As I sit here petting my cat, I look out my back window. I can see my garden, overgrown and unkempt (I really must get to that!) and I can see two large metal dog kennels stacked on top of each other. I have been meaning to turn them into a way for my lovely cats to relax in an outside cat patio... I look at these two projects as my Mom's words echo in my brain like a bouncy ball that has just been released in a room, "She has too many projects" Indeed I do have too many projects! Two of which I have just given you but many more that I will keep to myself. Just know I have too many of my Dad's qualities. Through introspection and lots of reading I have really come to realize it is part of the reason that I understand him. I do not align with his parenting style however. You see, there are brief and few memories where I can honestly say I felt true warmth from my Dad, and those were the projects. That man loves a good project! Like him, I love starting them but alone we are no good at finishing them. Together, he and I have finished a few good projects though and those are the memories that I have to hold on to. The rest of my relationship with him seems cast in shadow. The truth is I know of corporal punishment but my saving grace is that I also know of the complete opposite of that spectrum.
You see growing up my Mom was always warmth and kindness. She is a go getter, a never stopping, never dropping type of woman. She exudes confidence (well at least and most importantly to her kids) and though I am trying something new for my kid, I can not in any way complain about my Mom's punishment style. She was always thoughtful with her approach and in that she taught me that as long as your lesson is always lead with love, your kids will know that. Even when we don't agree, which is often, I still feel understood and important to her. I never question her love for me or have to excuse the way she treats me because she has always treated me with love, kindness, and respect.
My Dad on the other hand was cold and detached in the very early years. Leaving the "parenting" as it were up to my mom and only stepping in when "punishment was warranted". Which interestingly enough just happened to most often be when my Mom was at work or otherwise not home. His actions caused a rift in our relationships (My brother, myself, and my sister) with him and he was confused when later in life we were not able to easily bond with him. Most memories I have were of his stern voice. Reminding you that as kids you should be seen not heard, he believed fondly, I surmise, in corporal punishment and he was never really that great at showing love. I do think he loves us but I just don't think he knows how to show it. As Playful Parenting put it, "At the other extreme, some fathers completely disconnect from their families, perhaps breaking off contact and never realizing that hole they left behind. They may stay, but remain emotionally distant, not playing unless they feel like it, not really connecting, Real fathering takes a commitment to the everydayness of parenting." I don't think my father felt connected to the everydayness of parenting but daydreamed in the "father of the year moments". Yet he never wanted to put in the hard work to actually take credit for those moments when his kids did excel. A bitterness was kindled by this that can only be exemplified by the nonexistent relationship between him and us. I see in him regret and honestly just that feeling you have of "welp, it's too late now since my children are all grown up". So much so, in fact, that when he remarried we often talked among each other about how he treated his step kids and family. Pictures illustrating the way that we wished he would treat us. But if we know anything about our father, we know that most of what is perceived is just a mirage of happiness. To everyone on the outside things look peachy but to those on the inside, in my experience, their is no happiness. Just emptiness, cold and uninviting emptiness.
