Dancing to the Beat of Her Own Drum: A Mother's Failure

So, as I was dancing and singing to my dog, it occurred to me, I am a very weird human being.

Now, I would not be surprised to find out you read that sentence twice. Yes, I was dancing and singing to my dog. Yes, my dog. Yes, it was a love song, but in my defense it did not even occur to me that I was doing this, until I turned sideways and saw my husband smirking at me. It was only then that I realized, I am dancing and singing a love song to my dog.

So that is me in a nutshell. If you are thinking, man this person is really weird, I have to admit, your assessment of myself is quite accurate. The thing is, I am okay with that and love my childlikeness. I was always a very self-conscious young person, so the fact that I am not that same girl makes me wish I could have told my younger self, as long as what I am doing is kind, respectful, and pleasing to God, it really doesn't matter what others think. The thing is, though I want to tell my younger self that, I often unconsciously tell my daughter that being herself is not okay.

One thing I admire about my daughter is that she is outgoing, confident, brave, the exact opposite of me at her age. I would like to credit myself for this, but she has most of this inherently.

Unfortunately, there are moments when I realize I am squashing that beautiful outgoing, confident, brave girl. Like today, she took off her tennis shoes to put on her brand new black high heels in the backseat of the car leaving behind the crumpled up paper that kept their shape and the box open all over the floor.

I should be happy that she liked her new shoes enough to put them on. I've never told her this type of behavior is unacceptable in the car, so she was not being naughty or doing anything remotely wrong. But in my ornery, self-absorbed selfish way, when I opened the back door to head home with my own purchases, I snapped, "Why did you take off your shoes, now you have to put all that stuff back in the bag so we can go home! Now hurry up." Then I stormed away with my own purchases.

Why did I do that? Did we need to hurry? No, so why at that moment did I decide to take a perfectly innocent, non-disobedient act and cause her to feel less than adequate.

I think too often we do this to our children. We don't let them be children. We don't show them it's okay to be themselves, and we take things that are not naughty and show our frustrations, because it's different than how we would expect things to be. But, if what they are doing is not unkind, not disrespectful, and not unpleasing to God, why do we make such a big deal about them?

So later, I apologized for my impatience. I showed her my delight at her gymnastic prowess, and even danced the Macarena with some friends of both mine and hers.

I just hope that in those moments of impatience and frustration, I am still able to let her know that it's okay if she dances to the beat of her own drum. I think too often the adult in us tries to squash the childlike fun out of those around us. She just wanted to feel pretty in her new high heels. She probably was thinking about where she would wear them or what women who wear high heels do.

I guess today I failed. Tomorrow I will try to do better. I will encourage her independence, her braveness, her ability to be herself, and hopefully I don't do too much damage in those moments when I try to make her live up to my expectations rather than let her dance to the beat of her own drum.