Free from expectations
Hello dear!
I started doing the Summerhill School course, The Role Of The Adult, a few weeks ago and it’s been really nice and insightful. Last weekend the topic was freedom from expectations.
At Summerhill School, and at APTB for that matter, children aren’t expected to do, think, believe, play or have anything unless it interferes with the boundaries of another person or the whole community has set up a rule in one of the democratic meetings that states a certain expectation of behaviour within the school.
In the last lesson we discussed how The Victorian way of raising children was very much a black and white ‘punishment and reward‘ type of upbringing with very strict expectations on the children.
Another form of setting expectations, we found, was by manipulation: Trying to get a child to do or not do something, not by telling him straight forwardly, but almost by tricking the kid. An example would be withdrawing love when the child isn’t doing what you want. Or by excessively praising so that he knows that’s what he’ll get in the future when doing what you want.
The last category we spoke about was ‘unintentional expectation setting‘. When I go out with Bo, we get many people looking at her, smiling, saying things like ‘You’re so beautiful!‘, ‘Hello, princess!‘ and so on and even though these people mean well and probably don’t know that just 1 minute ago another person has said or done exactly the same thing, it does create the expectation for Bo to look beautiful and act like a princess.
My parents were pretty cool people when I grew up (and continue to be). My brother and I experienced a lot of freedom. I remember being aware of this. I knew I was allowed out longer than other kids, watch movies that weren’t for our age group and I had sleep overs at girl’s and boy’s houses at any age.
My dad was more on the Victorian side of setting expectations, he was more of an authority figure when he wasn’t happy about something we did or didn’t do.
My mom is very much on the manipulative side of things: Not authoritarian at all, never punished us, but she knew how to get us to do or stop doing things ‘nicely‘, without raising her voice or so…
Now, the unintentional way of setting expectations is something that lingers in all of us.
Just to be clear, my mom and dad are great parents and I wouldn’t trade them for anybody else. They’ve experienced their traumas in childhood and carry around a lot of generational baggage. Both improved upon their parent’s child rearing and did the best they could, I know that! So, I don’t mean to be disrespectful or speak ill of them.
When I’m with my daughters and get overwhelmed I can sometimes feel my dad’s conditioning come up from time to time and I need to really look within to detach myself from this and stay calm or I raise my voice, feel like I want to punish with ‘No screen for you if you don’t…‘ and so on.
I can also see my mom’s behaviour in me sometimes and also need to stay conscious about what I say or do next, or else I find myself becoming aware of saying something that my mom used to say when I was a child. And I don’t want that!
I want to stop passing on words, behaviours and feelings that my great great grandparents used to have 150 years ago.
We’re not able to make conscious decisions all the time, otherwise we’d be only thinking positive thoughts from now and everything would be perfectly fine all day. Realistically spoken, most of the time, we make unconscious decisions. I mean, how can you even know whether the ‘conscious’ choice you just made wasn’t actually your subconscious driving your behaviour, AGAIN?!
So, it’s very clear that there are countless acts, words and feelings we express on a daily basis that are probably sending unintentional messages of expectations to our children, whether we want it or not, whether we like it or not, whether it’s right or not.
Let me give you another example from my upbringing:
My dad has a strong black and white way of thinking and when he sees or hears something that doesn’t fit into his ‘right way of being’ box, he says it out loud, in front of everybody. When I was little I heard him say things like ‘He’s so stupid‘ - when someone made a mistake. '
‘She’s disgusting‘ - when a woman was obese
‘What an a**hole!‘ - when a movie character did something bad.
‘She’s perfect‘ - when seeing a slim, young woman.
The list goes on.
He never said those words to me but I still learned that making mistakes means being stupid, being obese means being disgusting, doing something bad means being an asshole (disliked), being slim means being liked/loved.
I projected all those believes onto myself and he unintentionally put massive expectations on me about being good, beautiful, not making mistakes etc. As none of these are possible all of the time, what happens is that a child starts to hide and reject those sides of herself and never feels good enough, no matter how hard she tries to be good, in shape, intelligent and perfect.
It’s an unachievable goal…. you’re stuck on a hamster wheel of achievement and failure, spinning around from trying your hardest to achieve something and then falling back down failing miserably. That’s the story of my life. Whether it’s to do with my body image, my self-worth, my former relationships, school, career attempts etc.
For 15 years I’ve been healing many of my childhood ‘traumas‘ (believe it or not, thinking that you’re not lovable because you’re not meeting your parents’ expectations can be traumatizing when you’re little). I’ve resolved a lot of them but I continue doing so because many still exist.
I’ve told you all of this because I want you to know that you might not put any obvious expectations onto your kids, which is a great thing! I’m happy you’re giving your children the freedom of expectations.
But I also want you to know that the unintentional expectations you’re sending are the ones you need to heal within yourself in order for your children to be free from them as well.
You might work hard all day, every day and even though you never force, coerce or manipulate your kids into doing something, you’re unintentionally setting the example of how they should be as an adult or as a mother/father.
You might look in the mirror and don’t like what you see, never saying a word about it because you want your daughter to like and love herself the way she is and not criticize what she sees, but she will copy you at some point and look in the mirror thinking ‘if only I had fuller lips‘ or something like that.
You might never tell your boy how clumsy he is when dropping a plate but if you say ‘I’m such a dummy‘ to yourself after spilling the coffee or even just making an annoyed noise, it will teach your child that people are expected to be careful and not to make mistakes.
Again, trying to be conscious about your thoughts, actions, feelings and reactions is very hard to achieve, almost impossible, because when we make an effort to be a certain way, we step into a hamster wheel that will spin around at some point and give us exactly the opposite of what we wanted.
You want to be the calm, cool, patient, loving and respectful parent you always wished to have? Something will happen that will bring the anxious, impatient, cold and disrespectful You to the surface.
What to do then?
Meditate.
And I don’t mean sitting in a lotus position with your eyes closed, gentle music playing, candles lit etc. Meditation means the observation of self.
This is best done as often as you can remember to do it, wherever you may be. Not just some scheduled 10-15min per day in the morning or evening when you’re alone.
It takes practice and discipline. But it’s worth it because it’s the best way to get to know who you think you are, the one who’s usually in the driver’s seat when making decisions. It’s the way to go to free yourself from the expectations that you have been burdened with when you were a child that your children will inherit if you don’t do anything about it.
To learn how to meditate in an effective way (aka becoming aware of yourself) I recommend signing up to our free member’s area where you can find Rob’s Meditation OS course. You can also access my UnParenting course with guidance on how to give your kids freedom from expectations and more, plus some other courses.
You can always email me if you have further questions and I’d love to read your comments below.
Yours
Sylvia
