Parenting: A Place for Sources And Stories

Article Table of Contents

• Books That Have Informed Me
  • Elimination Communication
• On people meeting
• on scripts
• “Shy” isn’t a helpful question or label
  • What not to say
• On “Beauty”
• Words I do not use
• Words I Do Use
• Misc Resources
• Footnotes

As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that.

This is complex for me to write and engage with, because something that is certainly true for all of us is that we “have a parent” or we “have been a child”. To talk about any of it is to talk about all of it.

Also the status of ‘child’ is quite temporary in society, and then perhaps less so in different structures. Also, to be a child in America is to be a member of an oppressed class. I entirely oppose the energy

I think a helpful frame might be

I am responsible for someone who will some day be in many ways a peer, who is not yet fully equipped with the same or equivalent sets of tools/skills as I, and I happen to enjoy the company and personality of this peer.

The ‘peer’ part is not to adultify or parentify a child, of course. It’s to elevate or express the commonality of some shared humanity, some shared participation in the human experience.

I am pleased to regularly embody a way-of-being that is quite accommodating and peaceful to a toddler, and because of the other people who’s interactions I now witness, and my own lived experience as a child and adult, lots of the natural way of being of adults/western&modern&american adults is quite inhospitable to children. 💔❤️‍🩹

I’m not quite sure how I’m proceeding through this post, by the way. There will certainly be some book lists and links to articles, as usual. Write it now and such.

I’m inspired by people like Robert Heaton. One of his many posts about his child: Height: 2ft 10 inches. Occupation: baby. Patrick McKenzie’s vibe with his children, Simon Sarris. Penelope Trunk. Certainly many others.

Books That Have Informed Me #

• The Art of Roughhousing: Good Old-Fashioned Horseplay and Why Every Kid Needs It\
• Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive
• Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think (less enthusiastically recommended today than say 2017)
• The Secret of Our Success, one of the best books I’ve ever read. Hard to summarize myself, so here’s scott alexander’s book review

Many western parenting tropes rely quite a bit on coercion and a punishment-informed mindset. When pointed out, a reactionary defense of ‘what other options do I have’ is sometimes offered up.

Besides indicating that the speaker has an operating belief in the entitlement to dominate¹, I earnestly, humbly suggest a self-paced ethno-biographical study of 14 different cultures and legal regimes that operated in specific times and places. One can imagine at least partially enlarging one’s array of non-coercive tools for mutuality with others after embarking (willingly) on such a journey.

Elimination Communication #

This concept, this possibility was groundbreaking to me when I crossed paths with it.

This was perhaps responsible for most of the early-stage ‘this child seems extremely chill’ vibes. I’m perhaps trying to cover too much in a single post, sorry.

Western diaper culture, esp disposable diapers, is not how it’s always been done. Eastern cultures were aware of the rhythms of children/infants, built routines of baby-wearing + ‘easy’ aided waste elimination, so from a young age the person is simply eliminating into the ground or a suitable container by default instead of defaulting into soiled diapers.

This is also the first move of learning to be non-coercive towards children. Observe, study, learn to communicate, use your adult brain/skills to bridge towards their brain and skills. Their skills grow so quickly in healthy environments.

Baby sign language, and recognizing/helping-into regulated nervous system states. Go Diaper Free: A Simple Handbook for Elimination Communication

On people meeting #

Eden loves to meet my friends, in her words, and my friends love to meet her (theirs). She meets strangers, and interacts with adults, in my company, regularly. I’ve seen many different patterns of interactions, and I’d like to speak about some of them.

I barely concede the use of this language, but it might be legible enough.

Often, when a large adult meets her and directs too much emotional energy straight at her, especially if she has not interacted with that person or recently or just doesn’t feel like it she will turn her face away and give the body language of disengagement.

It’s plainly visible to me, it’s easily namable by both of us, before and/or after, and of course I always help. I’ve got skills and capacities and status that she doesn’t, so it’s easy-enough for me to manage, even if I resent that I have to ‘manage’ something like this at all.

