Seacoast Moms Blog is excited to welcome guest blogger, Monica, who you can also find over at edible New Hampshire!

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I sometimes yell at my son. Still. Even after reading amazing parenting books. Even though other parents have told me what a patient, understanding mom I am. The only explanation for the praise is that they are seeing my best foot forward. I mean, I’ll nominate myself for most willing to try and most remorseful for failing, but I’ve made a mess of peaceful parenting since the beginning–back when I didn’t even know about it.

Despite home birthing and bare-butting our little guy, my partner and I had no child-rearing plan. We thought that we were progressive, resourceful, look-to-nature folks, who would just figure out things as we went.

So there we were a year later with our elimination-communicating son and a vision for positive-minded parenting, whatever that meant. And not more than a few months later, I was melting down inside: I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO MANAGE MY CHILD!

I cringe at that word ‘manage’ now, but it reflects one of my truths–I have little patience. Actually, I have a lot of patience until my buttons get pressed. (I also have great skin when I’m not breaking out.)

You see, by a year-and-a-half, our son was agent to his own needs and wants, often in direct opposition to my needs and wants. This was difficult for me because my parenting buttons go off at all manner of my offspring’s impulsive behavior. Cue ugly cry-laughing: I AM NOT IN CONTROL! Bwhaahawa.

I started taking desperate notes from The Whole Brain Child. Its credentialed authors outline the neurological reasons why children react as they do. In short, parts of the pre-adolescent brain are not matured enough for children to effectively monitor impulse or translate emotion into language unless GUIDED to do so.

The epiphany rose like incense from my marginalia, blessing the reality of my toddler’s nature: Oh, he’s actually doing exactly what his brain is ready for. All I have to do is recognize what he’s feeling, validate its realness, commiserate over its affect, and be ‘in’ it with him.

Simple. Connect in the midst of an issue; then find a path forward TOGETHER. This plan works like true magic. Except for the times my buttons are pressed—the ones that boil impatience and steam out yelling. How do we manage in these moments? What’s the trick to remaining peaceful when your own impulse is to admonish?

When I interviewed natural beekeeping advocate Cynthia Ouellette for edible New Hampshire, her thoughts reminded me that there are no short cuts to peaceful parenting. It requires breaking the habit of living for one’s self alone in order to honor another sovereign being.

In Cynthia’s permaculture view, attempting natural bee keeping without peeling back the institutionalized view of honey as the end goal is as unrealistic as attempting peaceful parenting without letting go of the idea that the effort will result in easy children. Yes, copious honey and obedient children are consumable, but if these outcomes are the overwhelming motivation for our philosophies, then we’re on self-serving, nature-depleting paths.

Cynthia explains that we cannot control bees, not if we want authentic pollinators. Sure, we can create unnatural hive settings designed for beekeeper convenience, but we’ll take away bees’ ability to express primal hiving patterns. We can give them sugar water to help production, but we’ll interfere with their long-term, beneficial survival selection. If we want real, wild bees and pure, un-coerced honey, then we must steward bees.

She goes on to explain that we cannot control our children into a harvest space of ‘good’ behavior, not if we want authentic humans. Sure, we can oppress their dissenting voices because it makes every-day life more efficient, but we’ll close off this wondrous chance to understand our children and help them understand us.

We can incentivize a child’s behavior with threats and bribes, but we’ll forge associations between action and reward instead of between connection and compromise. Now can ‘no’ be firmly ‘no’ sometimes? In our house, yes. Do we ever bribe with—er, eat—dessert first so that we can survive dinner? Oh do we! But we make these decisions jointly, against the backdrop of trust and dialogue.

In other words, if we want whole, spirit-full kids AND deeply rooted peace in our family ecosystems, then we must put in the work to guide our children, not control them. We won’t always set perfect paths through the wilds of volatile emotion, but every venture to try exposes tiny buds of mutual child-parent respect, and the nectar of peaceful possibility gets sweeter each time.

Then some days the nectar tastes like soap and you wish it were a cocktail already, but keep at it. You’re not guiding alone.

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[dropcap]A[/dropcap]bout the Author – Monica Christofili

My name is Monica, I’m 34, and the three things I never leave home without are parenting guilt, my faded Jersey accent, and the bucket list wish that I’ll start taking modern dance. After living 10 years out in California and Oregon, I can also usually be found with a mason jar full of water, and sometimes I bring along my four-year-old, too. I joke! Yves and I spend all day together, exploring the Seacoast and its network of progressive-minded families until our favorite partner and dad gets home from his carpentry business. Home is a studio apartment in Newmarket, NH–our ‘room for three’ until we finish building a tiny-ish house out in Nottingham. Once Adam is home for the day, I go to work at the kitchen table to teach writing online, to freelance for edible New Hampshire, and to pen pieces like these where parenting guilt becomes insight. Now if only I started implementing some of this moving forward. Maybe I’ll take better tips from you. Share your thoughts with me!