Rights & Responsibilities

Over the years during my teaching career, and certainly during pregnancy, I spent a lot of time considering how I would raise my children. I considered what kind of attitudes to themselves, to life and to others that I wanted my children to have. Due to the extensive professional and personal development preceding the arrival of my firstborn, I had a pretty good idea of my goals and how to go about achieving them, however it wasn't until that firstborn was appr. 18 months old, that I had an epiphany and was able to narrow it down to a very simple underlying principle. Safety.

I want my family to be safe in our home. Our home is not a fixed physical location such as a house, it is the essence that makes up our family unit. Safety is not limited to that of our physical well-being either. I have a holistic definition of safety. The safety to be yourself. The safety to take risks. The safety to know that you are loved. The safety that you belong. The safety that you will be nurtured. The safety that you will be fed. The safety that you will be able to pursue your interests. The safety that you will be encouraged to grow and learn...

'Rights' is a very difficult concept to explain to an 18 month old. It seemed to me however that these rights, and the availability of these rights all contribute to a feeling of safety. And this is how I explained it to my 18 month old, when he queried an occurrence, and I needed to answer in a way that he could understand.
" I want everyone in our home to be safe."
In the following years as he has grown older and better able to understand more complex complementary concepts, I have extended upon this with statements such as
" We all need to feel safe in order to learn and grow well"
"Everybody has the right to be safe",
you may now glance to the title, and notice that the word rights features in the title. Alongside the word rights, is the word responsibilities.

In order for everyone to have their basic rights met, we have each have a responsibility to bring that about, for ourselves and for others.

As a parent I have a responsibility to ensure my children's rights are met. I also have the responsibility to ensure that they  understand their rights and simultaneously recognise their responsibility in meeting and maintaining their own and others rights. I have a further responsibility to ensure that I do not expect more of them than is developmentally and individually appropriate. Until recently, my youngest was too young to be able to really see things from another's point of view, or to understand how is actions affect others. The parts of the brain that are crucial for this, do not start to form connections to the rest of the brain, until they are approximately 6 years of age.

Generally I am in favour of allowing my children to learn things when they are ready to learn them. I believe that this is their right. However there are times when extenuating circumstances require me to take steps to ensure things are learnt when they are needed. This is my responsibility as a parent to ensure that my boys have the skills they need to function within our home, and society. This weekend I reached an internal snapping point. For the better part of nigh on 9 years, I had been consistently putting the needs of others first. I had children under 6 years of age, and I understood that my prime responsibility was to meet the physical and emotional needs. I Understood that at times, this means temporarily putting my own to one side, in order to raise healthy well-balanced, mature and secure children who would then be able to reciprocate in later years as their fundamental needs had been met in their early childhood years.

My 6 year old, is now almost 6 1/4. He had been starting to show early indicators of being able to understand another's point of view, and things had been coming to a bit of a head for me in regards to how I felt I was being treated, and the things I understood my family expected me to do. These all revolve predominantly around the roles of maintaining a household. Over the last year there have been some comments from my second son that have frankly left me aghast and furious, however upon reflection, I realised that he had been essentially articulating his observations.
"No Daddy, you don't tidy, that's Babsie's job"
"I'm tired of doing this, come on just leave it, Babsie'll do it all"
"I'm not doing that, it's your job"
Despite immediate responses from the other members of the family around him to extend his view, such as Carl's comments "That's not really true, I do things around the house, I do the washing, and tidy the kitchen at night, and help get you boys to bed" many of these things were either done at a time that K(6) was asleep, otherwise occupied, or something that he did not see as 'work', namely taking the boys to bed, because that in K's view is quality time with Daddy, not work for daddy. Most of the services treats, and privileges that K receives such are in K(6)'s world view his right. My attempts too open his eyes to a wider view, and especially the idea that a family all has a responsibility to contribute to the home, have been in vain. He has become increasingly demanding, in fact to my view, his attitude at times borders on dictatorial. I had enough.

Out of desperation I took action on Sunday, that I am not particularly comfortable with. I have spent a fair amount of time reflecting on what I did, and have reasoned that I have not breached any of K(6)'s rights. I am still not comfortable with it. I've thought a lot further about it. This morning I realised that a large part of my discomfort with Sunday's actions stems from the fact that I stood up for my needs. This is not a well ingrained habit, in fact I would say it was an emerging / developing skill before I became a parent, and one that I have had little opportunity to practice since then. My Bridge outings are currently my only 'sefl-care' activity that I engage in with any regularity. Standing up for myself and ensuring my needs are met is a right that I have, and it's my responsibility to ensure that it is met. So how did I do this?

Sunday Dinner

Over the preceding two weeks I had stated a need that the lounge be tidied, and especially the table cleared so we had somewhere to eat, and the couch to cleared so that we could have a comfortable place to sit and relax. I had stated my need for orderliness to alleviate stress. I had stated the hazard of not having a clear exit path. To no Avail. I asked for people to tidy. To no avail. On Saturday I shouted at the family, because things still had not been done. I lost my cool, and blew my stack. Sunday dinner, and the table was cluttered, the couch was littered, and I wanted to have a meal at the table with the family...which hadn't happened in some weeks by this stage.

I threw things off the table onto the floor. As I cleared the table (yes somewhat dramatically) I stated," I have asked, and asked and explained and explained. No-one has cleared their messes off the table. Now I am clearing the table, because I want to eat with my family at the table." The boys were a little upset by this, as their precious things were on the table, and they feared they would be damaged, and Mama is usually pretty stable, and may shout, but doesn't throw things about like this. I think it is fair to say that if nothing else, I got their attention.

I set the table. We all sat around the table. I served Carl his meal first, K(6) thrust his bowl at the pot for his share. I ignored him, and stated "Daddy works hard everyday earning money so that we can have food to eat, and electricity, and Internet, and have a house to live in." I started to fill my bowl and stated "I work hard to look after my family, and to teach my boys, and make food, and try to also keep things tidy." K(6) looked a little upset that I had passed over his bowl. Then I put the lid on the pot of food. T(8) asked in a a concerned voice "Babs, can I have some dinner?" I stated "What have you done to help the family? Daddy and I work hard for this family. You can have your dinner when we have finished eating ours". At this point both boys got somewhat upset. As was I. I do not recall precisely what was said by whom and when in what order. I do recall that almost immediately, both my boys become very solicitous with their manners, and way of speaking. After a couple of mouthfuls, I opened the pot, and served the boys their dinner. We ate together as family. Despite the somewhat dramatic early dinner show, I enjoyed the meal. I like sitting with my males, and this particular dinner, the boys were very very very polite (which I knew they could do, because other people often tell me how very polite they are). We also talked a little more reasonably about how the boys needed to take a more active role in doing things around the house.

The jobs chart I had constructed 15 months earlier, had fallen to the wayside after the Chch earthquake, and just as the family had regained some degree of equilibrium, we moved, throwing it all out again. We re-visited that chart, and the jobs. We have been successfully implementing them over the last 4 days since the Sunday dinner blow up.

I am very happy with the results.

The boys are choosing in which ways they are contributing to the day to day household jobs, and I... I got the chance to do a little sewing yesterday, because there was room for it, after all the tidying, and time, as I am not doing ALL the housework by myself.

Now to keep it up.