I’ll put myself physically between them, more than she’s already done, and if I’m holding her I’ll turn her away, and I might even also turn away from the speaker, and direct our attention to something else.

Not her, not me, but that plant, that person over there, the thing. A step to the side/away also might happen. At least once or twice, an adult still changes their location, elevation, tone of voice, and content of discussion from what seems conventional, and sort of swoop in again to try to, quite literally, ‘get in her face’, but with a certain expectant energy.

To pick from one of several available frames, it’s a little bit of a projection of a role onto someone, while that same person steps into their own projection of their own role.

Eden feels the projection of the role, and doesn’t like it. It’s usually a pretty namable energy, every/anyone can see it, Eden will name it to me, sometimes before or after. “I didn’t like that person”, she might say, or other things like it.

A nice alternative energy is something more akin to:

1. allowing non-demanding emotional engagement to extend in her direction, in an ‘opt in’ kind of way.
2. keep most of the energy and focus on whatever is normal, which is usually some mix of whatever you were up to 30 seconds ago, or engaging with me, or participating in the flow of whatever is going on.

on scripts #

The kinds of people who script social interactions and believe they’re entitled to verbal engagement from someone tend to say things like:

• “say please/thank you”
• “say […]”
• “say i love you”

I’ve often-enough/too-often informed others of a norm for interacting with eden:

we do not put words in edens mouth, or demand her to place your words in her mouth.

To the credit of some, i perceive this norm to have been well received. Adults “tell” kids to do or perform something all the time.

My parents attacked me as a child when I didn’t look happy enough for them. “Have a good attitude, Josh”. “Put on your happy face”. “We do all things for the Lord, and He wants you to be happy.” I spent enough of my life around people who heavily suppress the emotions of people around them, and I no longer permit it from other adults, when I am present.

When Eden would cry, I’ve seen adults turn to her and say “you’re not upset” or “don’t be upset” or “here’s a distraction”, instead of allowing her whatever is going on, attending to the environment (“oh, you have to go to the bathroom? thanks for letting me know!”), and supporting her with their own regulated nervous system.

Unhealthy adults need to suppress the emotions of other people if they are unable to access their own sense of that emotion. Grief and sadness and anger is heavily suppressed in evangelical/white cultures, so those are the ones children raised by them tend to not have easy access to.

I make sure Eden knows her grief and sadness and anger do not cause me trouble, and I’m happy to support her through it all.

Possible word swaps:

• “good job/nice work” becomes “that looked interesting/tricky” or “was that interesting to you? what was something interesting about that?”

“Shy” isn’t a helpful question or label #

Sometimes an adult acts entitled to obtaining a certain reaction from Eden.

Sometimes people ask me “oh, is she shy?”, while Eden is with me, pointedly not making eye contact with the question-asker, who perhaps just walked up and has never shared a moment of real interaction with her in the past…

They perhaps think she doesn’t understand what they’re saying, or isn’t able to comprehend our conversation.

I say some version of:

That framing makes useful conversation less accessible, rather than more. Eden knows that she doesn’t ‘need’ to ‘give’ anyone any sort of concession, just because that person thinks they’re entitled to it, nor does she need to perform for people. It’s inappropriate for an adult to demand a certain kind of interaction from a child.

I usually figure out how to be diplomatic about it, and fortunately ‘shy’ as a concept is sort of fading out of society, I think.

I’ll always add something like:

And obviously if we don’t feel comfortable with someone, we wouldn’t try to act like they’re a trusted person because they believe in politeness, or their feelings might get hurt.

So, sometimes Eden pointedly refuses to even turn her face towards someone. Sometimes the person correctly infers that it’s her de-escalating the intensity of the interaction, and they take their own steps to reduce the intensity, instantly and perhaps even subconsciously.

Others cannot see it, or refuse to act on it, and instead keep stepping closer and trying to get in her face, to get her to look at them and say hello or something. Or to say “thank you” as they make an evaluation of some aspect of her physical appearance.

Broadly, it’s possibly appropriate to comment on thinking someone made distinctive choices in picking out an item of clothing or displayed prowess in judgment or skill. “sick rainbow shoes.”, “that thing you did looked tricky, and skillful.”

