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The Revolutionary Who's Raising You
Empowered Parenting and Spiritual Psychology
By Deidre Steadman Balboa Press
Copyright © 2016 Deidre Steadman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5043-0446-7
CHAPTER 1
Conformity Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be
I was speaking to a mother and father regarding their young son. The parents were in conflict about their differing parenting styles — and, needless to say, this was adding tension to the marital relationship. These parents were a wonderful microcosm of the larger parenting macrocosm, a perfect representation of the broader attitudes that we hold regarding our children.
The father considered his young son to be defiant, and he felt that his son's behaviour was malicious and spiteful. "He just likes pushing my buttons," he'd remark. He thought his son was undisciplined and that he wouldn't succeed in life because he could not follow rules and did not respect authority. This father would often express himself with comments like:
"He just won't do as he's told."
"He just starts to run amok."
"He goes to whine to his mother because I won't let him do what he wants."
"I just can't get through to him."
The mother, on the other hand, sought to protect their son. In her opinion, the boy was a scapegoat who was being unfairly targeted. He was being picked on and therefore needed to be defended. While there was no question that these parents loved their son, their respective approaches were indicative of the psychological errors we make when parenting. The flawed premises we hold can sprout erroneous beliefs that then give birth to futile action.
Because it is reflective of a large portion of society, let's first take the father's mentality. His tactic with his son was a punitive, "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" approach. As the psychological underpinning of this approach is conformity, it is a stifling of individual freedom — and this was triggering a defiant, independence-seeking reaction in his son.
It is in our nature to sometimes cut off our nose to spite our face. When pushed, we will sometimes resist for resistance's sake. From an onlooker's perspective (and let's face it, there are plenty in the peanut gallery ready to level opinions about your parenting, even when they don't have children themselves), freedom-seeking behaviours play out as rebellion. They manifest as naughtiness in some opinions. However, at the heart of this type of behaviour is an assertion of individuality, authenticity, free thinking, and free choice. No human being likes to be dictated to. It triggers a fierce response. Why do you think wars happen?
Imagine you've started a new job and are enthusiastic about it. You know you can do the job well, and you have a talent for it. You know yourself to be hard-working and well-meaning. You also want to perform at your best for a company you believe in. All in all, your spirits are high, and you hold positive expectations.
However, what if you have a boss who criticises your work performance? Maybe it doesn't start out that way — perhaps your boss is diplomatic and polite about the critique when performance reviews come around — but nevertheless, it knocks your confidence somewhat. However, you still want to perform well, and you mostly like your boss. You rationalise the experience with thoughts like, He's just trying to get the best out of me, I guess.
Now imagine that the negative comments come more regularly and are more like thinly veiled judgements: "Not on the ball again today?" or "It's not really that hard to grasp, is it?" What if you are directly criticised: "You just can't get this right" or "How did you get this position?" or "I'm just waiting for an excuse to fire you!" What if this happens every day? If your boss's management style resembles bullying more than supervising, I guarantee you will end up hating this person (and your job). Anybody would. Anybody with a modicum of self-respect and independence would rebel. This approach would not get the best work performance from you; indeed, it would elicit the worst. You don't want to rise to your best when you anticipate criticism.
Criticism doesn't even need to be direct. Our instincts are well tuned; if you can even sense that a boss or co-worker doesn't especially like you, that's usually enough to dampen your enthusiasm. Let's face it: you're not about to go the extra mile for somebody who doesn't appreciate your effort or is downright antagonistic. It is psychologically healthy to assert yourself against suggestions that you are somehow "wrong" or "bad." To say it another way: it is psychologically healthy to get angry and defiant in this type of situation.
We teach kids to assert themselves in the schoolyard when they are being bullied, just as we encourage adults to assert themselves against management when there is discrimination or harassment. So why do we expect children to remain emotionally and psychologically buoyant when it's a parent offering subtle (but often painful) comments or judgements? Children are hardwired to love their parents; they are little emotional barometers. They can very quickly and accurately attune to a parent's disapproval or disappointment. You would absolutely hate going to a workplace where the emotional tone was one of disapproval or reproach, wouldn't you? But you don't love your boss as your children love you. Furthermore, you are an adult. Imagine the psychological impact upon a child who is subtly but clearly disapproved of.
Take the father we met earlier; he was sincere in his attempts to help his son but naïve about the psychological impact of his approach. He was expecting his son to be able to receive disapproval and negative judgement — from somebody he loved, no less — without having an anger response or a guilt response or feeling a sense of failure. Unfortunately, it is psychologically impossible for a child to sense recrimination yet remain psychologically buoyant, happy, focused, attentive, and optimistic.