You see two very different people in my parents and honestly it has really torn me to shreds because I dislike all the qualities in me that remind me of my Dad. I hate how beautifully I mothered my daughter when she was a baby but then when she was able to walk, something changed in me. This seemed odd to me. Then I realized that my mother was my only care provider when I was a baby (with colic, my mom practiced hardcore attachment parenting and breastfeeding - while refusing to allow me to cry it out even when her own sanity was being tested) and my father took on a larger "parenting" role in my toddler years on through their divorce some 15 years later. My aha! moment came when I was reading Parenting for Peace, as it so simply put it, "When we spend a lot of time with a child of a particular age, our own unresolved feeling from that age tend to surface. When a mother has a baby in her arms, the baby she once was is there too, fully present in her." What a breakthrough! It makes more sense now why I had such a dramatic shift into my child's toddlerdum. I felt as if I was being dragged back to my childhood and suddenly I was recoiling from my toddler and instead of delighting in her I was now her parent and she would listen to me. Feeling lost and sure that there was a better way than this power struggle, I searched for it. Becoming a doula opened a world of attachment parenting and a different view of children. In my momentum to learn as much about being a doula as I could, I realized that I also had to heal myself first. If I were to ever be able to properly care for those in my charge, I would first need need to fill my cup. I had so much pain shoved down deep that when it all started coming back up, my responses started to mirror my father's. I have such disdain for him that honestly this scared me. Even in our current state where most would probably high-five me for popping my daughter, I still felt a deep unsettling shame for my actions. So this blog, what is it about exactly? Well it is about my dual upbringing and how it shaped my thoughts and my reactions separate of each other. I have always felt, even before having kids, that a peaceful approach was necessary. Yet when my brain switches on to reaction mode I turn into the thing I hated most in my father. The road to healing has many bumps, potholes, and patches. Hell even as I have seriously put the breaks on these behaviors and really started learning how to connect with my daughter on her level, I still feel the pull of HIM. So let us start with why I firmly believe that corporal punishment is both unnecessary and extremely harmful to our children. Then I want to share what I have learned about peaceful parenting and how it has helped me heal while also offering me and my daughter more opportunities for connection instead of disconnection.
So......raise your hand if you have ever popped, spanked, or hit your child in anyway...Now raise your hand if you have raised your hand to your child and watched them recoil even if your intent was not even to hit them. That fear, in my experience turned into distrust and resentment and seeing my kid mirror that in her actions was enough to snap me out of my autopilot parenting slumber. Finding a better solution became not only necessary but exciting when I started opening up to the idea of attachment parenting. Not only did I have a parenting style but I had a plethora of books that had the techniques carefully and quite easily laid out for my trial and delight. As Peaceful Parenting puts it, "This is about the unprecedented understanding of our creative power as human beings, our participation in our own evolution. This is about the mysteries of the human adventure.....Once you realize how you carry on a continual dialogue with your fifty trillion cells-- consciously and unconsciously --you can aspire to cultivate an inner ecology that is truly fit for life. And when you consciously practice presence, cultivate gratitude and focus on appreciation, you are teaching yourself to be peace. You are being the peace you seek. You are changing the world"
Corporal punishment, a lost artifact from prehistoric times or a blooming bud of nightshade? Honestly, I see it as a dead trend and now we just need to replace it with something that actually works. I think what drives me to write this blog are my own inner turmoils but what lights the flame are the comments I see constantly that sound like, "I was hit as a child and I turned out just fine!" In this I know I did not turn out fine... I know that my sister and my brother did not turn out fine and only our father was a corporal punishment type of person. This is 100% fuckedupness across the board even though only 50% of our punishments were corporal in nature. I certainly can't counter the thought if I have no proof of such notions but I also know that confirmation bias is going to play a huge role in how this will sit with my readers. For those who are feeling a bit defensive, I want you to know that I am not judging you. Your journey is your own and "Part of the great privilege of our evolutionary inheritance as human beings is this gift of self-reflective consciousness:we can make a thought inside our minds more real than anything outside our bodies! This is where the active work of parenting for peace comes in." (PFP) And well since I don't live in a glass house, I can hardly go around throwing stones. That being said, there are a few facts about corporal punishment that scare me a bit:
~As 5-year-olds, the children who had been spanked were more likely than the non-spanked to be defiant, demand immediate satisfaction of their wants and needs, become frustrated easily, have temper tantrums and lash out physically against other people or animals.
~And, you’ve guessed it, research has shown that spanking does in fact increase children’s stress levels, as well as their risk for a host of future psychological problems....The data indeed shows that children who are spanked do not internalize a notion that their behavior was wrong. They do, however, become more likely to endorse aggression and physical means as acceptable forms of resolving conflicts.
