In my first sentence in the prologue of my book, In the Midst of Parenting, I write," At some point in the midst of parenting a discovery awaits us; we realize that from the start parenting has rendered us completely helpless.

Though this is a statement that could be argued it is meant to speak to the fact that if we are honest and open to experience we will experience new and wonderful and new and difficult feelings in knowing who our baby and child will be and will bring out in us." In fact the book in many ways starts with the parent because we get a new child at the beginning(already alive with some kind of temperament) but we meet that child with our own temperaments, our own pasts and our own baggage.  If there are ways to share and bring to the surface, our own stories, that might make the day and all of us, just a little richer.

        Another title for today’s talk could have been “Turning Power on its Head” since my belief is that we are taught that to be strong and quick is good, and to be honest and admit confusion or defeat or mistake is weak and that weakness is bad.  To be strong is to have quick answers of action or of speaking and this will be a place to question all that and to consider the good parts of apology, amends, and recuperation- even of confusion.

        I wrote my book after I had a baby and felt mistreated or misunderstood by the available literature, which I needed badly.  There was the psychoanalytic literature which basically blamed the mother for everything- great (sarcastic) for me who had a dramatically colicky baby boy; and then there was all the other advice that made it all sound easy, very quick and very easy, smiley-face easy.

        I looked for good authorities and helpers and found bad ones, and I looked for leaders until I felt forced into- perhaps my destiny or my real job- of finding my own path, a very bumpy ride indeed.

        I come to you today to share some of my hard earned wisdom, compassion, empathy and perhaps help particularly in the arena of limit setting and power struggles.  I wrote my book as a fellow traveler and am here today as such though I am probably the only one who took three flights to get here.

        I was discovering, slowly, the quick-fix, how-to advice of certain professionals was actually stripping many parents of a good kind of power, a power to think and feel and ask for advice sensitive to them and their children, and stripping them of the notion that we are all unique and there is no one-size-fits-all for everyone.( This presentation will assume the importance of trust in relationship.)

        And then in my practice, I came into contact with weary and frustrated parents, and then the same or other parents who brought disobedient children or brought themselves with children with whom there were constant struggles.

I saw strict parents and detached parents but I didn’t see too many who were having a lot of fun- and believe me I would never say it’s all fun, even with the help I had............I saw power destroying relationships, struggles escalating or kids hiding and sneaking and never being found. In between I saw naturally and easily engaged families but that was pretty rare. So I want to talk about good power and bad power and how it can change, how we can change.  For me parenthood is about change- like it or not- if we want to grow with our kids as they discover who they are and can be and become, and as we influence them but are not their sculptors.

        So let me start with power that is not so good:

1.   Power, to restate a bit, when used as absolute advice which bypasses the receiver’s claim to thought, feeling and common sense, can be abusive.

Parents and kids need to be respected and here lies a value system so let me state it outright.  It is not a system of values that lies in an absolute morality but aims towards an ethical respectful approach to individual children and parents, and to what I call “developmental realities”.  A little girl may be shy and sensitive to yelling- yes who isn’t but some kids are scared more easily.  I would say it could be important to tone it down if one can.  In certain cultures it is fine to have a family bed and there is no sure authority to make anyone feel evil about it unless there is sexual abuse.

        And remember, psychology is new and America is a new country.  People often don’t have the last word and very often when they act like they do, they change their minds after it’s too late for those who swallowed the pill of their “absolute” advice, and implied foolishness or punishments for those who didn’t- sounding a bit like a religion, all of this advice, no?

        Pretty obviously, perhaps, this can be a beginning of a co-dependency on in many books and I have met parents who find it actually helpful. Authorities or “deciders”, and who wind up deciding our whole lives.

2.  Cerebral Parenting.  This is using the brain or advice to skip over feelings and become dismissive of our own or children’s feelings.  It’s parenting with a script, with ready answers, and usually either has a forced empathy, “That must be really sad for you”, which is a statement or sentiment which can sometimes be helpful but not if it's forced and predictable 

        What I am calling "forced empathy" is a popular format, one way too popular.