These kids often find themselves in a double bind: "Dad wants me to perform at my best, remember and follow the rules, and make few mistakes. I desperately want to do this for him because I love him and I want his approval, but I somehow get it wrong, and the stress and pressure of being good paradoxically makes me more likely to be bad." The ultimate tragedy of this merry-go-round of pain is that it is most likely when kids are happy (laughing, playing, shouting, etc.) that their behaviour is considered disruptive to adults.
Think about it: When kids are happy, they are like puppies. They bounce off the walls, get noisy, are exuberant, and become effervescent, talkative, playful, and sometimes even snappy. Can you imagine the confusion for kids when they are literally feeling their best and yet are reprimanded for it? "Simmer down!" they are told. "Be quiet!" they are rebuked — just for acting as a happy child naturally acts. I have found myself uttering these words to my six-year-old son. These words almost gagged me as they came out, yet they came out nonetheless. Yes, I can espouse the benefits of nonconformity and still struggle with my own selfish desire for conformity. When I want to go to sleep and my son seems at his happiest (which is a polite way of saying he is boisterous and effervescent), it is something of an art to strike a balance between my wants and his wants. At times, I have wondered what would happen if I started jumping on the bed and face-diving into the pillows with him.
When children are guided away from their own happiness towards pleasing a parent, they learn how to please others but forget how to please themselves. This is a recipe for conformity. In the name of good parenting, we unwittingly elicit guilt, sadness, remorse, anger, or hopelessness from our kids while simultaneously guiding them away from spontaneity, happiness, playfulness, confidence, and the like. Conformity demands a trade-off: something needs to be psychologically sacrificed in order for human beings to conform.
To some degree, emotional authenticity becomes the sacrificial lamb. Free thinking and individuality are hogtied to the nearest pole, marched to the volcano's edge, and thrown in. We have been taught that conformity is required for a successful life. You were encouraged to get a respectable job, to be sensible and practical, to get good grades, get along with teachers, do the lessons as instructed. Social principles are imbued with a mandate to conform. Social order ostensibly depends upon individuals following the rules; otherwise, we're in danger of anarchy ... or so we're told. Morality ostensibly depends upon individuals following the tribe mentality; otherwise, we are in danger of debauchery on every street corner.
But here's the rub: we are all freedom-seeking by nature. We all strive to express ourselves uniquely and authentically. When social mandates, based upon conformity, thwart individual expression and free thinking, people revolt (anger response) or they begin to feel hopeless (sadness response).
I was channel-surfing recently, and I came upon a brief snippet of a documentary about prison inmates. In the few minutes that I watched, they showed a young man facing away from his cell door, a towel over his head. He had stacked a chair on top of a table and was endeavouring to sit upon it. I assume it was his private protest against some perceived injustice.
The thing that I found psychologically fascinating wasn't his behaviour; to some extent, I can imagine the impulse to hide away — hence the towel upon his head — and protest being in a cage. I get that. I understand feeling powerless and wanting to take control, even of something so minute as putting a towel over your head and placing a chair upon a table. There was an empowered, personal statement being made: "So there!" he seemed to scream. "You might have stuck me in this cage, but you can't stop me putting this chair up here." It was the psychological equivalent of a toddler sticking out his tongue in protest.
What I found psychologically fascinating was everyone else's reaction. There must have been about ten individuals outside of this cell door, I don't know their respective roles, but I can guess there may have been a nurse, a prison officer, the camera crew obviously, and maybe a supervisor. Everybody seemed intent on this man "simmering down," and it made me think that we respond to nonconformity in adults in the same way we do with children. The onlookers were insistent on this offender taking the chair down and taking the towel from his head.
Now, don't misunderstand. I have worked in a correctional facility, and I understand why things are done this way. It's not a lack of clarity on my part. I would just like to inspire some contemplation and suggest that we could improve the way we react to an anger response. This cadre of bystanders might as well have been a school principal, a school counsellor, a class teacher, and a camera crew. Our societal reaction to nonconformity changes little from infancy to childhood to adolescence to adulthood. It's just that our time-out corner gets bars.
Don't you think that with incarceration rates at record levels, with suicide statistics ever-climbing, with the prescription of psycho-pharmaceuticals at record levels, perhaps we could revisit the paradigm? Traditional is traditional — it is the dogma that is familiar and the principles that are common — but does it serve humanity?
Now, I can only begin to imagine the chain of events that would lead someone to serious criminal behaviour and thereby imprisonment, but I know without a doubt that it does not happen in a vacuum. Let me give you a very small, completely trivial example to see if I can pique some reflection.
