On being a 'silly' parent

There’s things you can’t ever learn from parenting books, or even (gasp!) babycentre.in, the site I recommend to everyone having a baby.

Although they all talk about the need to be ‘silly’, it’s like telling someone to be ‘funny’. Unless you’ve had parents who giggled and laughed, you can’t be ‘silly’ or have a sense of humour. Even though I do have such parents, I’ve often been told I need to lighten up – that’s part of my personality. Here’s where I’m glad I have my parents around while I parent my toddler. Their silly reactions to situations are enlightening, and I realize that I would not on my own react that way.

For example – one day in the hall as my then two year old painstakingly put the last block on his ever so tall tower, it all came crashing down. In the few moments that followed – I saw his emotion of anger and frustration surface, but pause as he looked around to see how the adults would react. My natural reaction (as tutored by my reading on acknowledging children’s feelings) would have been to be like this – “awww….never mind, come I’ll help you build it up again”. Before I could act, both my mom and dad clapped excitedly and said “Yay…good job….you made it all fall down! Did you see that?” And then my son started building the tower again – just to knock it down and clap excitedly.

The end behavior that we both wanted was the same – to get him to get over his anger and redo the really difficult task. Only mine would have reinforced the concept of failure, while theirs made the failure a success. Over the next year, he built so many towers, with the great joy of knocking them down, and I know that this reaction was the defining moment that set his attitude.

Being silly is such an invaluable parenting tool.  I learn this over and over as I see my mom stick her tongue out, make up nonsense words, resort to tickling and giggle at really really bad jokes that revolve around poop and pee. Now whenever there’s an ego clash stand off and I can’t reason with a three year old, or he’s too tired to understand his feelings, I resort to silliness.

Sometimes even when I’ve had a tough day at work and feel the pressure of coming home to be a ‘parent’, I kick off a silly rumble on the bed or floor that usually ends in nonsense talk and tickling, and you know what, I feel better too. Maybe silliness is not only for children.