Parental Surprises

I originally thought about writing this a while ago when my wife told me one of the most surprising comments my son has come out with so far, and he has surprised us often. As such I will start with background to the surprise, the comment, then move on.

I am not a pleasant person, an avid self-improver who expects a lot of myself and those close to me makes a tough person to live with let alone love. I am not abusive in the classical sense but I am incredibly strict and my mood can change like the weather and many don't even notice it happening.
The first word my son learned was 'no' if he didn't stop what he was doing at being told he would be removed from it or have what he was misbehaving with removed from him. It took very little time to learn that no meant he was doing something wrong and that a cute look was often not enough to get him out of trouble unless he stopped too.
Keen advocates of physical punishment hate me, because while their discipline has the range of their arm, mine doesn't. A look or call and the action stops, there are definitely occasions when there is a bit of stropping about it and heated exchanges happen, but unless I am wrong with what I assumed was happening my word goes. It angers a lot of people declaring a smack is needed that my son who has never been hit and has Asperger's which many use as an excuse is so much more disciplined and responsive than their progeny.
I make no secret of this to my son, he is told in no uncertain terms that I am hard on him and that his upbringing is strict. He knows this by the reactions of other children who think I must be cool Dad for getting involved in play, then are less pleased when they realise I take no nonsense.
We were out for a day with a friend of his who's parent uses a lot of empty threats, 'if you do/don't do this I'll do x' or 'you'll lose y' then they continue doing or not doing what they are told nothing happens but a repeat. Subsequently the behaviour doesn't improve. It is an unfortunate point to parenting that you can't bluff, if you say you will do something you have to follow it through even when it goes against everything you believe in, just learn not to say it again, or ideally think it through first.
I know my son has observed the behaviour of others then comment on being glad we are strict with him because it has stopped him being like them, but even still I found the conversation reported to me a shock.
With me being such an openly strict disciplinarian I have often expected this to cause issues between me and my son, something I don't want, but accept as part of being a parent. The conversation he started with my wife however made me realise that honesty and structure really are appreciated. His comment was that he knew we gave him quite a long leash but was glad we didn't give him as much as others because it showed how much we love him.
I will be totally fair a lot of surprises with children can be hard to take or amusing but this one stunned us both and made us feel very proud. This is the sort of thing I expected might happen when he became an adult, maybe had children of his own, but he's only 11.

No child is by the book, but it's worth reading them. Like most parents with a crawling toddler we took precautions, including initially putting plug socket covers over unused sockets. These covers are not really essential in the UK because the current only flows when the large earth section is fully pushed in but parents are paranoid so we cover them. The thing any parent will know about these things is they are a pain in the rear to remove, and before we put them in our son showed no interest in any socket. Once in place however they became a source of curiosity and he would sit pulling one out and pushing it back in repeatedly, they were given away that day and he never went near a socket again.
There are things you have to improvise and we all get things wrong but it is best to read up first and make informed mistakes than simply repeat the mistakes of parents or create whole new ones of your own. One I found horrible but have kept in mind is that as social animals there is no way to bring up a child without teaching them to lie. I read it and watched a show of various very good parenting methods and what the child would take from it. There is little more horrific to a parent than knowing there is no way to avoid a failure, and teaching dishonesty is something most of us would class as a failure.
None of us ever become expert parents but failing to bother learning anything at all will leave you floundering often and it is better to find know as much as you can first. The surprises are then less frequent and often less distressing.

Intelligence. I have often said if you treat a child as if they are idiots they will become one and have worked very much on the basis of treating my son as someone with a working brain, which has stretched him a lot and ended up with me spending long periods explaining things to him when saying something that sailed over his head at first telling. In contrast I have also been very surprised with some of the things he has simply picked up and the direct way in which he has declared it. One rather embarrassing example is the way he easily linked the mating processes of other mammals with humans and the understanding that sex is the beginning of procreation. When my wife declared that he was a child born of love to explain how we were in a strong relationship before he was born, his reaction was to laugh and say 'No I wasn't, I was born of sex.' It's very hard to have a response ready for a 9 year old saying that, especially when he's not wrong. Other parents nearby simply looked on glad it wasn't them.
It is bizarre sometimes to see him managing a lot of academic things so easily while totally missing what most would consider obvious social cues, but that is Asperger's and there is usually a cost to any gift. I won't say I am always happy to pay it but I got what I wanted and am willing to take the cost.

