Intentional

Audrey's sleep has been really disturbed lately. She's never been one to sleep all the way through the night, with a few brief exceptions when she was a baby, and that's always been fine by us. We so strongly disagree with the concept of "controlled crying" or "cry it out" - we take the longer, harder route of safety, respect, attachment; we practice gentle parenting. This means Audrey doesn't sleep for twelve hours straight like a good little automaton. It means she acts appropriately for her age and developmental level and wakes up several times a night needing a feed, comfort, her mama. It means she calls out to us if she has a bad dream, and in the morning she wakes me up with warm little hands on my face: "Mama! Wake." If I had a problem with this I would be seriously asking myself why I had a baby - this is what they do, you can't just pick and choose which parts of it you want and which you don't.

Audrey knows we'll always be there. Always. If she needs us, she only has to let us know and we're there. This safety, this lack of abandonment, is one of the single biggest things I can give her at this age when it comes to her psychological development. I need to remember that when I'm trying to wrap presents at midnight and hear her call my name through the baby monitor.

Independence is prized so highly in even very young children. I always wonder why. Obviously I think it's good to encourage children to try things they are ready for - both physically and emotionally ready - but it is simply not developmentally appropriate for a toddler to be independent of their parents to a very great extent at all. She needs us. She needs me to hold her hand when she's feeling shy, and not tease her for it or make it a big deal, or invalidate her feelings - "Oh, you're not shy!" Sometimes Audrey flings herself at people, makes friends with the kind of wild abandon I wish I could have when meeting new people. Sometimes she hangs back and wants to do her own thing instead. I have to work harder to make that Fine By Me.

It's also funny to me that, for all that "independence" is prized when it is something the parent wants - the child to sleep for 12 hours without waking, the child to learn to use the toilet as early as possible, the child to be okay with hanging out with strangers at nursery, the child to play by themselves/with other children and not need us there to engage with them - it is actively curtailed when it is inconvenient. What a mixed message! We are entering with Audrey what is known as the "terrible twos", the age where she is asserting her autonomy, her individuality, her no. It is really tough, but I want to be a parent who has a LOT of respect for that. I want to give her a lot of space to find out the shape of herself. And I want to teach her, through this respect, that she has a right to control over her own life and body.

As I've said so many times, I want nothing to do with "obedience". If I can't communicate why Audrey needs to do something, maybe I should have a think about what that means. Is it a NEED after all, or a want on my part? How can I model respect for people's boundaries, communication, team work, compromise? Why do I keep enforcing MY priorities on other people?

I'm trying to be a better person. I'm trying to get things right. I'm trying to look at my own behaviour first, before I censure hers. And you know what? She is trying. She is trying big time. In a funny way, she gets so much more of this right than I do, and I am constantly learning from her. Parenthood is immensely humbling like that.

Yesterday I had people coming round here to the house at 4pm for shelter related stuff, and we were cutting it fine to be back on time. My work mobile charger was broken, so I didn't have it with me and couldn't call them to rearrange. Audrey wanted to play - oh how she wanted to play outside on the crunchy, frosty grass in the park we were walking by to get to the bus stop. There were little hills to run down, and she wanted to be there so fiercely. She could not have understood less about getting home for boring work things. We couldn't stop. She cried and cried, melting to the floor, struggling to run to the park. I so got it. I so empathised. I didn't want to go home either, I didn't want responsibilities. I wanted to run down a hill and feel the grass crunching under my feet.

Empathising is easy. Communicating that to her is tough. Letting her cry and be sad and not feel pressured to pretend she's not really hacked off just so it doesn't embarrass me - that's tough. I don't want to say "it's okay" when it's clearly NOT okay by Audrey. I say "it's okay to feel really bad" and "you wanted to play, you feel sad and angry" and "I'm sorry we can't stop today, I wish we could too". I try to simply explain what's going on and keep checking that she's following what I'm saying - "We have to get the bus. Can you point to the bus?" I provide lots of opportunities for distraction, but try not to force them.

I try so hard not to let it provoke an emotional response. It is really, really hard. I can feel my brain wanting to go there, to make it all about me and how I'm having a rough time and I'm tired and hey, kid, don't you know I have work to do? Don't you care about how *I* feel?? I can feel myself wanting to shout her down, show her I can make a loud noise too, tell her to shut up, tell her she's cried enough. Ouch. Ugly feelings. It's tough to even write it down like this, but I want to be honest.

Most of the time I can look at my little girl and realise hey, I'm the parent here. I'm the adult. The only way she's going to learn to regulate her emotions and her responses is by my example - I can't bully her into feeling better, I can only try to be a calm, accepting centre for her. I can make this about empathy, or I can make it about how I'm bigger and she needs to do what I say and shut the hell up. It's an obvious choice when you think about it, right?

Lots of hugs. Lots of letting go of the small stuff. Lots of remembering just how many people would love to have these problems, lots of remembering that one day I will miss this so strongly that I would give anything for one minute of it back. Even the 1am still-not-sleeping minutes.