Every Shape Has a Place
Monday @ Montpelier:
October 28
Abuse by Another Name
I know, this sounds like a real upper, right? But I can’t help the tone, because I was recently introduced to a preacher in Idaho whose philosophy of parenting deeply disturbed my spirit, so that’s what I’m processing today (you’re welcome).
I actually think quite often about the parenting philosophy he ascribes to, which asserts that parents are locked in conflict with their children and they must NEVER concede, for fear that “losing” battles will result in children’s misshapen-ness of heart leading them to eternal ruin. Despite the fact that I decry this perspective, I still find myself influenced by its prevalence in the religious culture I inhabited in my younger years. I do still worry about “losing the higher ground” when faced with my kids’ resistance; still find myself saying “because I said so” rather than engaging in conversation about a directive I’m giving.
I’m not arguing here that a child’s level of experience and comprehension is the same as the adults’ in their lives. Very often, I don’t have time to explain my instructions and just need my children to trust me—you know, because they’re about to step in a hole, or touch something they don’t know is hot, or don’t see a car coming. There’s a place for asking your kids to trust you, just as there’s a place for asking for trust in any relationship between humans, and value in habit-training them towards quicker and deeper trust. But a parent demanding blind obedience and denouncing emotional reactions or questioning as simply unacceptable and sinful puts the wellness of child and parent alike on a knife’s edge. This kind of parenting pits one human will against another, creating an extremely one-sided power dynamic that sets children up for dangerous relationships in the future, and invites pride to take deep root in the heart of the adult.
This method may justify itself by claims of saving children, “training them up” out of love so that sin doesn’t get a “foothold” on them. It may claim to be a rescue mission for their souls. But this places an enormous amount of power and control in the hands of a finite being—tempting, to be sure, but definitely not a practice of trust in the Creator and Sustainer of our lives who alone can change the hearts and direct the paths of our children. There are so many dangerous pitfalls in maintaining a combative, authoritative posture towards our children. This turns easily into abuse of the child, but the adult in question is also experiencing abuse to their spirit.
When I say abuse, I mean improper use. I mean treatment that causes damage or harm. I mean treatment by and of humans in such a way that the God in them (His image) is not recognized or valued, and not affording them the respect and dignity due to God’s beloved creation. This is true not just for children, but for adults, who I believe are doubly damaged by this fight to maintain control and authority at all costs. While a child may be able to nurture a healed, tender heart despite abuse inflicted by another, an adult’s heart, petrified by unchecked pride, self-righteousness, and an uncompromising grasp for control is much harder to soften.
The Child Never Grows Up
As I have internalized the CGS philosophy of the value of children and their spirituality, and engaged spiritual formation (my own, and my children’s) from those beliefs, I have learned that it is to my own peril that I juxtapose myself to my children or over-value my experience and wisdom to the undervalue of theirs.
We are on a much more even playing field with children than we want to admit. We want to believe we are more righteous, more intelligent, more adjusted, even (dare I say), more valuable to the world. Assuredly, the culture we swim in does much to reinforce these ideas. But, in fact, children and adult alike have blindspots, are sinful, have big emotions that defy expression, have trouble trusting or letting go or being humble. It looks different for each life stage, but different does not always equal better.
As afore-mentioned (in a great many of my posts), the child version of ourselves never goes away. They are inside of us, each version of our self, like nesting dolls. If they are removed, it doesn’t lead to a more solid self. It just leads to a greater, more echoey emptiness. We never outgrow ourself. The child within always exists as they were, and the adult version of ourselves can surround and validate that inner child, or ignore and suppress them, but we can’t eliminate them, hard as we might try.
I wonder how much of parenting, teaching, training, counseling—any kind of work with children—is really the parenting, teaching etc. of our own inner children. This could mean trying to give that child whatever thing it has lacked—love or control or safety or assurance or freedom—or it could mean continuing the work someone had already begun of devaluing that inner child, shutting them up and shutting them down so that we are “protected” from feeling the pain and powerlessness of that innocent self.
I guess this is why every parent is going to imperfectly parent their child: not every child needs what you needed. We are all unique people shaped by unique circumstances. What our children are communicating by their words or behavior have equal chance of being something that we have the capacity to handle, or something that presses on our emotional bruises and sends us into a rage. We very well may need someone else from our “village” to step in and use their gifts, talents, capacity to give the child what they really need. If parents rely on our own limited resources as the end-all-be-all for our children’s care….well, we are wounded people and we are going to wound each other, especially those who can’t articulate the hurt or protect themselves from it.
The Educational Power of Self-Vigilance
Parenting aside, no one person can meet every need of another person (think, friendships, partners, pastors) and we’re going to hit our limits at some point in every relationship. I feel this limited-ness so much with my own kids. So—what can I do for my children when I find myself facing a situation that I can’t handle or solve?
The only thing I know to do, at any time and in any situation, to address my kids’ needs is to model humility. This means showing them that we all have limited capacity and need to ask for help, and it means modeling repentance when I don’t do what I “ought to have done” and have done what I “ought not to have done.” And then, out of that humility, connect them with something or someone that will actually fill their particular need.