I should decompress this a bit because like many I was hit as a child and I would say that about 90% of my friends and family were as well. It would then be unfair for me to say that we have all become aggressive to the point of being out-of-control. However, let's not kid ourselves, our society seems to be abuzz constantly with hate and violence in all shapes and forms. This even includes publicly humiliating our own family and children in the name of "punishment" and "teaching them a lesson." So when I got to thinking, I felt really unsettled by myself trying to excuse my actions away when my internal dialog otherwise said that hitting(in any form or amount) was not working and that it was in fact making my child's behavior worse. See, I too fall victim to my own unsettling realities that I faced as a kid even with my superhero Mom, my head and my anxiety are still royally FUCKED. So in the beginning it was definitely easier to excuse away my own misguided behavior and inadequacies than to face them in an internal struggle of chicken. Thankfully I was reminded by the books that I was reading that there is no shame is taking responsibility for these actions and seeking out better forms of communication and discipline.
I guess that leaves me with the entire reason for this blog, of course there is a point, but honestly I would be doing you a disservice if I first did not offer you the best advice I ever took which is to fill your own cup. Your emotional and physical needs are 100% valid and important. When you let your needs slide, as I often do, you tend to become resentful or angry, maybe even anxious or depressed and these big emotions feed into our interactions and subsequent reactions to our children. What I would love for all of my readers is for your cup to be full before you ever try to work through this parenting conundrum. I want to encourage your to start your journey to this radical parenting shift by first loving yourself. Check out the "feelings inventory" and the "needs inventory" provided by The Center For Nonviolent Communication and see if maybe any of your needs are not being met and what sort of feelings that is stirring up in you. Then with all the conviction in the world go and meet those needs. Notice that this is a call to action for you and if I have learned anything in life it is that we should not count on others to make us happy. We mucst find ways to self sustain our own happiness so that our community becomes the cherry on the sundae and not the entirety of its contents. Sadly relying on our community to create our happiness or to make us feel better will never work because our internalized struggles are simply not theirs. If however, we can learn to fill our cups we may just find that we overflow with more joy allowing us to easily share or accept and less likely to feel out of control which for me and so many other people snowballs into the use of corporal punishment on children.
Okay the point... yes of course but the backstory was equally important.
Let me preface this by saying, I am ashamed to admit, I did utilize all the tricks including time out and a smack on the butt or hand for correction. These techniques not only felt terrible the entire time but they seemed to just cause escalation of her feelings and without fail mine. Love and connection quickly replaced by tension and anger. I saw a change in my daughter and I did not like it. Most importantly I already knew that this is not how I wanted to be. Also, up until this point I had not really learned any alternative techniques and so I felt lost. I want to reassure parents that there is almost no hope for the earliest of toddler years, the fact of the matter is that all kids will hit, bite, kick, pull... these are all part of their process but its how you respond to them that solidifies how they will use these actions in the future. If you meet their anger with anger, it will be a vicious cycle, but if instead you meet their action with compassion and patience ("Grabs hand softly, we don't hit" or offering a high five when you see them raise their hand to hit) You may find that this phase quickly passes as their understanding of their world opens up. Once this happens they quickly move on to robust curiosity instead of bullying. We cannot spank the bully out of our child, it simply is not possible because we become that which we seek to change.
