Parenting From Depth, Part II: Children Should be Seen and...

 

Early in our Imago Parenting Course--Connected Parents, Thriving Kids--we give a quick survey of how parenting styles have changed over the years. For hundreds of years,
parenting was parent-centered, authoritarian, "because I said so", "children are to be seen and not heard." You really have to shake your head on how this approach dominated for thousands of years. Why didn't we as a species see the terrible limits of this approach sooner? Well, that will be a discussion for another day. Suffice it to say that parent-centered parenting did a lot of damage on this planet, some mild and some on the level of holocaust--children treated as slaves, property, brutalized and even killed because "father knew best"in some way. Finally, after the World War II, there was a gradual shift towards child-centered, permissive parenting. "Cchildren are to be seen and not heard" gave way to, "Children are to be seen, heard and given whatever will support their 'self-esteem'". Being a baby-boomer, my experience is that I and my cohort grew up with a sometimes confusing blend of authoritarianism and permissiveness. I think this conflation of the two styles dissipated gradually over the balance of the 20th century and into the 21st.
In the last few years, a lot of parents and professionals in the field of child development have arrived at the conclusion that child-centered parenting has frequently gone too far, indulging children, allowing their scheduled activities to run the life of the household and generally being unwilling or unable to leverage a "positive no" that actually can give children a clear boundary and nurture in them a greater sense of responsibility, a sense that there are other people in the world besides themselves and a mature person makes room for those others. Now what we see, and what we in the Imago community are working towards, is parent-child centered parenting; parenting that emphasizes the relationship between the two, that sees both as catalysts for each other's growth and enrichment. Toward that end, children are to be seen, heard, felt and responded to in ways that are appropriate to the need and the developmental moment, but not over-indulged. As our workbook states: "I am in healthy connection with my child when I'm emotionally available to learn what he/she needs from a parent who is willing to take charge." One obvious example: Conscious parents know that four year olds need about a dozen hours of sleep and are best served by a bedtime around 7 in the evening, not nine, ten or eleven. They also know that it's a good idea to make sure kids burn off a lot of energy about three hours before that bedtime so that they are ready for the quiet enjoyments of bath and reading and gentle play.
My own mnemonic device for this parent-child centered approach is the Italian word cara,which means dear. I set it up this way:
C=Consistenly (consistency across situations, not constancy which is impossible)
A=Attuned, (meaning emotionally available to "get" our children's reality)
R=Responsive, (in a timely manner to the present and long-term needs)
A=Appropriate (to the developmental moment the child is experiencing)

So, being a C.A.R.A. parent means we would respond to a crying infant by picking it up, comforting it and attuning to learn what it need: Just the comfort? A diaper change? A warmer/cooler/quieter/more-or-less stimulating environment? Food? Etc. We would understand that an infant can't meet its own needs and certainly cannot regulate its own emotions. She needs us to do that for her just as she needs us to walk for her because she can't walk and speak for her because she can't yet speak and make decisions because the left side of her brain where decisions largelyt get made is, for all intents and purposes, not at all functional. But an appropriate response to a crying teenager might look very different. It might mean that we would mirror his feelings: "Oh, I can see that you are really hurting over this." Or, "You seem really angry about this. Is that what you're feeling?" It might mean we offer hugs. It might mean we let him know we're available if he wants to talk, but empower him to work it through on his own if that's his choice. Your get the picture. The bottom line is to be Consistently Attuned, Responsive and Appropriate...which includes our own needs, thus the parent-child relationship. Sometimes, especially with smaller children, it IS appropriate to drop what we're doing and come to their aid. But as a child matures, we have more choices about our proximity to her and her issues. It's important for kids to gradually get through living examples that their parents are "others" and have needs themselves and those needs will sometimes preclude an immediate response to their own. For an infant, the experience of an unmet need can be catastrophic. For a four year-old, far less so. For a fourteen year-old, still less--IF the parent has been consistent over the years in balancing (based on the child's developmental stage) the child's needs with their own. Children ARE to be seen, heard, felt, "gotten" and responded to with appropriate loving behavior; but parents are people, too, and also need to be seen, heard, felt and "gotten"...mostly by their life partners and other adults but, over time, by their children, too. When kids get that their parents are separate people, they grow up to be much more responsible contributors to culture. So there is no danger of children becoming narcissistic if they are truly seen, heard and gotten by parents who intuit or have learned through study what is appropriate at a given moment.
In my book, Real Fatherhood, there are a number of examples of good moments...and bad ones that I tried to correct as quickly as possible. Our Imago Faculty has called such errors, "beautiful mistakes" to remind us all that none of us can be perfect. In one such situation, my son was eight years old. I had been giving him an allowance of $2.00 a week, for which he did certain chores. He got very money focused because there were things he wanted. Suddenly I realized that it was a significant error to pay him to do things. After all, he and I were a family (I was a single dad at the time). We were a team. To pay him changed his status. He became an employee. Kids are not our employees. They are family members and what was appropriate for Ben was to bear his weight as a family member.
Obviously, there were chores he could not do, given his developmental moment. But he could help prepare meals, do dishes, wash the car and do yard work with me. So I self-corrected by telling him that I would no longer pay him for specific chores. He would still get his $2.00 a week so he could learn to manage money--which was the real and right purpose of an allowance. His initial reaction was to pitch a fit. "How will I make more money?" he cried at me. I held steady and let him know that he really couldn't right now. Eventually he'd be old enough so he could perhaps do things for neighbors or have a paper route. I let him cry it out. He was mad at me and he had cause. I was correcting a decision that was less than attuned to the situation at the time. He had a right to his frustration and tears. But the whole thing was over in about a half-hour. That was one of the best half-hours I ever invested in his character...and mine. Parent-child relationship!
C2012 Bob Kamm

