Learning to be a Mother

I think one of the primary responsibilities of being a mother is to fulfill the needs of the child. These days my personality is coming in the way of fulfilling my child's need. We are at the park playground during school lunch hour and my son comes complaining that some kid is mean. My first reaction is to ask him to play elsewhere or find someone else to play with. But he wants me to be his voice - he wants to confront this friend using an adult. When I ask my son to be the peacemaker at that moment - which is what I would have done in that situation - I am asking him to be like me. Even though this is unintentional on my part, I can see him getting frustrated since this is not what he came to me for. So I have realized that I have to put aside my personality and parent him for his needs. I should get in the middle of things, find out what's going on, explain my son's perspective to the other child, etc.

This is not often easy, given that my son tends to look things from his perspective. But often times, his playground complaint is fair. There is a hidden rule - the child on top of the slide gets right of way to slide down. So if a child is climbing up, they need to move to give the sliding down child right of way. Now a bunch of kids are sitting on the top platform of the slide. When they see a child climbing up, nothing happens and this child joins the crowd on the top. Then my son starts climbing up the slide. When he is half way through a child decides to slide down, pushing my son in the process and frustrating him. Now a teacher running to intervene listens to the segment of what happened and advices my son that the child sliding down has right of way. Now he runs complaining to me and if I ask him to find another empty slide to climb on or find something else to do, it extends his frustration.

Now I have to modify this rule - A child can start an action only when the slide is empty and the child who started an action first has to be allowed to finish before another child starts an action. Fair enough. I haven't explained this rule to the kids yet. What if the kids in the top platform only want certain kids to be in their private game? Should they include everybody? Can the child coming in choose the role they want to play? I am reading "You Can't Say, You Can't Play" by Vivian Paley which looks into this play dynamics of children. Most children understand fairness in including everybody but when they are in charge of the play they want to set the rules - who can join in, what role will each child play, etc. So the sense of fairness has to come from within in order for the child to play fair.

While as a mother I have to teach my child to be fair and point out when he is not, I also have to stand up for him when he is fair.