This title came from a saying that has been echoing in my head ever since I heard it come out of my three-year-old’s mouth.  The first time I heard it, she was chiming it to herself while picking up some toys that had dropped and scattered across the floor.  Hearing it made me smile with amazement and pride at her ability to call up this simple statement, in the midst of disarray. Her statement allowed me a glimpse at her process of working on acceptance.  Certainly, I thought, this is emblematic of coping with imperfect and ever-changing circumstances; indeed, this is a concept with which most adults struggle.

The second time I heard the verse was during a conversation that must have been intensifying between her 14-year-old sister and I. This time, this three-year-old’s words stopped me dead in my tracks and made me question myself as a parent. Was I not accepting something that is?   Was I pitching a fit or heading in that direction so plainly that even a three-year-old could see it?  This thought led me to a more conscious moment in which I posed a discerning question to myself: what is this situation asking of me?

“Parenting is tough work!” as we noted in our interview with Jennifer Laurent, author of Excerpts from the Heart of a Mom.  A large part of parenting involves a careful dance between teaching and accepting, and the process is often less than graceful.  Hence, “you get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit.”  But how do we know when to implement this statement, never mind how to avoid pitching that fit?  Do we accept our children’s bad behavior?  I believe the answer is both yes and no. Yes in that, in order to be more effective, one is encouraged to first accept the present circumstance, as it exists at this moment – bad behavior or otherwise. No in that such acceptance does not imply neglecting to guide our children toward more skillful words and actions. However, until we first take the crucial step into reality – accepting that whatever is happening is simply what is happening, without getting bogged down with angry or frustrated thoughts about what we think should be happening but isn’t – we will not be effective in coaching, disciplining, or otherwise imparting lessons of parenting. Moreover, accepting whatever the present circumstance is necessitates a mindful, self-compassionate, and non-judgmental investigation of any role we ourselves may be playing in the creation of that unwanted circumstance. Let’s look at how this situation might play out in the following example.

Mary Ellen, a mom of four kids, complained that her son didn’t seem to do anything that wasn’t related to video games.  She bemoaned the fact that she could barely get him to talk to her, never mind get him to do his chores.  She would talk about their frequent escalating conversations that would end with one or both of them being upset.  The net result was often him protesting in some manner consistent with teenage logic and her yelling accusations replete with labels of laziness and lack of caring.  Once she spoke to other parents, she heard similar complaints echoed, but with laughter.  When we discussed this, she jokingly said she wished she could be as lighthearted as the other parents seemed to be.  After a moment of silence, she broke through to something deeper.

In this reflection, Mary Ellen began to be conscious of how she herself checks out.  She admitted that she goes on automatic pilot in the rush of the evening, shouting commands and pummeling the kids with questions about the day without stopping to hear the answer.  Almost like a light bulb going on, she noticed that she was doing exactly what she complained that the kids do.  Thus, she mindfully explored her role in generating these tension-filled moments. She ultimately stopped trying to change her son—after all, he is a teenager acting like a teenager, and accepting that fact instead of expecting something different is what we mean by accepting the present circumstance—and started looking internally at what she needed to do differently as a mom to get the response she wanted. Once she began to really tune in to his answers to her questions about his day, she found that he opened up more and more – now, he was really talking to her, when he had only ever responded to her nagging by staring more intently at the screen. Once she shifted from yelling commands to setting clear expectations about his chores, taking the time to praise a job well done and kindly but firmly following through on consequences for any areas he neglected, their earlier pattern of upsetting protests and accusations subsided. Sure, he is still a teenager and prefers zapping aliens with laser beams over washing the dishes. The difference is that Mary Ellen was able to accept this fact, examine and modify her own behavior, and ultimately guide her son’s behavior in a positive direction.

A common parenting complaint is that children don’t listen.  Hearing this may arm you with the knowledge that you are not alone and may be the first step in acceptance of the moment, which will lead to greater balance in your parenting.  This first step of acceptance is important in that it guides your initial reaction and contributes to the cascade of responses that follow.  Interestingly, it is often when we are blindly chasing after what we believe should be versus the way things are that we lose control.

Once we stop this chase, we can ask ourselves what factors we may be contributing to the situation as well as what the situation is asking of us.  Doing so will naturally challenge us to see things from a fresh perspective and increase the potential of a more effective and novel solution.  Or perhaps we will find that some aspect of the conflict comes from the simple but common attachment to wanting things to be different than they are. In any case, the “what is the situation asking of me” question allows us to lovingly detach any difficult emotions, such as anger or disappointment, and take the role of calm observers.

So, when my own teenager and I were experiencing conflict, was my three-year-old right? Was I pitching a fit and forgetting that “you get what you get?”  Though I am not entirely sure and am not fully ready to embrace the “fit-pitching” label, I’ve come to realize that acceptance in parenting involves meeting our children where they are and simultaneously reflecting on motherhood and fatherhood not just as we automatically experience it, but in a way that leads us to reinvent it.