dreaded "if statement" implies that we are about to reward or punish based on a result we judge to be correct.

When you set a condition (such as an "if statement") then you have negated a child's emotional life.  And why do we even care about a child's emotional life?!?  Because that, my dear reader, is the foundation for a healthy, school/life-ready human being (I'm simplifying... not by much).  Contrary to certain beliefs that perhaps we ourselves were raised with, the emotions of a child are important and life-altering.  Let's honor that, shall we?

But...  From Marshall Rosenberg, the author of Nonviolent Communication, comes the saying: "Don't put your but in my face", but not butt.  When you make a statement and add "but..." then you have taken away everything you JUST said.  I would like to prove my point, but I don't want to bore you.  Or I could say, I would like to prove my point, and I might bore you.  Yeah, I'm gonna prove my point and you might get bored and that's okay.

I challenge you to eradicate "but" and "should" from your vocabulary.  "If" is far tougher.  The truth is, IF your kid runs in traffic they might get hurt.  There is a place for an "if statement", however, there is also a way to abuse it.

Aware, aware, aware....aaaaaaaand I'm aware I'm done with this post.  If you want to read more, then you better get comfortable (and don't spend too much time away from your kids while you read this).  You probably want to think about fixing something to eat.  See that?  Not a "should" or a "but" in sight, and one lovingly placed "if statement".

Fin