John Holt (1923-1985), an esteemed writer and advocate of homeschooling, unschooling, and children’s rights, is often quoted as saying:
“To trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves…and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.”
In the words of Shakespeare (I mean, while we’re quoting people): “ay, there’s the rub,” eh?
Is it possible, or dare I say, probable, that in order to raise our children with a spirit of profound trust, we must first unlearn what we were taught as children? That we must first learn to trust ourselves? As most of us can testify, that’s no small feat.
In a respectful parenting approach like Visible Child, trust is foundational. It’s at the very core of the decisions we make and the advice we give to ourselves and others. We can’t do this without deep and abiding trust in our children. Trust is the opposite, the antidote, to fear. And parenting from fear, while it is so often unconscious and unavoidable, is antithetical to the sorts of joyful and life-giving lives we want to have with our children.
And so, it appears, we cannot do it without trust in ourselves (darn it!) It’s hard to say which one is more difficult, trusting ourselves or our children. But we do know which one has to come first.
So, how do we do it? Or more to the point in this particular moment, how do we do it in the face of an outrageous amount of pressure and stress, aimed at eroding our trust in ourselves and our children? I wish I had easy answers. But we can start. We can talk about it. We can dare to envision it, and imagine that that envisioning might be a critical part of the journey.
Are you in? Great. Let’s go.
In my view–and in Visible Child–the first step in figuring out how to solve any challenge is to “go upstream” and figure out what barriers are keeping us from getting there. What do I mean by “going upstream?” Maybe an analogy would help–it usually does for me, anyway. The easiest way to understand “going upstream” is to get a bit literal about it. No, I’m not talking about the “actual upstream” of your child, since neither you nor your child is, in fact, a body of water. I’m talking about pollution. Yup, pollution. Work with me here.
Imagine that you or your family live by a beautiful river. You love living there, falling asleep at night to the sounds of the water rushing over the rocks. You remember times when you waded or swam or fished or cooled your feet in the clear, calm, water that is perhaps runoff from the snow of winter past. Maybe you have even drunk some of the water, maybe as a child. Today, you return to the house on the river, and you find that the river looks murky. You see a few dead fish on the banks, and there is some trash in the river. It’s not what you remember, and it’s surely not the way you want your life to be, living by that river. What do you do? Do you go down to the water by your house and somehow try to clean it up? Sure, maybe you remove the dead fish, and you take out the trash and maybe you skim and remove the algae that covers the water. And for a day or so, the water by your house looks remotely like it used to. But soon enough, it looks just like it did–algae, fish, trash, and all. You don’t like this state of affairs. What do you do? Well, if you want it to look and taste and feel and run the way it used to, you’re going to have to “go upstream” to find out the source of these pollutants. You and I both know that doing so is the only way–and I want to emphasize that…it is the ONLY way–that the mess will get cleaned up. We know this. It seems obvious. It makes perfect sense.
People are the same. The pollution in the river is your own self-doubt, your fears, your dysregulation, your past traumas, your daily stresses. And the same is true, of course, for your children. I have spent all day every day, for 10 years now, having people ask me what to do in the moment when their four-year-old is hitting them. And I do answer, because I know you need and deserve support. And I also never fail to emphasize that what you do in the moment is never going to solve your problem. It’s just like cleaning your little section of the river–it’s addressing the obvious chaos that is right in front of you. Of course, you feel compelled to respond well, and that’s admirable. And it won’t produce any sort of lasting change. To do that, you have to go upstream, and understand the source. Just like the river.
The same is true for you. To find out what is getting in the way of trusting yourself as a parent, you, too, have to go upstream. I don’t know what lies upstream for each of you–I barely know what lies upstream for myself, even as I work at remaining mindful about what those things may be, and the ways in which they need healing. But I do know one thing that is getting in the way for all of us.
We live in an era in which the volume of voices about how you should parent and the labels for how you should parent is deafening. We live in a time of unparalleled amount of information and feedback, including from strangers, not to mention from the proliferation of self-proclaimed “experts.” As strange as it may be for someone who has a significant social media presence to be writing this, it’s undeniable that social media and the Internet have brought an extraordinary amount of anxiety and pressure into the lives of people trying to raise children the best that they can, just as millions of people have done before them.
I call it information paralysis. I encounter it (and sometimes feel it) every day. “But Dr. Becky says…” “But Ross Greene says…” “But our pediatrician says…” “But my mother is telling me…” “But I’ve heard that letting babies cry causes brain damage!” “But Janet Lansbury says…” And yes “But Visible Child says…” or (my personal favorite) “Wait. On a comment on a thread six years ago in response to a question, Robin said x and now she just said y!!!” WHICH ONE IS RIGHT?!? Or worse yet, WHICH ONE IS BEST?!? WHICH ONE GUARANTEES THAT MY CHILD WILL NOT BE DAMAGED IN ANY WAY?!?
