The other day I was speaking to a friend of mine while we were picking up our children from school. We were chatting while the children played together. Suddenly my friend’s daughter began telling him that she wanted to go home, “Now!” Within seconds she was whining and carrying on, pulling at his shirt and even kicking his legs. He tried to continue over her voice while occasionally telling her he was leaving soon. “Yes, darling, we are leaving soon. Darling, please don’t do that. I am coming, sweetheart.” Needless to say, our conversation ended after several seconds.
The scene sat in my mind all day. Here was a father who was respected in the community, outspoken, strong and intelligent, who, from my perspective, not only enjoyed being a father but also treated his children respectfully and fairly. How, then, can a child raised with such dedicated parents, behave in a way that is so disrespectful? Is this new age of conscious parenting creating self-centred children who get their way to a point where it becomes destructive to them? Is there some place for plain old-fashioned firm discipline? These are the questions I found myself asking as I looked at my own parenting style. For it is in always questioning the status quo within that we find refinement. This is the task of conscious parenting.
The conscious parenting movement came about as an urgent swing away from the dictatorial styles of the past where fear instilled order over children. Parents began reading more books and attending workshops while working on their own personal growth. We wanted to maintain the free spirits of our children and give them the love and respect they deserved. All the articles in Byronchild give evidence of this new paradigm and it thrills the heart to see it unfolding around us.
But in that swing, there is a danger of swinging too far and becoming too permissive. Both ends of the spectrum, suppression and permissiveness, are our primal responses to control our environment and our children. What sits in the middle of the swing, untapped, is authority. When we think of those past dogmatic styles, we mistakenly confuse authority with suppression and therefore steer well away from it. As a result we have no other place to go but permissiveness. Then guess what? We have come no farther than before. We are equally as controlling, but in a much more covert way. Permissiveness is trickier to spot than our fore-parents’ style of suppression because it often looks like’conscious’ parenting. Permissiveness in its subtle forms can often seem democratic, empathic and respectful. The key to identifying it is to look at our own hidden motives behind our movements as parents.
I’ve discovered that in my own relationship with myself as ‘conscious’ there are indeed some ulterior motives running. They hide my fear and guilt inside the sheep’s clothing of ‘conscious’ parenting: fear of making a mistake, fear of being disliked by my children, guilt for not being a good enough mother, guilt about the split from their father, fear of conflict… just to name a few. I will, for example, be allowing (my concept of conscious behaviour) rather than risk my child’s wrath.
In attempting to do it right, we will read hundreds of books and acquire many skills to manoeuvre our way through the often intimidating experience of parenting. While opening our minds to new information is paramount in increasing human potential, our leaning on it at the expense of our own innate abilities is incapacitating. And not only do we lean but we use the concepts to serve our hidden motives. We are afraid of ourselves as parents, so we use conscious parenting skills to be, not conscious, but safe. Indeed we are finding new ways to abandon our responsibility, our authority, and hand it over to someone else. In the end, when all parenting modalities have been learned, every trick used, we come to see one thing: children learn not by what we say but by who we are. So what is authority? From my perspective it is composed of two aspects: Who we are and sovereignty. The dictionary defines sovereignty as:
1) the position of authority
2) ability to be independent of outside authority or not governed by another.
The ability to truly be ourselves and not give ourselves over to another; this is authority. It is under threat within this consciousness movement, not by fault of the movement, but at the hands of our unquestioned motives. It is under threat because Who We Are consists of the full gamut of being human, in all its perfect imperfections. In the name of perfection and consciousness we deny our darker half, leaving us with only half of who we are. When we deny the half, we give away our authority. Who We Are is the most important of reference points for our children’s development because it gives them the imprint of how to live within the constant paradox of those imperfections. So that brings us to the next question: if authority is based on who we are, and we are not perfect, then what does authority look like?
Because real authority is based on each person’s uniqueness, then a formula for what it looks like can never be made. We can describe it rather from what it is not. It is not a capacity to bend in order to serve ulterior motives, our children’s or ours. It is not manipulating the child (suppression) nor is it manipulating circumstances (permissiveness) in order to relieve our discomfort. It is not blame, shame or coercion, as authority would have no need for these. It is humility in the face of those things showing up ’cause that is what happens when you let yourself be you and it is to be welcomed as the raw material for our increasing authority. Authority would look like firmly, unashamedly and humbly being oneself. All of it. Trusting the capacity to govern another based on one’s ability to govern oneself.
