ElementalMom

Attributing Positive Intent

I was going through my emails, and found this old gem from an email to a friend. Thought it was worth ressurecting. It’s from nearly three years ago.

Attributing positive intent to my child is gonna be really really important, going forward. It’s so easy to think of misbehavior (which is simply my own societal impression, and not a real yardstick) as having bad intent, when so often it’s just them trying to get you to do something that they can conceive of, but don’t have the skill to tell you outright. Take yesterday…I leave him in the shower after I get out, so he can play in the water, hang with his toys, etc. I got out, got dried, did my routine, got dressed, and he was still hanging out in there. I came, opened the door, and asked him to get out. He said “NO!”, and threw a washcloth at me. Three. Deep. Breaths. I pitched the washcloth over his head, back against the wall. He squealed with delight, grabbed it, and tossed it out of the shower again. So I pitched it back over his head. He gestured at me with his hands…aha! The light finally goes on. He wants to play *catch*. So I put my hands carefully out, and he heaves the washcloth directly into them. Again, just beaming with pride, and laughing like a demented thing. We sat there and played catch for about half an hour with this wet washcloth. He finally said “finished!”, and got out, dried off, and dressed. ::whew!::

I could have seen that as being willful. I could have seen that as being a pain, or as a “terrible twos” thing. When what it was, at its heart, was my son wanting to engage with me in a game he’s just learning how to play. He has zero concept that catch isn’t usually a shower game. He has zero concept that catch is usually played with a firm object, and not a wet washcloth. He has no concept of time, no idea that we were heading someplace. There was zero malice there at all…it just occurred to him that now would be a good time to do this cool thing, and because so few of the facts of the situation concurred with what I generally perceive to be the context of “a game of catch”, I almost missed it.

Can you imagine how utterly devastating it must be to be little, to not have the words, or a real firm grasp on the facts, but to desperately be trying to engage the Center Of Your World, and have them react with yelling, or impatience, or frustration??? Dear god. The thought boggles. And yet there I was. Way more in my world than in his.