Wow. Wow. Wow.
We face more information, coming at us constantly, faster and more aggressively than any generation of parents has had to deal with in the past. It’s no wonder that parents are so stressed. And ironically, when parents are stressed, we don’t parent as well. And then when we acknowledge that, we feel more stress because we’re being criticized for not parenting as well because we’re stressed, and because we don’t have a culture that has adequate social supports, blah blah blah. It’s a vicious cycle.
Listen up:
No. One. Should. Live. Like. This.
Children are not that easy to damage. Nor are our relationships with them. And even if we do some temporary damage, it’s not hard to repair.
Everyone is learning. Everyone does some things well and some things not as well. Everyone makes mistakes.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, as they say, “it all comes out in the wash.”
The real goal is JOY. Joyful family life. Joyful life with our children. Loving being together. Cultivating a family culture where people genuinely like one another (or grow into liking one another!). Really. That’s the goal here. Not doing it perfectly. Not “following directions.” Not using “the right words.” Not speaking sweetly at all times. Not making sure you never do anything that your parents did. Joy. Really.
Recently, I shared this article, entitled “Too much parenting advice is getting in the way of parenting” from the Washington Post in the Visible Child Facebook group and on the Visible Child Facebook page. Some people were surprised that I would share an article critiquing the avalanche of parenting advice. I figured maybe those people just don’t know me well yet. “But Robin, this is how you make your living, supporting parents!” Yeah. It is. And I am aware every day, that, as Groucho Marx famously said “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” I don’t know. Maybe my goals and outlook are just a little bit different. Or maybe not, but it does sometimes seem that way.
There is a principle or strategy in child development and education, derived from the sociocultural theories and practices of Lev Vygotsky, known as “scaffolding.” (terrific graphic at this link!) There’s actually a lot of great stuff if you read more about Vygotsky (for you developmental geeks out there) but scaffolding refers to “the breaking down of information or of parts of a new skill into pieces that are digestible for the learner.” You know what that means? It means meeting each person where they are and giving them the little bit of support that they need to move to another level of learning and practice. Sound familiar?
Just in case it doesn’t sound familiar, or you’re a new reader here (welcome!), one of the tenets of Visible Child is that we encourage parents not to intervene so much in children’s play and development and to allow them to develop and explore in their own way and pace. For example, (there are so many examples!) we do not support putting children up on climbing structures that they can’t climb on their own – because that’s too much support and it doesn’t empower the child to take on tasks that they are ready for or nearly ready for, and to grow to know their own capacities and to then take reasonable risks based on that knowledge. We do sometimes stay close just in case, ideally without shouting “be careful” as that distracts children from their efforts. We trust that children will learn how to use the toilet by their own initiative, but that doesn’t mean we do nothing at all–we provide them with the basic supports and then we give them space to learn. We know that children will make mistakes, and we don’t try to protect them from those mistakes, as mistakes are a critical part of being an active learner. You get the idea.
The same is true of you and me.
This is why in leading Visible Child my emphasis is on encouraging you to think critically to take in information and then most of all to trust yourself that you know the best thing to do, rather than to rely on instructions and scripts and “here’s what you do.” It’s not stubbornness on my part. It’s not unwillingness. It’s respect, because giving you instructions may steal from you your own learning process, and that’s not what I’m after. Sure, you might sometimes need some ideas and extra support to figure it out–and we’re here for that–but you already know. You don’t need to read all the books. You don’t need to follow the directions. You don’t need scripts. You’ve got this. This is your child, your relationship, a sacred place that we cannot begin to touch or tell you how to manage. We would be risking losing your authenticity and your own trust in yourself, and that’s too high a cost.
One of the things that many people notice about Visible Child is that it is our way to ask parents a lot of questions, give them things to consider, and issue “invitations” about things that they might want to experiment with. This is scaffolding. We try to provide just enough support to get people to the next step, but not enough to steal your learning and autonomy and initiative, nor to expect an enormous leap all at once.
And just in case you think you’re alone in this, I’ll have you know that multiple people in my life have given me those gifts that say “Hold on, Let me Overthink this.” I’m a veritable champion. So let’s do this together. Let’s trust ourselves, and our decisions. Maybe this one thing doesn’t need us to research it (wait a minute…WHAT?). Maybe we don’t need to rehash how we lost our tempers last night with our kids and worry about what it will do to our children, and try to figure out the best way to apologize or repair without falling all over ourselves and losing our “confident leadership.” Maybe we could just return to joy, and let that be a repair in itself. Because it is.
I know. I know it’s hard sometimes. I know that trusting yourself feels like it’s not enough. I know that you don’t want to repeat some of the patterns that you may have experienced as a child. I know that you need and want support in finding a different way. All of that is good. All of that is OK. And you do not need the level of involvement that you may think you do in order to make that happen.
Trusting yourself is a muscle. Try it. It gets stronger. I’ll be over here working out right along with you.