Rowan Williams, in his book Passions of the Soul says that pride is
“at heart a failure to accept dependence gratefully and gracefully, a failure to accept our dependence…There is a completely proper kind of self-determination; freedom is part of how we activate the image of God in us. But—and it is a pretty substantial ‘but’—we are, like it or not, dependent, minute by minute, on all we have received and are receiving. We are dependent for our humanity on our parentage, our upbringing; we’re dependent for our life, moment by moment, on our breathing and our eating. As persons we are constantly receiving, absorbing; and if we try to deny that, once again we become not more but less human.”
Teaching children to lay down their pride (ie: accepting they have need/are dependent) is not about telling kids how it’s done, but by showing them how it’s done (or not done, more frequently, but still effective). This is a very minute-by-minute, constant-vigilance kind of practice, and keeps one very self-sin-focused rather than others-sin-focused: a very different parenting approach from the one outlined perviously. Modeling humility for my kids requires me to recognize my dependency on God/others and live my limitedness transparently (they are always watching us and, for good or for ill, seem to learn more profoundly from that which we didn’t mean for them to see).
I believe this approach is even more important for our kids’ education than our inevitable, secondary roles of telling them what is right and wrong, what is the best way to live, and pointing out where they have failed to meet standards and expectations. I will inevitably have to do those things, but they will be actions taken to treat an immediate symptom and are always, always, indicative of bigger and deeper issues to address. If, through modeling, I can somehow equip them with the tools to recognize when they are beyond their capacity, and the words to say “I’m sorry” and/or “I need help,” they will be far more likely to make their own healthy choices, and find what they need when they need it.
I’m new to this practice, myself, but engaging the practices of recognizing capacity, asking for help, and apologizing, have already significantly impacted my relationship with my children. When we face hard things—either external things like loss and disappointment or internal things like selfishness and anger—we have language available for tracing problems to their root and fixing things from the ground up rather than the other way ‘round.
Living in Our Actual Shape
Recognizing our capacity (an amount which varies from person to person) is an underrated skill. It doesn’t serve us well in a Western world, where capacity doesn’t matter so much as accomplishment. Being a whole person matters much less than being a person with a whole lot of power, money, and/or success. If we’re going to reach the top, be the very best, we have to be everything all the time. If we aren’t, we will get passed over and left behind. We will be delayed, set back, unable to achieve the most and/or the quickest results.
I have spend a lot of my life ignoring the limits of my body, heart, and mind. It’s only been in the past decade that I’ve experimented with finding my boundary lines and operating within them, and I still really struggle with respecting those limits. Often, this has meant working outside of my capacity, but it sometimes means under-performing, too. Both are a problem. If we ask ourselves, or loved ones, to supply what cannot be given, performing past limits, there will be damage—legs breaking under too much weight. But if we ask too little, devaluing what a person has to give, denying the dignity of participation, we run the risk of contributing to the atrophy of once-capable limbs.
What does this have to do with parenting?? Maybe I’m stretching, but here’s how I see it: to operate as sole arbiter of what is right/wrong, good/evil, healthy/unhealthy, truth/distorted reality is to have an inflated sense of our own capacity, an act that often invites into our veins the poison of pride (“I’ve got this; I don’t need anyone else; no one can tell me anything I don’t already know”). In tandem, this philosophy of parenting often requires shutting down our children out of the assumption that they have no capacity to tell us what they see and feel in this world and are devoid of any kind of emotional or spiritual wisdom. To view them as such is to refuse them the dignity of exercising the muscles needed for both current and future flourishing—not just their own, but the flourishing of the place/time/community in which they were providentially born.
We tend to think that kids’ impact on the world is something that will happen only in their future, and parenting is often about either preparing them for or shaping that future into what we think it should be, but the imprint of any human life on the world happens in the NOW, at any and every age, and ultimately, the person embodying a soul is the one who has the final say about what that impact is meant to be.
What I am suggesting is that there is an approach to child-rearing that simultaneously dignifies a child and humbles the adult, putting them on a level playing field where they stand side-by-side rather than face-to-face, looking to God and not to each other. He is the ultimate source, and gives out of the kind of unfathomable love outlined in 1 Corinthians 13. He is, in fact, limitless, and owns all things. His love won’t ask too much or too little of us, or put us down, hold us back, or degrade us. He knows what we need, better than we know it ourselves, and can meet those needs—whether that is assurance of His great value for us, or rest in the reality of our need for the common grace that fills the lungs of every created being. Maybe both children and parents simply need to find a co-journeyer in each other, to exchange what is seen, learn, and witnessed along the road, to mutual edification.
“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” —Matthew 5:3
“…the poor in ‘spirit’ (pneuma in Greek) are those who are aware of their own pneuma, their breathing in and out, as that which carries the sense of their dependence. They know that their own breathing in and out happens only within and because of the deep flowing in and flowing out of God in them, the life-giving breath that is God’s gift. ”