3.  “Just do it”.  This is the brain not having time to process and the parent feeling a pressure to get things done quickly.  The “quick fix” solutions usually have believers who try to make non-believers or doubters feel inadequate.  That, I think, goes to our need to get others to diet with us when we do so or to binge when we lose control.  When we have company, that is, we feel more secure of what otherwise might make us have serious doubt.  An example would be, “Are you having trouble taking a bottle or pacifier away?  Just throw it up in the air and say bye-bye and that the store has no more and there is only one store in the world and after a day of crying and sadness your kid will forget all about it.”

        What’s wrong with that?  Some of you may say nothing.  But I confess, I’m going for the gold of authenticity and trust and honesty here because I think it makes for the foundation for intimate and honest relationship.  Facing the truth, and what I call the “gift of disappointment”, the experiencing of disappointments of reality, like “you’re 3 and a half, it’s time for school, and they don’t allow bottles in the class” or something like that, something true.  It makes for sadness in a parent to be the bad guy and very sad for a child.  It may even seem alarming to us to see a child so sad because quick-fix advice theories tell us that our child will be smiling in no time.  The question is, are we creating a child with a vacant room, an emptiness of sadness rushed away- a future adult who will rush away from any bad feelings, even it is for a fakeness of surface wellbeing. Or are committed to raising a human who can live with limits AND integrity............

        Remember, I say, if we give pat answers that avoid the harsher truths our children may well learn to do the same.  And when we want them to tell us the truth, they may be adept at making it sweeter than the real truth.

4.  Richard Ferber deserves a number of his own, so bad is he in my concept.  He is so bad, obviously to himself that he has been appearing on national tv and in Newsweek to say things he would have sworn off and against.

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May 23, 2006

In the news: Ferber rethinks co-sleeping

In the most recent issue of Newsweek, Dr. Ferber revises his previously unsupportive stance of co-sleeping and states, "Whatever you want to do, whatever you feel comfortable doing, is the right thing to do, as long as it works." This “mom knows best” position is quite a contrast to the advice he gave in his 1985 bestseller, Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems. At that time he wrote, "Sleeping alone is an important part of [your child's] learning to be able to separate from you without anxiety and to see himself as an independent individual.” Dr. Ferber now tells Newseek, "That's one sentence I wish I never wrote. It was describing the general thinking of the time, but it was not describing my own experience or philosophy."

Times have changed since “Ferberizing” was all the rage. According to the Newsweek article, a 2003 study led by the National Institutes of Health found that infant co-sleeping “more than doubled between 1993 and 2000” and “that in a two-week period, 45 percent of infants spent some time at night in an adult bed.”

        This is not to give a definitive point of view,  but to point out my strong opinion that Ferber had a great deal of power in his hands and still does and it can be dangerous to our health and welfare to accept carte blanche the “wisdom” of a self-proclaimed wizard.

        My chapter on sleep, “Tossing and Turning over Crying it Out” was originally published in Mothering Magazine and I was forced, I felt (also because I mark up books) to buy the wizard’s book.

        Who of you has a sample of Dr. Ferber’s techniques and who of you know his techniques for older children who come into their parents’ beds, presumably out of fear or for comfort?

        I am not passing judgment on anyone who is going mad or ill because of sleeplessness if a child is not sleeping for any number of reasons.  All I am saying, aside from “Give Peace a Chance” is that it has to be a human process, a process of parental feeling of sadness, perhaps, if there is a need to cry it out.  I went through this with my daughter Emma at 18 months- also in the book- it is simply that HE LAY CLAIM TO NO PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE COMING FROM HIS METHODS AND HIS INSINUATION- HIS CLAIM WAS THAT THOSE WHO DIDN’T FOLLOW HIS METHODS WERE IN FACT DEPRIVING THEIR CHILDREN OF THEIR RESOURSES.

        ME: JUST WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS???????????????

5.  Assuming that any questioning or challenging of our authority by our children- ASSUMING THAT IT IS MANIPULATION AND MANIPULATION IS ALWAYS BAD.

