Being the Constant

By: Alexandra Murtaugh

 Recently, my 8 year old has stopped saying goodbye to me when I drop him off at school. He’s always been very conscious of others’ perception of him, but recently it’s been amplified, especially during moments of transition. I’ve asked him to give me some form of communication to acknowledge our separation, even if it’s a wave goodbye. 

I was talking to a family member about this situation and the family member told me that I should teach my son a lesson by withdrawing my communication, so that my son will miss my goodbyes and begin to offer his own. While well intentioned, I believe this is misguided advice. 

Our children need us to be consistent, they need our love to be a constant when most other things are changing. They need to know that, while their actions have an impact, they are loved unconditionally. The caregiver-child relationship provides the most security when the caregiver doesn’t rise and fall with the child’s actions. It can be tempting, especially when we're feeling emotionally impacted by our children's behavior, to change our behavior in an attempt to generate empathy in our children. However, the result is often the opposite and the child feels rejected-- the chasm widens instead of narrows.

As a mother of 4, I’ve learned that my kids are each wildly different and unique. My daughter will proudly and boldly say goodbye to me in front of her peers, but that doesn’t make her more deserving of my love than her brother. I want to teach him that it’s respectful to acknowledge someone by saying goodbye, not that my acknowledgment of him is dependent upon his treatment of me. Our role as a parent is to be the best model we’re capable of being, one that models a constant love. So, while I’ll continue to work with my son to find a goodbye he feels comfortable offering, he can feel confident that my goodbye will predictably be there.

Research Tidbit

In late 2022, Pew Research Center asked 3700 parents across the United States if their parenting was similar to or different than the way that they were raised. Approximately 43% of parents say they are raising their kids similarly to the way they were raised, while 44% say they are raising their kids differently. That means almost half of parents are raising their kids without a model for what they would like their parenting to look like. Additionally, regardless of how they answered this question, 62 percent of parents said that parenting is harder than they expected it to be. While we try to foster strong, positive relationships with our kids, we need to keep in mind that the work we're doing as parents is not easy, especially if we're doing it without a model of what it should look like. We cannot expect perfection-- we're deserving of grace.