What not to say #

I don’t like to make it sound like a child’s entire existence is already the same as an adult slaving away.

References to jobs, and work, are not interesting to me, so “good job” and “nice work” are not phrases in my lexicon. “That looked interesting” and “what did you like about that?” or “did that feel tricky?”

Eden is also quite happy to stare at a something with intense focus. Sometimes it’s a dog, or a bug, or a person. If the person is close enough, and notices, and feels self-conscious, they might call it a withering intensity.

It’s distinctive enough that complete strangers often commented on it, even at a really young age. I proffer it’s maybe the look of someone who’s totally focused on what they are looking at, they’re not performing ‘social softening’ of the gaze. As a toddler, she’ll turn her head to look at something as it or she passes by, in a way that is identical to when she was an infant, and I presume is motivated out of a similar-enough inner state.

She’s permitted to look at something as hard as she wants, or not at all, and I perceive that some adults are unaccustomed to be looked at in such an evaluator-like, non-apologetic way, by such a young child.

On “Beauty” #

I dislike the energy that some people have, when they insert themselves into me and Eden’s day to pronounce that they find her physical form appealing. It’s very strange to have grown adults continuously talking about the “pleasing physical form” of a child. (settler colonialism! Seeing children as possessions/nationalism).

Sometimes it’s very visible that an interlocutor has an internal values system that is coherent with white/american/western/racialized beauty norms, and that they see in Eden an attribute that seems coherent with their norms, it feels like they’re playing a role in supporting those beauty norms. Taking anyone seriously necessitates at least being able to refrain from stating objectifying statements, or trying to.

Eden doesn’t like having her appearence commented upon. If you happen to notice, for instance, that her shoes are distinctive and colorful, and there’s something appreciable about the pattern of an item of clothing, and told her about it, she’ll probably brighten up and say “yeah! I think it’s cool too!” and will talk to you about it.

But…. on the ‘unwanted communication’ side of things, recently someone said, in this falsetto sing-songy voice, sort of to eden, sort of to me, “Ohhh, you’re such a beautiful girl”. This was just as we arrived at their stand where they were selling some wares. When it’s white people acting entitled, I’ll usually stamp it out quickly. If one conveys the message of “doesn’t it seem strange to have strangers comment so openly, their thoughts about someone’s body?”, it usually jostles the person a little and they refrain from more comments. I do this to _privileged, entitled, european-americans, especially if their age clocks as ‘close to boomer’.

This feels sensitive to write even a few paragraphs about. I want to throw a bunch of books out that talk about ‘whiteness’ or ‘supremacy thinking’. There’s a few energies still bandying about today rooted in the beliefs that supported chattel slavery, genocide, that sort of thing.

• Fearing the Black Body
• The History of White People
• The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia
• They Were Her Property: White Women As Slaveowners in the American South

It feels vastly under-appreciated in ‘normal’ society how total of a regime of social control chattel slavery represented, and how fundamentally and totally the dehumanization that occurred affected the mind of the oppressor, the consciousness of the classes and races, that “it” created. Often enough, this commenting on one person’s beauty is an implicit statement about the not-beauty of a different person. It’s inherently supremacist, demeaning to everyone (yourself, the target of the assessment, anyone who hears the utterance) and would best be not said.

But what would I say if I cannot comment on the body of a child???

I know, right? What else possibly could you say? </sarcasm>

How about “hi”, or “would you like me to explain what these things are?” or “The flower patterns on your shirt indicate that whoever chose it has good taste.” or, say nothing.

Race isn’t real. Ethnicity is. White people get angry when you call their conflict ‘inter-ethnic-group conflict’ but that’s all it is. Settler colonialism in the USA was supremacist european americans showing up and using violence to displace some, enslave others, and they used english, books, and authoritarian language to justify it, instead of simply saying

Yep, we [european americans] like people like us, we don’t like people who are not like us, and we’re willing to kill them if they don’t give us exactly what we want. or even if they do, but especially if they don’t.”

