Wire Mothers

"We first make our habits, and
then our habits make us."
- John Dryden
Click Here For Success Tip # 040 


I am blessed by the blogs I read when others share their experience.  Over at 'Writing the Wrongs of Narcissistic Parenting' she posted a reminder of an experiment about monkeys being raised by wire mothers verses cloth covered mothers.  http://pronoiaswriteofpassage.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-wire-parents-experiment.html  I first encountered this research in Psychology 101 in college.  It impacted what I believed about parenting and was instrumental in taking a hands on, hugs on approach to parenting.  I was told on more than one occasion that I held my kids too much.  Spent too much time with them.  I couldn't do too much for them since I was so sick for so long.  I became a huge believer in cuddling kids for as long as they want to be cuddled.   One of my kids I bought a t-shirt that says cuddle me quick.  She would run past me.  Give me a hug and be gone again.  I felt a lot of confusion about my past because my mother did hug me but in my mind I still saw her as a wire mother.  This post gave me time to think over why this discrepancy.  With adult eyes, I recognize that if my mother hugs me it is about her need and what she wants.  As a child, if I hugged my mother I never knew if I would be hugged back or shoved away because the timer was set and she wanted to beat the timer.  She was like having a cloth mother with stickers.  If you hugged the wrong way, wrong time, or wrong I don't know what, pain instead of comfort occurred.  Confusing for a child.  She hugged me and told me she loved me but I didn't feel comforted or loved.  I can't change her.  I can't explain it to her.  I can only do things differently for my kids and grand kids. 

One of the things I discovered about children, they liked to be tickled a little.  I didn't know how to judge how much was too much since I was tickled until I cried on more than one occasion.  I called it tickle torture what was done to me.  So I needed a way to get feed back from a child without giving a huge explanation.  I don't remember where I came across the game "Cut the pickle."  It is a simple way to let a child set the pace.  They put theit two index fingers together tip-to-tip.  Then I would use my finger to 'cut the pickle' and then tickle them for just a second or two.  Then if they put their fingers up in another 'pickle' I knew they wanted another tickle.  I taught myself to be more aware and sensitive to the needs of my children.  Now I don't need a pickle for feed back.  However, I do have to be careful not to rough house too much.  Sometimes I'm the one that gets the grandkids stirred up and kind of wild and giggly.  So far nobody has spanked grandma but I feel real bad if they get into trouble from their parents.  I learned that what my mother is, does not make me the same.  I create my own habits. 

At Grandma's house the grandkids play with the dishes in the cupboard.