Stragglers Into Loving Arms: A Meditation on Jordan Peterson’s Fifth Rule for Life
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Stragglers Into Loving Arms: A Meditation on Jordan Peterson’s Fifth Rule for Life
Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them
Everything I have learned from Dr. Peterson and his wife Tammy has made me a better mother. With all my heart, I understand the dark truth behind Rule Five, and why it’s necessary. The rule has saved my reason when I am turning myself inside out wondering if I’m getting this parenting thing wrong.
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But I would like to not so much disagree as add to the conversation a bit. Children's misbehavior is not always the result of poor parenting. I am well aware of how scandalously ADHD and ADD were over-diagnosed and misdiagnosed not so long ago, and how often these conditions are used to excuse poor behavior. But that does not mean that these are not very real neurological conditions that require management.
True ADHD is not the inability of an active, healthy young child to sit still in class as a result of play deprivation, nor is it a loss of focus due to poor nutrition. Those are certainly serious problems, but they are not ADHD. ADHD is a neurological dopaminergic condition that is diagnosed by evaluating an age-inappropriate lack of impulse control, executive function, emotional regulation, and focus. It is not easy to get that diagnosis from a child neurologist, nor is it a badge of honor. It is a condition to be coped with that causes parents of ADHD kids unspeakable heartache and despair.
There is no amount of good parenting that can discipline the ADHD out of a child. It is not a matter of “letting” or “not letting” your kid do things that make you dislike them. No matter how judiciously you parent your ADHD child, those behaviors still manifest. There is a time and a place to seek professional help. No matter how good a parent you are, you will not be able to teach your ADHD child to find their way around a mud puddle without that help.
The goal of therapy and medication is not, contrary to popular opinion, to produce zombie-like drugged up kids who mindlessly follow directions and sit still in class. The goal of therapy and medication is to help the child function, learn, make friends, and enjoy life to their highest capacity. In other words, help them to not act in ways that make you dislike them.
And sometimes, in order to not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them, you need to hand them an iPad for a bit. Dr. Peterson often says that he thinks children don’t develop the ability to pretend play because they have ready access to screens. We are not having, and we need to have, discussions about what good screen time can bring.
Screen time doesn’t destroy my children’s ability to pretend play; it enhances it. They play Minecraft for a while as a way to wind down and relax after school while Mommy makes dinner,
and then they go outside and act out a survival situation in the woods surrounding our home. They watch The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and then go turn Mommy’s bed into the Dawn Treader and play Prince Caspian on the sea. They watch a science fiction show like Star Trek: Prodigy and then make rocket ships from Legos. They watch The Pilgrims Progress and go off to make “armor” by taping bits of cardboard cartons together with duct tape and twine and using a stove-up rubbish barrel lid as a shield.
This leads to discussions with Mommy about the whole armor of God and spiritual warfare and fighting in God’s army. They watch the Harry Potter movies and then go around putting spells on everything they see. This also leads to fruitful discussions about good and evil and how to recognize both.
As a single mum, a writer, and a recent university graduate, part of not letting my children do anything that makes me dislike them involves giving them free access to screens. But that doesn’t make them mindless screen-addicted zombies because, as a result of that access (except, of course, in case of discipline and losing the privilege), they have learned to self-regulate their use.
They play or watch for a while, and then they get bored with it, jump up, and go play with bubbles in the bathtub because Mommy once again forgot to put the shampoo out of the reach of little hands. Or they find the dental floss and make a “spider web” on the stairs while Mommy’s folding laundry in the other room. Or they steal Mommy’s butter knives and go out to dig dinosaur bones in the dooryard. Or they start a Play Doh bakery.
Over April vacation, they developed an incredibly complicated and intricate game that lasted all week and involved Green Toys, Duplos, stuffed animals, and squishy silicone toys. They do at least an hour every day of Nature time with Mommy; they are read to reasonably often; they ride bikes and play Tag and Hide-and-Go-Seek on the playground with their friends. My children are popular and beloved everywhere they go, with their friends, their friends' teen siblings, and their friends' parents, and I think that means I’m doing something right.
It is the dark truth of parenting that all parents and all children are fallen Daughters of Eve and Sons of Adam, and we have been born into a world that “groans and travails together in pain.” We don’t know what depths of depravity we are capable of until parenthood breaks us, again and again. We find out fast what depths of depravity our children are born capable of, however.
My Grandmothers warned me that there would be dark times when I would wonder why I ever had kids. But watching them both enjoying and reveling in their adult children taught me that real as are those dark moments when we wish we had never had children, the joy and love is more real, and that is what goes on long after the shadows have passed.
Mary Lamb says it for all parents:
Thou, straggler into loving arms,
Young climber-up of knees,
Ere I forget thy thousand ways,
Life and all shall cease.
Author’s Note: If you have enjoyed this essay, look for the continuation of my meditations on the Twelve Rules.
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Stragglers Into Loving Arms: A Meditation on Jordan Peterson’s Fifth Rule for Life
Yes, there will almost certainly be times that you wonder if you made a mistake having children, or at least, that you give serious thought to all the aggravation and missed opportunities that being a parent entails. Parenting is a totalizing activity---once you have a child, you are thrust into a parallel universe where everything looks the same but everything is different. You will never be the same, and you will never look at the world in the same way.
I don't remember ever doubting the decision we made to have kids but then again, we never had any major problems to deal with like physical or mental health challenges. What I never expected was how much meaning and enrichment they would bring into our lives, especially as they passed into adulthood. The joy at having two children who love us, and like us, and want to spend time with us, is priceless and neverending.