Peeling Bananas in Secret

[from the archives]

Is there someone in your life that you allow to control you? I remember when my Josiah was two and a half. He controlled me. He didn’t like me to peel his bananas. He was incapable of peeling his own bananas, but he didn’t want me to peel them for him. If I peeled his banana he would throw it on the floor. If I picked it up, rinsed it off and put it back on his high chair tray, he would promptly throw it on the floor again. It didn’t make sense.

If I spoke sternly to him when I put his fruit back on his tray, he would begin to scream. SCREAM! I didn’t like screaming. It was so annoying and made breakfast nerve wracking. I had 4 other kids to get breakfast for. I wondered why Josiah made every breakfast so unpleasant and I felt sorry for myself.

If I took his fruit away from him and set it on the counter, he would scream harder. There was no winning. On his tray, it would shortly be on the floor. On the counter, he would scream in anger. What if I just left it on the floor?  No, that produced angry screams too.

So I developed a solution. Peel his banana before putting him in his high chair. If he didn’t see me do it, he didn’t seem to be quite so mad. But that only worked for a few mornings. What if I hold his banana below the counter top on the other side and peel it there where he can’t see it? That worked for a while, but soon he found something else to scream about. Sometimes I would put him in bed and tell him he had to stay there until he stopped screaming. He could scream for hours, and I worried that maybe I was abusing him somehow. I felt like the screaming was my fault. I just needed to figure out what I could do differently to prevent it.

I let him control me. One of the symptoms of being controlled by another is the frequent feeling of being trapped. For me, failure to behave a certain way with Josiah produced screaming. None of my behavior modification I tried made it stop permanently and it was illogical, so I felt trapped in it.

Mom’s who are easily controlled develop elaborate means for escaping the consequences of failing to please, but these strategies rarely work as a continuing solution. I let Josiah’s screaming control me and motivate my behavior. It’s not normal to peel bananas in secret.

The easily-controlled mom is trying to get something out of the situation. I wanted peace and quiet, and I was trying to get it by adjusting my behavior. I was using Josiah to get something for myself, attempting to manipulate him while I was failing to meet his need for correction and instruction. I was being trained by him, when I was the one who was supposed to be doing the training. I was working to please myself while keeping him bound in his sin.

Bananas on the floor and screaming are annoying for moms and can even be overwhelming when multiplied by 4, 5, or 6 kids and more. The stakes get higher though. As the child gets older, the screaming changes and takes on a more hurtful nature when words like, “Leave me alone!!” ,“I hate you!!” or “I’m going to run away!!” are added to the angry screaming. Controlling kids can adjust their controlling behaviors just as fast as mom can figure out how to change her own behavior to avoid the circumstances that produce the unpleasant consequences dished out by the child. Some controlling kids resort to quieter means, cold stares, rolling eyes, backs turned, clever arguments, even a crying fit will work—“I just don’t want to talk about it anymore….sob…sob.”

I dreaded the morning screaming just as easily-controlled moms dread saying “No”, limiting privileges or having certain conversations.

Several of the challenging ideas of Marilyn Howshall’s book Empowered—Healing the Heartbeat of Your Family point to our need as parents to allow God to address our attitudes, intentions and motivations first so that we can be above reproach and develop the skill we need to meet our children’s needs to be known and loved, including providing needed correction and instruction in love.

I couldn’t bring loving correction to Josiah because I was using him for my own gain. I had a wrong motivation and a wrong attitude (way of thinking about a particular thing). I needed to change the way I was thinking, and my understanding of what was happening needed to grow, and I needed to put down my own selfish motivations to manipulate and come to love him by meeting his needs instead.

In my more recent blog posts I’ve been remembering my process of growth and change. Four and a half years ago as I began to pay attention to the Holy Spirit speaking through my conscience, He began to show me an area where I needed to change that I did not expect. He began to show me my sin of letting my husband control me. Over the next few blogs I plan to write memories of the Lord’s process for me in stripping off my flesh of being easily controlled.

Some may wonder why I would be writing about my relationship with my husband on a blog about parenting. It’s because we as parents need to be changed in our relational behaviors first before we can begin to bring change to our children. This means that all our relationships need to be considered.  Many parents who allow their children to control them also allow other people in their lives to control them. Perhaps it is your spouse or the in-laws or an adult sibling or your own parents.

The Lord showed me the way out of my fleshy desire to be controlled by my husband. The principles are the same for becoming free from allowing our children to control us.

My story continues here–>

[originally posted November 2010]