I have two favourite authoritarian examples in my life growing up: my godmother and Mr. Dudly, the vice-principal at my school. They were immense uncompromising presences. If I crossed the boundaries around them, I knew I was in trouble. I liked that. I liked that I deserved such expectations. I liked the order in which they kept the universe around me. I liked how the mean boys at school didn’t get away with anything from Mr. Dudley and how safe that made me feel. I also felt respected by them, as I respected them. Their firmness never needed shame or blame to hoist itself upon, it was just firm and I mean really firm. And most interesting of all, their values were not necessarily like mine (my godmother insisted on clean fingernails, Mr. Dudly was against hat-wearing) but it was the authority that supported me, regardless of values.
Self-authority and authority over our children is the anchor to which all other aspects of parenting are tied. When wielded responsibly it gives children the safe parameters within which to relax and grow into their own authority, their own sovereignty. Sovereign initiation happens when the parameters are pushed loose with maturity. Without the parameters they miss the essential initiation of Who They Are. Without firm parameters, our children are forced to scream and whine, desperately looking for the reference point from which to grow and initiate themselves. Quite simply, if we don’t claim our authority, how can they?
In our attempt to be flexible and democratic, our children have become keen negotiators. In our attempt to be respectful, our children have become demanding. Why? Because these attributes, unless in tandem with real uncompromising authority, have no value. In fact, not only do they have no value but also they become the means whereby our children are undermined because these attributes are being used to serve our motives, not display our authority. In the name of light, what darkness is playing itself out? We mistake permissiveness for consciousness. We want to be the good guys. In our fear, we become contrived and contracted, nice but small, kind but simple. And this, with children’s remarkable radar devices, is what they learn and inherit from us.
We are, after all, a generation fed on the ideals of world peace, personal awareness and non-violence. Words like authority, control, power, domination and discipline are contrary to that culture and remind us of all the dark aspects we would like to transcend. We therefore have, as Diane Ehrensaft, PhD says in her book Spoiling Childhood (see Anna Jahn’s review on page 40) a very difficult time embracing those capacities as parents. In this quasi-spiritual age where everyone is seeking to transcend their humanness and handing themselves over to higher powers, we are reluctant to step into our own authority, let alone take on the responsibility of parental authority.
If we can begin to see that even our unconscious parts might serve our children, then we can accept the whole of who we are and thus take authority no longer fearing our unconscious. After all, if I contain myself so well that my children never see me angry, never see me over the top, never see me in vulnerable and pathetic situations with myself and never see me resolve it, how do they learn about living the full spectrum of humanness? If you stay involved with a violent partner so the children don’t have a split household, are you teaching them love or cowardice? If I back down from my rule about no TV after school, are they learning flexibility or manipulation?
Look at the icons of our time, people who have managed to single-handedly change the course of events in their field: Martin Luther King, Mohammed Ali, John Lennon, Princess Diana, Jane Fonda and Madonna. These people are anything but tame and their lives anything but perfect. “Passion has no volume control!” reads the banner showing Lleyton Hewitt screaming on the tennis court. People like this excite us, make us feel alive and tune us to the awesomeness of being human. They also confront us with all parts of us left unresolved about our relationship to our humanness. All of it is our heritage. Our authority is the very gateway to that awesomeness. Isn’t that what we want to give our children?
We fear, if we ‘let go’ into that authority, we will become unconscious and dominant, indulging in our dramas and needs and our children will wear the consequences. But this is the protest of a very sophisticated ego. “Don’t do it!” it cries. “You know what a bad parent you can be!” “Just wait until you prove you are a good parent first, then take authority!” A Mexican standoff resides within. We only want to trust ourselves when we prove we are trustworthy. Seems like a good solution, but how does that mistrust translate into daily life? My guess is it keeps our control trips alive and well.
We can trust that our authority, when claimed, will not mess up our kids or treat them badly. We can know that sometimes the best lesson for a child might be when we lose it and then say we are sorry. Our own humility teaches them the same. We can say an uncompromising “No” to them, without explanation or democratic process. Dominion, authority, strength, passion, when given their rightful place, provide a strong, loving and protective environment for our children to grow up in. Then they can relax, no longer needing to push us into being an authority against our will. Then we give them the greatest gift … their own sovereignty.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness,
that frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented or fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t save the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking,
so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest
the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our light shine
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
–Marianne Williamson – A Return to Love
You can read more of Kelly’s writing at EQUUS, here.