Individuality. We home educate and it is very easy in this situation to enforce ignorance in your child. They don't get taught by outsiders so as many do it is easy to leave out subjects you don't want taught. Examples I have seen are people refusing to teach science, history even geography because they disagree with the bible, something I am pretty sure no well read theist would want to do, people choosing not to teach their daughters English to confine them to their local community, or simply not teaching subjects they didn't like or know much about. We have enough ignorance in the world and I am a firm believer that my son will never be limited by me, an opinion my wife shares. As such we teach him as much as we can whether we agree in it or not. The pay off is a child who disagrees with each and both of us on a number of things, a true individual who has formed his own informed opinions about the world, and continually assesses them.
It can be horrible sometimes to see your child not feeling strongly against things you have seen to be very wrong in the world but it is also good to know this means they haven't experienced it. He is still at an age where there are heroes and villains but he is starting to understand that very often it is simply perspective that separates them. He is staring to understand scale too be realising that large companies are big polluters but they are being so to provide things we demand, so by buying him toys that he desires we are polluting our world, meaning he s part of the problem too. He understands this but like all of us still appreciates a new toy.
I am proud that he is becoming his own person, he is far more decent than I was at his age and set to become a better person than me in so many ways.

Dialogue. Something we have worked hard to keep open and is working well so far, better with his mother than me but he is with her more often. This one is painful a lot of the time but we set up a principle that if we could tell him off for misbehaving he could do the same. This was initially to reinforce lessons by ensuring we all obeyed the rules and occasionally have me disobeying them to let him have the chance to tell me off which helped him learn not to do it, which worked well. As time has gone on this has left the avenues open for him to tell me how he feel I am getting parenting wrong or how he feels about me when being told off.
If you want dialogue and confidence from your child be prepared for the emotional cost, because some of what they will tell you will tear your heart apart. I have heard him telling me how I have made him feel so bad he just wanted to run away and never come back, how he hated me for saying and doing some things amongst others. There are a number of parents who would deem this as a sign I have got discipline wrong, they will be the same parents who don't understand why their child didn't come to them when they needed help or guidance. If you want your child to see you as someone they can come to they have to feel you are approachable. It is difficult getting the balance to ensure respect is maintained as well, something I undoubtedly get wrong both sides on occasion but I am often surprised at how comfortable he is talking to me while still keeping the fact that I am Dad and have the final word in mind. Of course on occasions it goes wrong and his confidence overspills to a full on strop, he's not perfect, he's human and that is going to happen. In fairness I would rather this on occasion than him be scared of me. I don't tend to tell him this bit, there's a difference between occasional acceptance and encouragement.

Failures. We all have them and it's important to know when they happen and learn from them.
One I will never forget is trying the scream out system to stop a toddler paddy, something that wasn't common in his youth in fairness and none but this lasted more than a few minutes. Rather than our usual talking down when he tried a screaming fit we simply sent him to stand on the stairs until he stopped. Once you have said you will do something you have to follow through as said earlier, so we stayed the course. 1/2 an hour later he was still going and when asked if he remembered what he was screaming about the response of 'No!' didn't stop the process, in fact he barely stopped to answer. Things we learned from this, it doesn't work with him at all and there is nothing wrong with that boy's lungs, he kept going just over 3/4 of an hour before becoming tired, having a cry about the fact we didn't care enough to talk him down as normal then going to sleep. Never tried anything like that again, reasoning was the way to go.
The failures we make will often be small and short term if fixed immediately. I have even been complimented by my son for changing the way I have done things and he has told me how the new way made him feel which in itself explained it's improved success rate. Positive feedback on your parenting skills from your child feels good especially when it is about something they still don't like, example discipline, but are still happy to tell you is an improvement.

There are no perfect parents. I will continue to get things wrong but the important thing I have found which isn't a surprise is how accepting not being perfect as a general theme is not enough, we have to know what we are doing wrong and fix it.