Attachment parenting - What is it really? Is this some crunchy idea that just started and has no real base in science? My experience is no, not really. There are many psychologists and family therapists who have been discussing this parenting style and these ideas for some time. From my personal experience after having my daughter it was everyone else trying to convince me to put my daughter down when I was perfectly content to hold her ALL DAMN DAY. As she gained mobility this of course changed and she begin her gradual decent from my bosom but for the very short six and a half months I had with her before crawling and subsequently walking ensued, I was perfectly content staring at her and studying every small curve and marking. I could have gotten lost in her beautiful little smile and ohh that smell. If you have ever smelt a babies head you know what I am talking about! I could have swam in that smell. (okay tangent over back to Attachment parenting) Attachment parenting is perceived, I think, differently by everyone. For me it makes sense but I was also colic and my mom literally held me all the time. For others their parents may have used a more hands off approach and so they respond to it with cringe. Though I did not share that feeling during my daughter's infant stage, her toddler stage was a whole other BEAST! (Let's just say she gets her sass from me) To be honest, I understand that feeling and fighting against it through my daughters toddler years has been my biggest accomplishment. It is what I am most proud of myself for. Breaking generational norms is difficult, like a salmon swimming up stream I continue to pursue a happier way to raise my daughter. One that saves my sanity and offers her the best opportunity at finding love in this wold where us adults can feel it is so dim.
Attachment parenting does not end when your child becomes mobile, on the contrary many find that continued breastfeeding into the toddler years helps to continue the solidification of the bond while also helping to create a safety net. One that says, "You are safe and you are free to be you and to explore how your actions effect the world." I wanted to be that safety net and not a fly swatter, just swatting away my problems. So I am putting in the work knowing in my heart that NOW is always the best time to start.
Can we do something, thinking its a good idea, only to realize we made the situation worse? Yup! That moment, for me, was when I realized just how many choices I was giving my 2 year old. I thought that I was doing a good thing, liberating her spirit as it were. And Oooohhh it did just that haha and gosh it became difficult for her to leave well enough alone when I was trying to make decisions that pertained to her. I in essence created my own monster (cute and mostly sweet) but monster none the less. So my first change came from Parenting for Peace. I realized that I still had to be the leader, and the one with the final say and for good reason (such as injury) I needed my daughter to trust me when I asked her to do something. PFP says we must cultivate loving authority, "When we offer endless choices to the child, or engage in extended explanations, justifications, or negotiations, or phrase our language in equivocal terms ("How about getting your PJs on?") we undermine our standing with him." After reading this it became, to my amusement, abundantly clear that I engaged in all the above pretty often. I must also say that you cannot say things rudely or expect someone to stop what they are doing to do what you wish right now, so its important to guide not tell. For instance I don't say, "go clean" I say, "Let's go clean" Kids are experts at follow the leader, so its important to be a leader not a dictator.
My second and most important lesson was to make a yes space. Now this is not to say that I never say No to my daughter, that is just not possible. Kids are going to want to push boundaries and seem to have endless stores of energy to do it. So the word No just needs to be re-framed. First you start by making everything in their field of vision and reach completely safe for them. The less you have to fight with them about interacting with their surroundings, like the little scientists they are, the better! Then you just have to get creative with how you say "no!" and "don't", while learning how to pick your battles. I also love the use of distraction, for instance if she wants candy but I don't want her to have anymore I might say, "you can't have that but we can play TAG YOUR IT!" Then run from her while jesting that she comes to get me.
I know what you must be thinking, "Amber, I don't have time for this!" Right I get it, I feel you on that front. It is difficult to immerse ourselves in our kid's worlds. Buuuuut the thing is, the more willing I became to meet C. where she was the more she was willing to trust and listen to me.
What if you don't want your kid to do something? Drawing attention to the fact that you don't want them to only makes their natural impulses to push boundaries bubble and all that pressure is bound to cause explosions. Your child's curiosity will be peaked, your emotions will be on edge, and the battle of, "stop that! listen to me now....why do you keep doing that?" takes on a life of its own. Before you know it you are angry because they keep wanting to open a door and they are upset and then they must be punished. If I learned anything from Playful Parenting it is the following equation.
"You can do (insert unwanted action), but what ever you do, you are absolutely not allowed to (insert silly action). i.e "You can open that door if you want, but you are absolutely not allow to jump on one foot and say ribbit like a frog! Don't you do it! I will tickle you!"
