Radical Parenting, Part 2
I finished the book (Unconditional Parenting) today, and I think everyone should read it. It's not a parenting manual. Instead it invites us to think about our assumptions about children and raising them and whether our actions match our intentions. It provides a framework for parenting better as its own goal, as opposed to parenting for a particular result--happier children, happier parents, obedience, peacefulness, etc. I find this immensely useful.
What's most challenging here though is the idea of harm by not parenting better. I think it's what holds me up when I read and talk about parenting. This idea that if we don't do it right, we're harming our children. It's a powerful fear, and it sells books. So I immediately question it when I encounter even a gentle fear-mongering tone. It's a little ironic that a book about unconditional parenting seems to admonish parents to stop coercing their kids by citing frightful statistics about moral development. Perhaps this is a necessary evil. Why would we ever reconsider how we treat our children, consciously and unconsciously, if we weren't afraid that we may be doing it wrong?
When we know better, we do better. That's what Maya Angelou told us, I think. But do we? We should, but we don't always. The other day Louis disobeyed me on the subway. This isn't rare. And I was so angry and embarrassed about it. It was a long day. We were all tired. I was in the middle of reading this book about unconditional parenting. I'd just written a blog post about it. I was in the throes of re-examining my parenting. And there I was on the subway with my recalcitrant child and feeling utterly vindictive. I thought about what to do when we got off the train. Should I just let go of the infraction? Should I ignore him? Should I lecture? I knew that the most loving thing would be to simply tell him in a neutral tone that he needs to sit close to me on the train because it's unsafe and unwise for him to be so far away in a place full of strangers. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I was so angry with him for making me yell on a train in front of random strangers. So peeved that people stared at me and then stared at my child at the other end of the train who refused to come. I got off the train, told him that it was not okay to not listen to me on the train, and withdrew my affection on the walk home. I knew this was wrong, but I did it anyway.
What's the point of this story? Maybe just that it's not easy. We can know a better way, but we can still so easily fall into old patterns. Patterns repeated from our own histories and throughout our culture. Sometimes we get stuck in the old ways, and maybe feel guilty, and maybe feel the need to justify our wrong-ness, or dismiss it. After all, didn't we turn out okay?
But I have to accept that I did Louie wrong that day. It is absolutely critical that we recognize when we wrong our children. I apologized to him. And of course, he forgave me without hesitation or condition. I've realized that children come into this world without conditions. Their love for us is primal and a given. We complicate their true love, but they accept their fate because they have no alternative. Like all of us had to at some point in time.
So harming our children is not quite the fear we should be focused on. We should be concerned that we're limiting their natural, inborn capacity for unconditional love by sticking to our old, unforgiving, inflexible ways. We know that children are resilient, that humans can overcome all kinds of adversity to produce all kinds of accomplishments. But imagine what the world would be like if all parents resisted the temptations of conditional parenting and treated their children with wonder, respect, good humor, and unconditional acceptance and when they failed to do so, acknowledged it, apologized and sought to repair the relationship. This kind of cycle, where parents and children honor our human capacity for failure and forgiveness, is one I'd like to perpetuate.
What's most challenging here though is the idea of harm by not parenting better. I think it's what holds me up when I read and talk about parenting. This idea that if we don't do it right, we're harming our children. It's a powerful fear, and it sells books. So I immediately question it when I encounter even a gentle fear-mongering tone. It's a little ironic that a book about unconditional parenting seems to admonish parents to stop coercing their kids by citing frightful statistics about moral development. Perhaps this is a necessary evil. Why would we ever reconsider how we treat our children, consciously and unconsciously, if we weren't afraid that we may be doing it wrong?
When we know better, we do better. That's what Maya Angelou told us, I think. But do we? We should, but we don't always. The other day Louis disobeyed me on the subway. This isn't rare. And I was so angry and embarrassed about it. It was a long day. We were all tired. I was in the middle of reading this book about unconditional parenting. I'd just written a blog post about it. I was in the throes of re-examining my parenting. And there I was on the subway with my recalcitrant child and feeling utterly vindictive. I thought about what to do when we got off the train. Should I just let go of the infraction? Should I ignore him? Should I lecture? I knew that the most loving thing would be to simply tell him in a neutral tone that he needs to sit close to me on the train because it's unsafe and unwise for him to be so far away in a place full of strangers. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I was so angry with him for making me yell on a train in front of random strangers. So peeved that people stared at me and then stared at my child at the other end of the train who refused to come. I got off the train, told him that it was not okay to not listen to me on the train, and withdrew my affection on the walk home. I knew this was wrong, but I did it anyway.
What's the point of this story? Maybe just that it's not easy. We can know a better way, but we can still so easily fall into old patterns. Patterns repeated from our own histories and throughout our culture. Sometimes we get stuck in the old ways, and maybe feel guilty, and maybe feel the need to justify our wrong-ness, or dismiss it. After all, didn't we turn out okay?
But I have to accept that I did Louie wrong that day. It is absolutely critical that we recognize when we wrong our children. I apologized to him. And of course, he forgave me without hesitation or condition. I've realized that children come into this world without conditions. Their love for us is primal and a given. We complicate their true love, but they accept their fate because they have no alternative. Like all of us had to at some point in time.
So harming our children is not quite the fear we should be focused on. We should be concerned that we're limiting their natural, inborn capacity for unconditional love by sticking to our old, unforgiving, inflexible ways. We know that children are resilient, that humans can overcome all kinds of adversity to produce all kinds of accomplishments. But imagine what the world would be like if all parents resisted the temptations of conditional parenting and treated their children with wonder, respect, good humor, and unconditional acceptance and when they failed to do so, acknowledged it, apologized and sought to repair the relationship. This kind of cycle, where parents and children honor our human capacity for failure and forgiveness, is one I'd like to perpetuate.
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