Blog by Valerie
There’s so much parenting advice, and so little I resonate with, so I thought I’d share my perspective.
Parenting is about building relationships through developmentally appropriate leadership (which is related to a previous post on governance and the YouTube video below on sacred leadership/eldership by Tjana Goreng Goreng, PhD). Kids, whether our own, family, or community, challenge us to confront triggers, fears and insecurities, as well as allow us to more clearly see our strengths, values and capacity to connect.
When babies cry out we give them instant attention and soothing, but that is not always a good idea with older kids, much less adults! Often we set patterns into motion because of our own limitations (read about some of mine here). I knew a mother who considered her adult daughter mentally and emotionally fragile (which I didn’t). She martyred herself to avoid her daughter feeling pain and experiencing certain struggles. But some of that seemed to me (and the daughter’s therapist) necessary growing pain for the daughter’s development. And I felt the mother was projecting her own mental and emotional fragility onto her daughter because she felt unable to hold space in certain ways. They both seemed a bit stifled.
I say that with deep compassion, because we all have limits and struggles. Part of the fulfilment of any spiritual work, and certainly parenting, is bringing our deepest challenges to the surface so we can make peace with ourselves (and our ancestors, younger and older!) to become even better leaders — i.e. more powerful, grounded, centred and humble human beings.
When I look at my child, I see some struggles she’s come here with, some that feel linked to her father and that ancestry, some linked to me and mine, and some connected to her context and the land and ancestors where we live. (Ie ancestors of spirit, lineage, and land). When I am able to shift something that she’s also carrying, I expect her to have a big emotional response because we are connected with very open hearts. My shifting innately moves her heart and affects our shared ancestors, and she has to process it too. All of that emotion is likely to also affect my husband, because we’re all very sensitive. So when I feel something shift, I both feel excited and tend to brace myself to be able weather some emotional storms that my leadership has set into motion.
I’m very aware that being committed to deep spiritual work asks a lot of myself and people who choose to be intimate with me. I don’t feel like I have a choice, though, in the way a singer can’t (or ought not!) stop themselves from busting into song throughout the day. To stifle it is to self destruct and snuff out my life force. Parenting feels the same in that it’s not a choice, it’s an honour and responsibility that defines the structure of my life.
I remember a book that made news years ago about parenting being all joy and no fun. To me, that says the parent is overwhelmed and may not know any other way to lead and set up their life. I’ve seen quite a bit of a so-called ‘gentle parenting’ approach, which feels like a reaction to authoritarian parenting and actually seems to me to stress out the children by giving them too much leadership space and not enough containing and consequences to uphold values and norms.I appreciate some elements of the ‘sturdy parenting‘ approach and agree that there’s a big difference between punishment and consequences (Image from here).
And I add to that an Indigenous worldview in which there’s a huge difference between deeming behaviours as unacceptable and judging a person as unacceptable.
It seems to me in an effort to limit the destructive impact of the existential judgment and punishment wound in the western worldview, there arose a popular idea that yelling at kids destroys their self esteem. I do not agree. I think expressing anger and showing that it’s an intense emotion that we all experience is part of healthy leadership. And after I express anger, I offer a cuddle. I tell my child that I love her no matter what I’m feeling, and that there’s nothing wrong with her. (And if I was angry with someone else, I make sure to tell her it wasn’t about her and still offer a cuddle if she wants.) She now says to us, ‘Sometimes we get angry’ with the same tone as ‘Sometimes we get sad’ or ‘Sometimes we get wrinkles’ (referring to what happens in the bath). It shows me she feels that it’s okay to experience intense emotions within herself and with others in her environment (Image from here).Recently I sat down and cried before bed and told her that I felt sad because she had been very hard on me that day. It was the highest defiance and worst day of listening yet. I could tell she felt bad. She came over and hugged me and said, “It’s okay, I love you no matter what, Mommy.” That helped fulfil me both as a parent and helped my inner child feel safer than I had with my mother.
Parenting, like other forms of leadership in Indigenous science, is an exercise in unconditional love and existential acceptance, while embodying core values and cultural norms and creating consequences for breaching them. I hope it resonates with you, and thanks for reading!
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