Parenting: Part 1 - Confusion and Guidance
Parenting is a massively important subject. The emotional and physical health of our children—and the adults they become as well as the society they create—depends on how we parent them.
Parenting is also quite simple because the basic needs that all children have are quite simple. The complicated part is that each child brings a unique character to the challenge and every parent brings a unique and limited set of emotional and material circumstances to it as well. A parent may want to give their child free play outdoors but happen to live in an urban high rise. Unique solutions must be brought to unique situations.
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The following is a relatively brief overview of the vast and essential topic of parenting.
What do I do?
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We have children, but then what? Do we do what our parents did—or the opposite? Do we follow our friends—or what various parenting books and “experts” suggest? Do we go with the method-of-the-moment, such as, “Attachment Parenting,” “Authoritative Parenting,” or “Free Range Parenting”? Or do we just do what feels right and see what happens?
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In my decades of experience I've seen everything from “let the baby cry it out” to “breastfeed them until they're three or four.” Popular childrearing methods like this that contradict each other are all backed up by studies and statistics—so something's not right. The so-called scientific methods being used and conclusions being drawn are either skewed, incomplete, narrow, or biased. If so much is suspect and even wrong, how do we find out what's right and what actually works? Where do we find the truth about children and parenting?
Parenting is Natural
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Jean Liedloff, author of The Continuum Concept, lived amongst the stone-age Yequana tribe of South America for 5 years. She once told the mothers, as they were working together and caring for their babies, that women in her world learned to be mothers by reading books and listening to experts. The Yequana mothers laughed and laughed—because this was the funniest thing they had ever heard. They truly thought she was telling a joke. When they settled down and she assured them it was true, they still thought she was teasing. To the Yequana, raising and caring for children was as obvious and intrinsic as breathing. They have felt it, lived it, and seen it their whole lives.
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In fact, breathing is an activity regulated by the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), the lower brain centre that is fully functional at birth. It doesn't require thinking, understanding, knowledge, or direction of the will—it just happens, just as the heart simply beats. If we need experts to help us breathe properly it is only because we have become tense, anxious, and dysfunctional due to excess stress, trauma—and poor parenting. I propose that if we need experts to help us parent, it's for some of the same reasons.
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If you're a parent, the ability to properly care for children is in every fibre of your being—it's as natural as breathing. If it's difficult or confusing for you, there are reasons, both inside and outside of you.
Personal Responsibility
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Healthy, caring, and effective parenting allows children to become healthy, caring, and effective parents themselves. If instead, your childhood had neglect, abuse, and negative conditioning, the resulting dysfunction will interfere with your parenting. When your own childhood has left you confused, doubtful, anxious, depressed, angry, tense, distracted, addicted, stressed and unhappy it is difficult to be a good parent.
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Therefore, the first step in better parenting is to commit to resolving your own issues, which of course, get between you and your child. It is not necessary or possible to resolve everything before you parent, but it is necessary to know what these factors are, and to take therapeutic responsibility for them.
Wisdom and Guidance
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There are often many other factors affecting parenting, including guidance and support. If, as children, we never experienced healthy parenting, we may not even know what that looks like. And, if we are not supported by family members and friends who are effective parents themselves, we may be overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all. My greatest gift in this regard was from a renowned Hopi elder, Thomas Banyacya, at the Six Nations reservation in Ontario, October 1990.
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Thomas was one of four chosen messengers tasked to reveal the ancient Hopi prophesies, which he ultimately presented to the United Nations in 1992. During the gathering at Six Nations he took me aside, and to my surprise spent about 30 minutes, one-on-one, talking to me not about the prophesies but about . . . parenting.
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The Hopi prophesies are a centuries-old secret oral tradition predicting social and natural upheaval if traditional values and protections of life were ignored. To Thomas, the core of those values was the community, the family, and—at the centre —the child. Never having met me, he gave me a mission—to communicate the right way to live to my people, my culture. And so he spoke about being a good parent.
Thomas told about his traditional Hopi childhood on Third Mesa in Arizona and how hard and unforgiving that life could be. “It is very important that children are close to many relatives—brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles,” he said quietly, “because, if they lose their mother and father, the bonds they have with others will carry them through.”
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Thomas emphasized how essential it was for parents and children to have connected families that offer support, joy and appreciation. He lamented how difficult it is for single mothers and separated nuclear families to raise children, and how this leads to many of the problems we see in the world today—the world the Hopi prophesies warn of.
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Thomas did not just talk theory, he gave me pointed and lighthearted examples of how to include my children when I was busy, how to be firm when they asked for too much, and how to protect them (without stealing their power) when they scrambled up trees and jumped across streams. He was warm, serious, caring—and hilarious. Then he thanked me for my time, gave me his blessing with a hug, and carried on. To this day, I am grateful for the unexpected gift of his wisdom.
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Parental Support
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Many parents come to me feeling overwhelmed and even guilty about their parenting struggles. That's when I usually inform them that for over 2 million years, our hominid ancestors raised children in close, familial-connected groups, just like the Yequana or Hopi. Without those supports and bonds, all aspects of parenting become more difficult. Single parents and couples without emotionally healthy—and available—extended family and friends need to find solutions to fill those gaps. If those gaps remain open, the unmet bonding needs of children will draw them towards dysfunctional influences from troubled peers, predatory adults (including teachers), and the infinite vortex of social media.
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These are complex issues, but just as thousands of leaves are supported by one tree trunk, the myriad problems of parenting are supported by one central power—the close bond between you and your child. That bond, in turn, is supported by a root system of other healthy relationships. For these reasons I strongly suggest that you:
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1) commit to resolving your own personal issues
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2) nourish the bond between you and your child
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3) both develop healthy relationships with others
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(continued in "Parenting: Part 2 - Basic Needs and Confidence")