Recently I took my children to swim in the local river. My dad came along, and he reminded me about lifejackets for the kids. Actually, he did slightly more than remind me. He politely (he is English, after all) stated that he would put lifejackets on the kids if it were up to him. I was surprised by my reaction, because I was slightly defensive — only slightly, but nevertheless.
Now, I know how sensible lifejackets are. I know how practical they are. I know the reason for them. Yet my instinctive response was defensiveness. I know that is a ridiculously superficial, silly example, but I'm sure you have experienced exactly the same to a greater or lesser extent. We are hardwired to want to do life on our own terms. We want to drive on our own terms, we want to eat on our own terms, we want to do chores on our own terms. We want to follow our own inner guidance.
Can you imagine if, across your entire lifetime, you were treated antagonistically every time you followed your own guidance? I'm sure you know as well as I do that there is often a predictable trajectory for young, angry kids within our society. They are constantly disciplined within the school system through exclusion, detention, and/or expulsion. This naturally elicits shame or humiliation or self-loathing or condemnation. When anger is the best emotion to be found amid this crappy collection of options, then more trouble is stirred up and more and more condemnation or shame or disapproval is elicited, which prompts more and more trouble and more and more anger ... and around and around it goes.
If I can get prickly when told about lifejackets — something so minor and banal — and you can become snappy when, for instance, your partner asks you to do something you really don't want to do or agree with something you don't agree with, do you see how even "criminal" is a social construct when you pare it right back? For a kid in a classroom who won't sit still and listen, even if the lesson is boring and feels irrelevant, naughty is often the most complex psychological notion we have concocted. If you were considered naughty and treated combatively by teachers, who in turn influence your parents to treat you belligerently, who influence your grandparents to treat you with hostility ... pretty soon you would seek refuge with peers. Which peers would you seek refuge with? The most loyal ones, of course, the ones who won't turn on you, the ones who'd die for you. Oh wait, that's a gang!
Yes, psychologically, that is the evolution, or perhaps devolution. It's not bad, it's not wrong, it makes perfect sense when you understand how the human psyche works. Can't you see that when the people you literally love most have formed a fixed, negative, perhaps subtle (but subtle doesn't mean better) opinion about who you are — and when the people who seem to hold the most power and influence have formed a fixed, negative opinion about who you are — eventually you just want to turn your back to the prison door, stick a towel over your head, and put a chair on top of a table.
Let's briefly return to our example to regard the father who was experiencing difficulty with his "defiant" son. The final irony came when he realised that he too was raised by a traditional father. His individual expression, his authenticity, was often squashed by demands to "do as you're told" — even when what you're told guides you away from your own happiness and confidence and from knowing your own mind. When I asked this father if he, himself, responded well to this parenting style, his answer was a resounding no. He had experienced his own rebellion exactly as his son was demonstrating now. However, instead of this revelation being the catalyst for transformation and evolution in his own parenting, he justified his embrace of the traditional with the old catch-cry, "It didn't do me any harm." Well, in my professional opinion, it has done some harm, it has done all of us some psychological harm.
Let me take you back to our fictitious example of working for a harsh and critical boss. Imagine that this boss suddenly recognises that the gradual decline in your work performance is due to his berating. I know, I know, your boss would need to be a spiritual and psychological master to achieve this epiphany, but just run with the example for the sake of the example. Imagine your boss has an awakening and realises that your irritated, sullen, withdrawn, angry presence at work is mostly because of his approach to you. Imagine what a profound difference it would make for a boss like this to say, "Hey, you know what, I've realised that it can't feel very good to be criticised by somebody you once respected. I've realised that you are probably doing the best you can under very difficult circumstances. It must seem to you like I'm not easy to please, and I'm probably not if I'm honest. I know that you are a good person and you are sincere in wanting to do a good job."
Now I know that this fairy-tale ending is what Hollywood movies are made of and not the stuff of real life, but I just want you to extend this metaphor in your own mind to a child and parent. Children love their parents. Let me say that again: children love their parents. Let me repeat that for emphasis: children love their parents. No child is defiant for the hell of it. No child is antagonistic for the chuckles. No child is aggressive because it's fun. The aggression you observe, the antagonism you observe, and the defiance you observe is psychological pain. It's the child's best, in-the-moment attempt at confidence and resilience. It is the direct result of being told, subtly or not, by a parent or educator or society that he or she is bad or wrong.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Revolutionary Who's Raising You by Deidre Steadman. Copyright © 2016 Deidre Steadman. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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