Continue to place emphasis on the end action, as if daring them not to or a tickle fight may just happen. Like fish they take the bate every time and it only strengthen your relationship with your child because giggles = connection. So you have a choice to make, do you want to have a fight with your child or do you want to laugh? I can tell you that the game of laughter is a quicker and more enjoyable avenue for sure. Maybe that is the key, understanding that you can either fight your way into the authoritarian spot or you can giggle your way into the SuperParent spot? Honestly it's your choice and thought you won't get there over night, I promise it will be worth it. Another trick I have really enjoyed is playing role reversal with C. To play, I allow her to be the mom and I the kid for a short time. Surprisingly enough on the days that I do this she seems much more willing to listen to me when I ask her to do things the rest of the day. Its as if I have given her just enough control that she is willing to relinquish it for a bit herself because she got to watch me do it with grace and a bit of silliness. Trust me its gonna get silly!
One of the final tricks from Playful Parenting is to just make it fun. Sometimes it is better to make the mundane more exciting by bringing your focus in and finding joy in even the redundancy of chores. Sing and dance while you clean. Don't get angry at a spill, get concerned...
"Oh NOOOO! There is milk on the ground! What ever shall I do? (puts hand to head with concern) *insert pause for child's candid response* "hurry Hurry we must clean it up! (Picks up kid and swooshes them down the hall) To the towel station!" (Dramatics are key! Kids love it when you are extra dramatic)
Now I want to stop right here and say that no matter your kids age, you can start now and you will see change. You can utilize playful tools to gain connection, respect, and most of all a lasting bond. You can start out with small changes until one day you realize that there is no longer a wall there. I also want to be abundantly clear when I say that there are variations to all of this and each relationship is unique. There are degrees to which taking the authoritarian approach can imbibe changes in our children. Yet kids overcome much and continue to love their parents in spite of it. We will continue like this until the end of time, such is nature's design. But what I say to you, and what I offer to you, is a chance to build on the already loving (at times misguided, messy, and imperfect) relationship you have with your kids. The depths to which we can feel love, community, and connection are unfathomable and for me at least, there is always room to grow.
And finally, the last piece of advice and possibly the most important one I have is let your children have their emotions. Sometimes its not about resolution but about immersion. Sometimes we have to feel our emotions to move past them and telling your kid not to cry or trying to shush their crying away does not allow them to get out the emotions, thus bottling them up, meaning GIGANTIC explosions later. To be the best parent and well people we can be, we have to be willing to sit with those we love and be sad with them. Share in their frustrations and worries without trying to fix them as if they are somehow broken. Not only is crying a release of pent up energy but it rids the body of the cortisol that flooded it. Allowing all of that to leave is cleansing and having someone there to hold us is humanity at it's finest. When all else fails, be willing to see yourself as imperfect and ready to admit and apologize for that to your kid. Your kid will not be perfect and mistakes are bound to happen, so seeing you apologize will help them to do the same. If you can take just a moment to remember about what it felt like to a be their age, with little to no control over your life, there are bound to be big emotions. Imagine if someone tells you that you can't have your coffee in the morning or that you must stop what you are doing to please them and their wants at once! The feelings that your child feels are the same, just a bit exaggerated and if we can be with them in their biggest emotions, they will let us in on some of their deepest emotions as well.
Wew! Thank you for sticking it out! I have needed to get all of this off my chest for so long and it took me having my own kid to really feel the conviction in my words. Anyone can say, "I won't do that when I am a parent!" but the truth is, you don't really know until you are there. Our presumptions can be our worst enemy though. It's not until we are out to sea as mother nature wages war on us that we realized we really "Don't got this" So I say to you, the person at the other end who has made it through this ridiculously long call to action, are you ready to love parenting a little more and feel more connected to you children than ever before? Yes? Then now is the best time to start! Carpe diem, I say! Because believe me, I have only given you the tip of the iceberg that is Attachment Parenting and I know that you are gonna want more once you try just a couple of the tricks I have detailed above.
Also you can get started by checking out the great resources below!