        “Manipulate” in Italian, comes from “manipolare” which has its roots in the word “mano” for hand, and one use is to change something into something else with one’s hands- it can be a very good thing.

“To move, arrange, operate, or control by the hands or by mechanical means, especially in a skillful manner is one definition of “manipulate” on the web.  Another one is influence or control shrewdly or deviously: "He manipulated public ...

        Wow, very different meanings and very different ways to see the word “manipulative”.  If our child cannot change our minds, how will he or she ever change the world at all or open a parent’s or a teacher’s mind to something new and different, and how will our children ever feel they have an impact on anything or anyone.

        Turning power on its head or side, I would like to suggest that manipulation can be a wonderful thing.

        If a child feels listened to, he or she ultimately develops limits from the facts of life or the personal limits of his own capacities or his parents’ personal limits, or the fact that there is a storm outside that makes it impossible to play.

If a child can manipulate nothing and no-one he may sink into a pit of sneakiness and alienation.

        Listening to our kids may bring us down from a pedestal, which is not always the most comfortable place to live a life anyway.  And we also may have to admit confusion.

6. The Abuse of Power in Having no Limits

        There is a great difference between permissiveness, let’s say complete permissiveness, and attunement.  Attunement implies a careful- though not a constantly over-thought, sensitivity to the “developmental realties" of parent and child, leading as much as possible to a carefree environment where humor reigns or at least there is lots of fun to be had. 

        It is another thing for kids to be shut up by indulging, the hated (by me at least) word “spoiling” which really means neglecting emotional needs and supplying material goods to fix the immediate situation, usually leading to irritable “ungrateful” children, whose deepest needs go unheard.  Because they have experienced the power to get what they demand they often feel omnipotent, and as such responsible for even the bad events that come up- since they have been left to feel the center of the universe, even though in a negative way. People who are phobic often believe deep down that it is their own aggression that could do great damage outside.

        7. Blame

        This is my own personal favorite, in that I have known it all too well.  It often is part of the “unappreciated martyr” syndrome made famous by Jewish comedians but by no means restricted.  It is part of my chapter “Is that a Monster in the Mirror?” in which parents, to avoid feeling like monsters, transfer the monster position to the child.

        My philosophy is that part of a child’s job requirement, is to use tools at his disposal, to test limits, to take advantage, and to accept presents.  It is our job to get to be the monster that has to say no, a big disappointment to our hopes of being Santa Claus all year round.

        There is another very serious point here.  If a child feels bombarded by blame and punishments perceived as unfair, one option is for him to feel victimized and as such, not have a chance to take or feel real accountability.  If I do something stupid and someone screams at me, I probably will feel stupid and humiliated but I may not have the calm or the willingness to think about my part; I'll be crying in my soup and that is what happens to some kids who experience constant blame and bombardment; they never get or take the chance to take responsibilities for their own actions.  That is not a good thing.

        8.  This tops blame in the category of bad because humiliation leaves unspeakable wounds, and I say "unspeakable" because shame hurts like a public slap in the face and may even come in that form. Perhaps it came that way to some of us and we have come to think of it as "not so bad".  But humiliation and shame go deep, they go to internalized feelings of badness and hiding and potential for violence later on, all as part of a deep sense of alienation.  This one, I would think, will deserve some time, after we finish with the negative, coming right up...............

        9.  Parents disagreeing all the time, or feeling they can never disagree

We send our kids to school to learn “conflict resolution” also because we often hate it or can’t get out of it at home.

        Let’s keep in mind that if a child hears and know that two partners have different points of view, and have to work out a compromise, this could be radically positive teaching and modeling for a child.  But we’re getting too positive.......

        10. The last before-----

Using limits as the answer to any and every parenting conflict and when everything gets focused on victory and defeat.

        There are homes, and we might know or have them, where struggle reigns supreme and constant, punishment rules, and there is the spirit of defeat.

