Let them go

We have a pot plant in the corner of the living room. It’s a big beautiful fiddle leaf fig that is now about 2 1/2 meters tall, surrounded by glass and sunlight. Right now there are wood chips and dirt all over the ground around the pot and a trail leading out to the middle of the room.

My 11 month old baby loves this pot plant more than any of us. He stands there grabbing its trunk and talking to it multiple times through the day. He then eats the dirt and throws the wood chips all over the floor. When he first started doing this I would run over and move him, offer him a toy as a distraction and continue doing what I was doing. The only problem is he would soon remember what he was trying to accomplish and return to the pot to complete the task. Again I would move him, right before he got his fat little hands into the dirt. This would go on all day and it would frustrate the hell out of both of us. He wanted the dirt and I wanted hime to leave it alone. 

One day I decided to let him get to the dirt and complete his mission. He grabbed it, ate it, threw it around, looked at me and smiled a smile of pure delight, then moved on to do something else. Job done. 

I cleaned up the mess and that was that. 

It made me realise that I was getting in the way of a desire of his and until it had been satisfied he was not going to let up. The time and energy expended preventing him from fulfilling this desire was pointless. 

Sometimes we think we know what is right for someone, we use all our energy to convince them to abandon their desire and pursue something “better”. However in most cases they need to satisfy themselves first. 

I let him eat the dirt and when he turned to me with glassy eyes and wood chips stuck in his 5 teeth I was there, waiting, smiling, holding a banana. He was stoked and accepted. The banana, I think, tasted much better after the dirt than it would have before.