Fierce Attachment, Part I

 

Two days before my father died, I felt him leave. I had just spent a few hours at his bedside. He was at home. Eighty-five years old. Until a few months before, he had seemed young for his age. Then, suddenly, it all changed. On this evening, he had slipped out of a diamond-hard clarity that had been the treasure of his last week, into delirium. With his eyes closed, he swung his legs over the side of the bed as if to get up.

I stood in front of him. He leaned forward until his forehead was resting against my stomach.

“Where you goin’, Dad?”

“School,” he said softly.

“No, Dad. You don’t have to go to school. Let me help you.” I bent over and lifted his legs. He lay back down. I caressed his forehead. He fell into silence.

An hour later, I left to drive home alone in my truck—a fifteen minute drive. When I was halfway there, I felt him go. It was as if someone had grabbed the skin at the edge of my chin and ripped it all the way down my torso. Tears came on so quickly, I had to pull off the road. Mind you, there were years when there was so much anger between us, we did not speak. Our relationship was complex, like so many parent-child relationships. If you had asked me at thirty if I would cry over his death, I’d probably have sloughed it off in the negative. But now, I was fifty-five years old. We were lucky enough to have had the time to work it all out and rediscover each other as grown men. In those sobs, I felt the purest truth. My attachment to him was fierce, fiercer than I had ever allowed myself to feel. I would simply not be me without him. It hit me in a way I had never experienced. The knowledge was straight, undeniable, painful, yet rich. Those were beautiful tears. I would not trade them for anything. I thought at the time that I had never before allowed myself to feel the full magnitude and meaning of our bond…and that this is likely true of most people.

His body lingered another day and a-half. But he was not in it.

Nine years later now, I feel my father in my own gestures, see him in the mirror, sense his presence in the shape of my thoughts and passions, hear him in the tone of my voice, my inflections, the words I chose to speak and write.

What really distinguishes humans? Is it our capacity for language? Abstract thought? Mathematics, Art, Music? I would say no. While our experience and expression of those things are certainly wonderful and unique among all known creatures, what really marks us is how fiercely the need to attach drives everything about human life. It is our primary survival strategy. How else would a creature as fragile and vulnerable as the human baby survive into adulthood? We attach first to our caregivers, but ultimately, to things spread around the 360 degrees of our field of being. We attach to our homes and hometown, to favorite places and memories, even trees, rocks, rivers, shorelines, mountains, to colors, foods, times of day, to equations, paintings and songs, to product brands, to certain sports, teachers, doctors, heroes, even villains and torturers as well as political parties, to our armed forces, our nation and, occasionally, our planet, to our clothes, toys and tools (whether high or low tech), to money, power, drugs, ideas, careers, identities, beliefs, ways of doing things and to dreams. Some of us even develop a stubborn attachment to actively denying that we are, first and last, creatures of attachment all the way through our lives…to that last delirious moment when we think we have to get up and go to our school.

To acknowledge the fierceness of attachment manifest in our very genes and brought fully into relief in our individual lives and our cultures, is to have the courage to say, “Yes, I need. I need others. I cannot fully be me without you, Mom, without you, Dad, without you, my brother and sister, without you my wife, husband, child, without you, my dear friends, students and beloved mentors. I need other hearts within which to place my own…and that I may welcome into mine. To be human is to need the solace of touch, the comfort of companionship, the safety of love…and to grieve ferociously when one to whom I have been deeply bound, dies.”
C2011 Bob Kamm