        If there is a winner here I am refereeing and deciding, (for a very limited time I am making myself "the decider" there can never be a true winner in such a negative atmosphere- again we turn traditional concepts of power on their multiple heads.  The winner, even though it would be a sad victory, would have to be the child because ultimately it is the child who has the magic three words, “I DON’T CARE”.

        Once those words have been spoken we have lost love, lost our kids, our own capacity for empathy, and lost our power. Usually we are feeling bad and we are in trouble.

 THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE LIMITS---potentially set to song using "These are a Few of My Favorite Things" for those of you who remember "A Sound of Music"

1. "Time-Outs for Parents in Distress"

        These would be part of what I call "organic limits", the limits allowed a parent when he or she cannot take level of distress in a given situation, such as when voices are raised and insults are being hurled and nothing seems productive, and a parent wants to say, "It's enough" but is also saying he or she has reached his own limit.

        When I worked in residential treatment, kids whose histories evoked tears of sympathy and pain were often experts in provoking the anger they were used to.  I succumbed a few times, pushing one boy out of the door and some more, and certainly having wishes of harming one boy in particular,-something that alarmed me at the time, especially since it went against the notion that I was a social worker and there as a professional nice person. 

I found the horrid truth that I would never be a convincingly nice person not all the time at all and actually it was there that my ideas on power struggles started to form.  I almost quit, really out of despair but had a therapist at the time that helped me not feel ashamed of my anger.

        I invented, somehow, the idea of quitting the struggle. I said to Brian, as I call him, "Enough.  I can't do this any-more.  You are a pro- much better than me. You can make me cry, or mad or sad or even feel crazy- I give up- you win at this one.  I can help you try to figure out why you try so hard to get me angry but our fight is over.

        In smaller battles when levels are rising to the point of anger all around and "let's take it a step down" can work, I say try it.  If it can't at the time, having a respite can be a good thing.  It actually helps kids as they grow, learn not to continue arguing beyond a certain level of intensity that could eventually become verbally or emotionally violent.

2.  Fred Rogers.

I want to say his name as a category because he was gentle and wise- seemingly naturally- and because when he died, Channel 13 took out a magazine ad with a pair of sneakers; the ad said, "To Fred Rogers, No one can fill these shoes................"  Emma, who cut all kinds of pictures out for a giant collage on her wall, said that one was just too sad. Fred Rogers, silly to some, and profoundly comforting to others, had a saying I liked a lot.  He said, "The important things in life are caught, not taught".  Life is, he seemed to think, not a barrage of lectures but a living of what is important to us.  How hard is that!  Like my friend Andy who told Jon to sit until he learned to listen, we all feel and say silly and sometimes harmful things.  Hopefully our kids are not afraid of us and will call us on their carpet and we can modify our behavior. Part of being gentle to our kids is being gentle to us. It's hard to beat oneself up and then feel sweet towards one's child.  "I can't believe I said that" can go to "I can't believe I even felt that" but it is often the freedom to feel that takes away the need to act- again it is a form of discipline of self with a side of forgiveness.

2A.  This is part of Mr. Rogers but a sidebar as well. It is about, along with comfort for the weary and besieged parent, asking the same parent to grow up with his child. Many parents stamp their feet and want a child to change. But curbing our own extremes will be part of the package of any limits for any other intimate person in our lives.

IN THIS WAY DISCIPLINE IS DEMOCRATIC; WE ALL NEED IT. 

3. PERSEVERANCE WHEN WE COME BACK FROM POWER STRUGGLES

        This is about changing gears, if we have an atmosphere of struggle.  If we decide to be pioneers of change, usually we go to our child and say, for example "I, we, want to go about this a different way.  I love you and we've all been getting it wrong. I've been getting it wrong and I want to try to communicate from more calm, I'm going to try, very hard."  There is no one formula saying though everyone can probably be helped to find a venue that feels safe and real.

        However once the pitch is made, the patience must begin.  We all get addicted or at least habituated to patterns we know and love/hate.

         It is a job and a half to change that. It is our job to model apology and amends.