It’s manifestly obvious when at least some streams of it reach out to touch Eden, and I don’t like it. We last walked through a weird little art fair in cheesman park, and she very quickly wanted to leave. I couldn’t figure out why at first. She just didn’t want to go in there, wanted to walk around the outskirts of where the stands were. I couldn’t figure it out, then:

me: “Do you notice a lot of people looking right at you, when I’m pushing you around in the stroller”

kid: “Yep”

me: “Do you find it to be uncomfortable?”

kid: “Yep”

me: “I believe it. I find that sort of eye contact to be uncomfortable myself sometimes, and I’m way bigger than you, and people treat me very differently than they treat you. I’ll think about how to reduce their staring at you.”

I usually wear a big floppy hat and sunglasses, or turn my head down and away from people as I walk by. I make vastly less eye contact with people than I less did, generally I’m happy to pass in a sorta invisible way. BUT when I’m mixing this with walking Eden around by stroller, if people can tell that by the brim of my hat I cannot see if they’re staring straight at eden they get much more open with staring at her, compared to if they look at her, look at me, and see me staring back at them. There’s less staring at eden after that.

It’s all very odious to me.

Words I do not use #

Here’s a few words I have no use for:

obey, obedience, respect, authority, comply, compliant

I was raised by modern day settler colonialists, fully intent on replicating their view of the world on the consciousness of “their” children. My parents, to this day are obsessed with the notion of children being compliant with them. My dad gets violent if he smells something that feels like non-compliance, from a child or an adult. His entitlement is perceivable from a mile away. (a long career in the military doesn’t leave anyone more in touch with their humanity or the humanity of others.)

That’s the language of an authoritative, domineering, person, in european american settler colonialism, this is the ‘masculine’ role. My mother leans into the ‘feminine’ side of religious authoritarianism/settler colonialism. being a good ‘domestic servant’, cheerful and chipper about playing the role she sees for herself, but she feels entitled to control the thought lives of ‘her’ children.

As children, we all got attacked in various ways by our parents, who would pour messages like “you are fundamentally bad” and “every aspect of your conciousness is being picked apart by sky daddy, who hates you”.

To interact with her is to be silently judged, and to be rendered unknown and unknownable, while she points a fake cheerfulness and a utterly real withdrawal and avoidance from that which she doesn’t approve of. Her words are full of “should” and “should not” and “if you don’t do what ~I~ sky daddy says, you’ll be tortured forever, alone, far from your loved ones”.

A few other words I don’t use:

• “good job/nice work” > jobs/work reference capitalism, she’ll have enough of that later in her life. I want her to do things that are interesting to her, for no other reason than it’s interesting to her.
• “Go higher” or “try to get to the top”. I am thrilled that Eden knows her own physical capacities very well, and never pushes into territory while climbing or running that feels unsafe to her.

Where someone else might say “good job”, upon seeing Eden do something she’s proud of (which happens all the time), I say “oooh, that looked tricky. Did it feel tricky? Was it interesting?”

Words I Do Use #

Evangelical settler colonialists have in their toolset the ‘weaponization of shame and guilt”, and want you/themselves to strive strive strive, for a modicum of affection. Soooo the antitode to that is some words I do use that are explicitly guilt/shame dispelling, in addition to being generally affirmative of someone’s humanity:

• “I am pleased to know you”.
• “it’s interesting to watch/observe you do the things you do.”
• “I like how interested you are in things”
• “i’m pleased to share with you the times that you are upset”
• “I enjoy your company”.
• "I am pleased to spend time with you _right now_! I am pleased and unpurturbed to witness or experience your tears or anger"
• “It is fun to watch your skills and competencies grow”. They i’ll name something specific about her biking, walking, smooth/precise movement, jumping, flips, pulling, recognizing landmarks/objects/people/places, running, playing, drawing, movie-watching, sleeping, expelling metabolic byproduct.
• “was that interesting to you?”
• “how did you come up with that idea?”
• “was that tricky?”

There’s so much more. I’ll make it it’s own blog post at some point.

Misc Resources #

• Taking Children Seriously (twitter account)
• John Holt
• Ivan Illych

Footnotes #