Parenting Studies

I know a number of us here at TOTJO are fortunate enough to be parents, and as today is Father's Day, I thought it pertinent to do a little reflection on my parenting style. I found some information in my reading which I thought might be of interest or of use to other parents - I should add this wasn't presented in the context of "parenting advice", but more as an explanation of certain adult behaviours.

It's my hope that any of us who find information pertinent to raising kids can use this thread to share it with others who may be interested.

May the Force be with all Fathers, Mothers, and children. So, uh, everyone.

---

This was written about young boys aged 0-5.

There are two important facts we must understand about children. First, when children come into the world they are totally helpless. They are dependent on others to recognize and respond to their needs in a timely, judicious manner. As a result of this dependency, every child's greatest fear is abandonment. To children, abandonment means death.

Second, children are ego-centered. This means that they inherently believe they are the center of the universe and everything revolves around them. Therefore, they believe that they are the cause of everything that happens to them.

These two factors — their fear of abandonment and their ego-centeredness — create a very powerful dynamic for all children. Whenever a child experiences any kind of abandonment he will always believe that he is the cause of what has happened to him. These abandonment experiences might include any of the following experiences:

● He is hungry and no one feeds him.
● He cries and no one holds him.
● He is lonely and no one pays attention to him.
● A parent gets angry at him.
● A parent neglects him.
● A parent puts unrealistic expectations on him.
● A parent uses him to gratify his or her own needs.
● A parent shames him.
● A parent hits him.
● A parent doesn't want him.
● A parent leaves him and doesn't come back in a timely manner.

Because every child is born into an imperfect world and into an imperfect family, every child has abandonment experiences. Even though their belief that they are the cause of these painful events is, in fact, an inaccurate interpretation of their life, children have no other way to understand the world.

These abandonment experiences and the naive, ego-centered interpretation of them, creates a belief in some young children that it is not acceptable for them to be who they are, just as they are. They conclude that there must be something wrong with them, which causes the important people in their lives to abandon them. They have no way of comprehending that their abandonment experiences are not caused by something about them, but by the people who are supposed to recognize and meet their needs.

This naive, ego-centered interpretation of their abandonment experiences creates a psychological state called toxic shame. Toxic shame is the belief that one is inherently bad, defective, different, or unlovable. Toxic shame is not just a belief that one does bad things, it is a deeply held core belief that one is bad.

As a result of these abandonment experiences and the faulty interpretation of these events, all children develop survival mechanisms to help them do three very important things:

1) Try to cope with the emotional and physical distress of being abandoned.
2) Try to prevent similar events from happening again.
3) Try to hide their internalized toxic shame (or perceived badness) from themselves and others.

Children find a multitude of creative ways to try to accomplish these three goals. Since their insight, experience, and resources are limited, these survival mechanisms are often ineffective and sometimes, seemingly illogical. For instance, a child who is feeling lonely may misbehave in a way that is sure to attract his parent's attention in a negative way. Even though it may seem illogical for a child to do something that invites painful or negative attention, the consequences of the behavior may not feel as bad as feeling lonely or isolated.

Trying to be "good" — trying to become what he believes others want him to be — is just one of many possible scripts that a little boy might form as the result of childhood abandonment experiences and the internalization of toxic shame.

1) All children are born totally helpless.

2) A child's greatest fear is abandonment.

3) All children are ego-centered.

4) All children have numerous abandonment experiences — their needs are not met in a timely, judicious manner.

5) When a child has an abandonment experience, he always believes that he is the cause.

6) This naive misinterpretation creates toxic shame — a belief that he is "bad".

7) Children develop survival mechanisms to try to cope with their abandonment experiences, try to prevent the experiences from happening again, and try to hide their "badness" from themselves and others.

These childhood survival mechanisms reflect the child's inherent powerlessness and naive view of himself and the world.

Not as psychological-centered, but I recently enjoyed an article at Zen Habits about fatherhood...

Leo Babauta of Zen Habits wrote: The Essence of Fatherhood: 6 Simple Lessons

I’ve been a father for more than 21 years, and have 6 kids altogether, and have loved every messy minute of it.

And now I have a young brother who’s becoming a father this month, and is deeply scared by the prospect of fatherhood. He’s not sure if he’ll do a good job, worried he’ll fail.

I can tell him this: being a father is the scariest thing I’ve known in my life. All of a sudden, I was 19 and in charge of a fragile human life, so precious and dear but so flickering and easily put out. And I was completely unprepared — no class in school taught me what to do, and I had very few life lessons by that time.

It was the most terrifying experience ever. And it’s been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.

More rewarding than getting married, than running an ultramarathon, than starting a successful business, than helping thousands of people change their lives through my example.

But to be honest, I sucked at it at first.

