“Don’t try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.”
Russell Baker
I used to believe in nurture rather than nature but that was back in my first son Beau’s childhood when he compliantly went along with almost every suggestion and I wanted to proclaim myself the best of parents.
“Beau, it would be funny if you wore underpants on your head.”
“OK.”
“Beau, you should say ‘thank you’ every time you open up a present, maybe tell them it’s just what you wanted.”
“OK.”
That birthday, Beau said 16 times to 16 different people all sitting in the same room that their gift was EXACTLY what he had wanted.
When Beau went to Governor’s School I was certain it was because of my hard work and because Beau was a “good child” and didn’t that make me a “good parent”?
Nurture, right?
Then Donovan was born, with an iron will that he started to employ not only immediately but emphatically at the most inconvenient of times. I began to realize that no matter what I did with this child he would at some point be carried out of a store on my shoulder – and that I would probably end up in an emergency room or principal’s office before all was said and done.
If nature was the cause then, that means his stubbornness came from somewhere – and I was not foolish enough to not know what was staring back at me in the mirror.
My stubbornness put Donovan into timeout 37 times and his got him out 38.
Donovan wore diapers till age 4; we started intense potty training four hundred and sixty-three days before that.
I wanted him to poop in the potty and, well, he decided he wouldn’t poop at all if that were the case.
He won that battle and I won’t give you the gory details.
I once taunted him when he couldn’t keep up with me on his bike while out cruising the neighborhood. I stubbornly insisted he was old enough to keep up and he was just being a baby. He stubbornly kept trying till he was ready to pass out in the 90-degree weather but still insisting it was too hard.
I found out upon arriving home that his brakes had been stuck the entire time and I not only had to write an entire blog about my bad behavior, but I also had to eat crow in front of a six year old.
Yay me.
Donovan is not only stubborn but he is also impulsive, can’t sit still, can’t memorize, doesn’t love to read, sometimes acts before he thinks and has in his not so fine moments acted like a complete asshole out in public; a “bad kid” and well you know what that makes me……..
But it’s not true; he’s just different and anyone who knows him closely knows just as I do that he is an amazing kind and brave soul. As long as I try to give him the tools to help him find what he deems as success in life – just as I did for Beau – then I have not failed.
“Nature” has given the two of us a different path and “nurture” as we travel it is what we’ll do.
And while I admire Donovan’s stubbornness, it’s going to make for a difficult couple of years if someone doesn’t learn to back down soon – and let’s be honest …it’s not going to be me.
About Rebecca Suder