      4.  AND PRACTICE. HERE IS MR.ROGERS AGAIN WITH HIS SONG ON PRACTICE (We should all Google it). 

        I see parents who give up after a sentence of trying and I can understand that.  A parent might feel, "I humbled myself and took the first step and no thanks at all, no acceptance, just frozen silence."

Have any of you known yourselves or other people to get stuck in giving up too quickly.

        5.  NOT FUTURIZING A CHILD'S WHOLE LIFE BECAUSE OF ONE    BEHAVIOR.

A family that is not dysfunctional, for the purposes of our talk today, is one which is fluid, where one behavior doesn't take over all the time and where no one person stays the crazy one all the time. Certainly a kid who is stuck in a bad behavior, like cutting class, or even one's own body (not that uncommon where I work, though it calls for emergency attention) is usually trying to say something and it's been my experience that when there is a team effort some relief can be found of time can be healing.  This is part of:

        WE'RE IN THIS TOGETHER AND WE WANT TO BE PART OF THE SOLUTION.  Sometimes what starts out as a kid's problem is really an expression of anger at a parent who is fighting a problem.  THIS IS NOT PARENT-BASHING, OR the sense that it is all because of parents that bad things happen to kids.  But some kids take their symptoms underground where action expresses feeling.

        IMPORTANT EXCEPTION:  WHEN PROBLEMS ARE SERIOUS AND COULD INVOLVE OR ARE INVOLVING THE LAW OR THE SAFETY OF A CHILD OR OTHERS THIS IS AN EMERGENCY AND NEEDS NEVER TO BE TAKEN LIGHTLY.

        6. Humor as Fun and Deflection: the Non-Robotic Family

        If there is some spontaneity in a family and a parent can laugh at himself without humiliation or intent to hurt, sometimes battles relax into laughter, and we can see the ridiculousness of a particular battle. 

        Sometimes I- I blame my upbringing and neurology, apologize ad nauseum, until one of my kids says," Mom, enough, we get it" and even then it's hard for me to stop.  It takes discipline and practice, really. Fortunately we don't argue nearly as much.  It was fun while it lasted, getting bunches of tension out but I guess others' feelings need to be considered too.

        Parents who are not funny should not be bullied into humor unless he or she can laugh at the down-fall of this attempt. That can be pretty funny but my latest definition of a good joke is where all the parties find it funny.

        7.  ALLOWING OUR CHILDREN TO CHALLENGE OUR LIMITS AND BEHAVIORS ON THEIR WAY TO CHALLENGING AND CHANGING THE WORLD FOR THE BETTER.

      8.   WE NEED TO STUDY HOW KIDS ARE INSPIRED

AND INSPIRING WHEN RESPECTED, HOW WE NEED TO VALUE THEM, ALSO FOR THE TRUE NEED WE HAVE OF THEM.

        If we leave them stranded in alcohol and boredom and alienation, with no national respect for volunteering and no real options or nothing important they can take initiative about.

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        IN OTHER WORDS THERE IS MUCH FOR OUR CHILDREN TO GIVE TO US AND TO THE WORLD AND THEY NEED TO KNOW IT...........AND FEEL IT.  IT WILL HELP THEIR SELF-ESTEEM AND THE PLANET AT THE SAME TIME.

        AND AS FOR US, WE WILL KEEP GROWING, HOPEFULLY (TOO RARELY AT PRESENT) IN A COMMUNITY THAT SUPPORTS US TOO.

        IF IT'S TRUE THAT IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILD, IT CERTAINLY TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE US AS WELL........................

     Hopefully our world will become more open to the physical and mental energy and compassion our children can contribute to the world.  Now that we know that boredom and drinking and drugs are hitting our teens on both or all coasts in America, we might begin thinking more globally or at least in terms of the nation or smaller community. Having real integrity of emotional connection to oneself is not a national value per se--at least not yet.

        Power is best when it's mutual and it’s not the only language of communication, negotiating, and caring.

  And admitting defeat—contrary to much current opinion—can be the beginning of true courage.