My biggest problem, apart from a dreadful lack of knowing what the hell I was doing, was a sense of entitlement. My child should do what I say, behave a certain way, grow into the person I want her to be. That’s ridiculous, I now know, but it caused me all kinds of conflict in the beginning.

I now see a father not as a shaper of clay, but a herder of cats. A father isn’t molding a child into the perfect ideal of a human being he’d like her to be … he’s trying to keep her alive, and feel loved, as she grows into whatever she already is.

So for young men who are becoming fathers, and young women becoming mothers as well (because there’s not much difference other than anatomy) … here are my thoughts on herding cats. Just know that I’ve violated all of these ideas repeatedly, and learned these lessons the hard way.

Your first job is to love them. And to be there for them. This is above all other duties. Of course, we need to keep them safe and fed and clothed and change their diapers — keep them alive — and that’s important. But let’s consider that the baseline — it’s not hard to keep a child alive into adulthood. Anyone can do it with a smidgen of effort.

What’s important is whether the child grows into an adult who is loved. This is trickier, because in our entitlement to having the child behave the way we want her to behave, become who we want her to become, we tend to push, to judge, to expect, to scold, to drive wedges between our heart and hers. But in the end, all of those things just get in the way of the main duty: to have her be loved.

If at the end of your life you can say that you were there for your child, and she or he felt loved, then you’ve succeeded.

Your example is more important than your words. We often tell the child to be considerate as we yell at him, and so he doesn’t learn to be considerate but to yell (only if he’s the more powerful in the relationship). When we punish, they learn how to punish and not whatever other lesson we think we’re teaching. When we put them on restriction, they aren’t learning to share like we think they are.

If you want the kid to grow up healthy, you should exercise and eat healthy foods. If you want the kid to find work that he’s passionate about, do that yourself. If you want the kid to read, then turn off the TV and read. If you don’t want the kid to play video games all day, shut off your computer.

A hug is more powerful than punishment. A hug accomplishes your main duty (to love), while punishment is the example we’re setting for the kid (to punish when someone makes a mistake). When a child behaves badly, this is a mistake. Are we adults free from mistakes? Have we never been upset, never behaved badly, never given into temptation, never told a lie? If we have done any of these things, why are we judging our child for doing them, and punishing her for them?

What’s more important than judging and punishing, when a child makes a mistake and behaves badly, is understanding. Empathy. Put yourself in her shoes. What would help you in that situation? Have compassion. Give a hug. Show how a good person behaves, though the example of a hug. And yes, talk about the problem, get them to understand why the behavior wasn’t so great, get them to empathize with the person they’ve hurt, but learning to empathize must start with your example.

Trust them. Let them take risks and fail, and show them that it’s OK to fail, it’s OK to take risks. Don’t give them the neuroses of being afraid of every little risk, of worrying constantly about safety, of making a mistake and getting punished for it. They will fail, and your reaction to that failure is more important than the failure itself. You must show them that the failure is just a successful experiment, where you learned something valuable.

If you trust them, they will learn to trust themselves. They will grow up knowing that things can go badly but trust that all will turn out OK in the end. That’s a trust in life that’s incredibly valuable.

Let them be who they’re going to be. You aren’t in control of that. You might care deeply about something but she doesn’t. You might think what she cares about is trivial, but that’s who you are, not who she is. Let her express herself in her way. Let her figure out things for herself. Let her make choices, mistakes, take care of her own emotional needs, become self-sufficient as early as she can.

Read with them. Play ball with them. Take walks and have talks with them. Gaze up at the stars with them and wonder about the universe. Make cookies with them. Listen to their music and dance with them. Greet them in the morning with a huge smile and a warm, tight embrace. Do puzzles together, build a robot together, get into their blanket forts, pretend to be a prince or a Jedi with them, tell them stories you made up, run around outside, draw together, make music videos together, make a family newspaper, help them start a business, sing badly together, go swimming and running and biking and play in the monkeybars and sand and jungle.

Each moment you have with your child is a miracle, and then they grow up and move away and become their own person and figure out who they are and get hurt and need your shoulder to cry on but then don’t need you anymore.

And so in the end, fatherhood is being there until they don’t need you to be there, until they do again. And it’s not a thankless task, because they will thank you every day with their love, their presence, their smiles. What a joyful thing, to be a dad.

http://zenhabits.net/fatherhood/

I saw this today- and thought this might be relevant to this thread despite the title of the video saying Psychotherapy. It's a school of life video but I thought it might be somewhat useful for people generally...
In any case, Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaZkvvB367I

Thanks for sharing that Proteus

I got a little lady on my side who's sitting at 5 y/o and WOOOOOOO WEEEEEEE is this the age of "Princesshood", so I'm always open to parenting insights. They say it takes a whole Community, and we Jedi are no exception!

Thanks ya'll!