Help your kids draw their map of the world

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Years ago, I came home from work , one evening, and spent some time sitting on the couch with my eldest daughter who was about 18 months old. She used to like standing on the tops of my legs so her face was level with mine and I would make funny faces to make her laugh. 

At a certain point she reached out and pulled my glasses off my face. So, just for fun, I put them on her and this time we both laughed. I laughed because her eyes looked huge and she looked like a very youthful librarian. She laughed because of the sensation of having the glasses on.

I didn’t leave the glasses on her very long because I didn’t want to strain her eyes but she kept trying to take them and put them back on. She had made a new discovery: “Whenever I put those round windows on my face, daddy laughs.”  This was new information to add to her map of the world. Something else to remember and repeat. 

All children are mapmakers. They explore and test boundaries, experimenting with cause and effect, and storing their results and conclusions in a mental map of their world. Basically they are trying to determine how the world works and what they have to do to be safe, to be happy and to be approved of. They carry those maps into adulthood, adding and changing details based on learning and experience. 

No two people will have the exact same map, though, so, when the time comes to be parents, Mum and Dad will probably have slightly different starting points. A lot of parenting decisions will therefore be a blend or compromise between Mum’s outlook and Dad’s. 

Being a non-resident dad allowed me to parent based solely on my own map. I got to decide when bedtime was, whether they were allowed to climb that really tall tree and whether they were allowed to eat pizza for breakfast. I got to decide the kind of holidays and day trips we took, the books I read to them and the TV shows they watched (or didn’t). It was a brilliant way to let my kids get to know who I really was and how I navigate the world. 

I was talking to my daughters about this on FaceTime, yesterday, and they definitely see differences between their mum’s parenting style and mine - reliance on rules vs natural authority, different levels of openness to risk, routine vs spontaneity etc.

They see this as largely positive but they both felt it was really important, especially when they were very young, that the difference between my style and their mum’s was not too big. Too much difference was just confusing and made them feel insecure.

In those early years, I tried to keep the basic frameworks of life the same as when they were with their mum but I added elements of adventure, exploration, spontaneity and risk that they wouldn’t normally get. 

To be honest, there was some temptation to do things differently from their mum just to express my right to parent however I wanted but that would only have made life more difficult for my girls. There were also some times when I felt it was important to show them an alternative to their mum’s way of doing things. In either case, the key is to act out of conscience and belief not spite or competition.

As the girls have grown older, they have started to see the advantages of being part of two different worlds - each with it’s own strengths and weaknesses. They are both bi-lingual, bi-cultural and deeply connected to two very different parents. This has given them a confidence and maturity that they wouldn’t, otherwise, have had.

In the midst of all the difficulties of being a non-resident dad, the chance to help my girls draw their map of the world has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my life. 

I think the key is to ask yourself what you can help your kids add to their map.

It could be introducing them to your hobbies, your friends, your favourite music, films and books. Maybe it is a skill that you can teach them or maybe it is a different way of thinking about things that you can show them.

There is an intrepid explorer in every child and who better to accompany them on the epic adventure of life than their dad?