This chapter is entitled, “The Dangerous Flight From Feeling” and discusses how peer-oriented adolescents and children become invulnerable to emotions.  The media has frequently commented that compassion seems to be on the dwindling end for many children in this day and age, and this chapter really explored this topic well.

Children who have been traumatized can manifest defensiveness and emotional hardening.  However, the authors point out that “many children who have been peer-oriented for some time can manifest the same level of defensiveness.”  If a child cannot be vulnerable, then learning is affected because that child cannot show curiosity or joy or passion.  Relationships are affected as the child cannot be authentic.

The authors lay out four reasons that peer- oriented  children are more likely to experience emotional wounding than a child who is oriented toward adults:

• Attachment with a parent makes the stress of peers  ignoring them, taunting, etc. bearable in many ways; a shield of protection.  However, with this  attachment to the parent also comes the burden and responsibility of the parent knowing that the child will be very sensitive to what the parents says to the child.  Your words matter.
• Peer-oriented children become “sensitized to insensitive reactions of children”.  Rejection by peers is a huge cause of teenage suicide.  The authors argue that children have always snubbed, ignored, shunned, shamed other children but in these days children do not have the attachment to family to override the impact of peer acceptance or rejection.

The authors write:  “The conclusion reached by some experts is that peer acceptance is absolutely necessary for a child’s emotional health and well-being, and that there is nothing worse than not being liked by peers.  It is assumed that peer rejection is an automatic sentence to lifelong self-doubt.  Many parents today live in fear of their children’s not having friends, not being esteemed by their peers.  This way of thinking fails to consider two fundamental questions:  What renders a child so vulnerable in the first place?  And why is this vulnerability increasing?”

“Studies have been unequivocal in their findings that the best protection for a child, even through adolescence, is a strong attachment with an adult.”  The authors cite studies that attachment to an adult is the best way to decrease a child’s risk for drug and alcohol problems, suicide attempts, violent behavior and early sexual activity.

• Vulnerability is often attacked by other children who will shame the child who is emotionally vulnerable.
• Because peer relationships are insecure, vulnerability due to fear of loss is inherent in these relationships.  This causes extreme anxieties: “What if I don’t connect with my peers?  Why if I cannot make the relationship work?  What if I don’t want to go along with the things my buddies do, if my mom doesn’t let me go, or if my friend likes so and so more than she likes me?  Such are the ever-present anxieties of  peer-oriented children, never far below the surface.  Peer-oriented children are obsessed with who likes whom, who prefers whom, who wants to be with whom.”

Other sobering pieces of this chapter includes the study by John Bowlby, father of attachment theory, where small children were separated from their parents and the outcomes of this and  also some notes on drug and alcohol abuse by teenagers.

“Peer-oriented kids will do anything to avoid the human feelings of aloneness, suffering, and pain, and to escape feeling hurt, exposed, alarmed, insecure, inadequate, or self-conscious.  The older and more peer-oriented the kids, the more drugs seem to be an inherent part of their lifestyle.”

The chapter concludes with some thoughts about how children don’t need friends but rather adults who love them.  Children who are not vulnerable are ultimately shut down from themselves.  Your attachment to your child can save their feeling life and the way they view the world and how they function in the world. 

Thoughts on this chapter?

Many blessings,

Carrie

We are back with more of our book study of “Hold On To Your Kids:  Why Parents Need To Matter More Than Peers” by Neufeld and Mate.  I encourage you all to read this book; it will underscore the importance of your work as a parent and that what you do every day really does matter!

We are up to Chapter Seven in this book, entitled “The Flatlining of Culture”.  The authors talk about how teen “tribe”s have no connection these days with adults at all. They remark that “Although we have lulled ourselves into believing that this tribalization of youth is an innocuous process, it is a historically new phenomenon with a disruptive influence on social life.  It underlies the frustration many parents feel at their inability to pass on their traditions to their children.”

I have a few things to add here.  I believe this peer orientation is beginning earlier and earlier, but parents are buying into this process as fact when it does not have to be so.  “Sleep-overs”, something women my age remember happening from their own childhoods in the teen years (ie, junior high and up), are now happening for children aged 7 and up.  There are many more instances of things that used to occur in the teenaged years just some decades ago that are now happening at the earliest levels of the grades.  This should be worrisome and we should be fighting to take the innocence of childhood and being with family back! 

The other interesting thing with this quote is the assumption that parents feel they have traditions to pass on.  I meet many families who do NOT have traditions from their own childhood to pass on.  Many of the parents I meet today are trying to re-create their families’ cultures from scratch with little idea how to start.  We must get very clear with ourselves and with our spouses, partners and other family members what traditions we hold dear, what values we hold dear and work to show this to our children.

“When a child becomes peer-oriented, the transmission lines of civilization are downed.  The new models to emulate are other children or peer groups or the latest pop icons….Peer-oriented children are not devoid of culture, but the culture they are enrolled in is generated by peer orientation.”

Another great quote and sobering fact from this chapter:  “Many of our children are growing up bereft of the universal culture that produced the timeless creations of humankind:  The Bhagavad Gita; the writings of Rumi and Dante, Shakespeare and Cervantes and Faulkner, or of the best and most innovative of living authors; the music of Beethoven and Mahler: or even the great translations of the Bible.  They know only what is current and popular, appreciate only what they can share with their peers.”

What did you all think of this short but intriguing chapter?

Carrie

Chapter Six is an interesting exploration of the concept of “counterwill”.  The authors define “counterwill” as “an instinctive, automatic resistance to any sense of being forced.  It is triggered whenever a person feels controlled or pressured to do someone else’s bidding.  It makes its most dramatic appearance in the second year of life-yes, the so-called terrible two’s. (If two-year-olds could make up such labels, they would perhaps describe their parents as going through the “terrible thirties.”)  Counterwill reappears with a vengeance during adolescence but it can be activated at any age – many adults experience it.”

This whole description made me chuckle.  Children push against forms all the time, but so do adults!  How often do we walk around complaining and essentially demonstrate the equivalent of kicking and screaming as we grump around?   “Why do I have the be the one who sets the tone in my home?”  “Why do I have to do all the research on parenting?”  “Why do I have to do all the housework?” 

Our children experience this as well.  I am very appreciate of the way Waldorf Education really helps me look at my children in a “sideways” manner.  Sometimes we really can affect more change through telling a story, through just listening and sleeping on it, through not approaching things so directly.  To approach things so directly so often leads to COUNTERWILL.

This from page 75:  “Counterwill manifests itself in thousands of ways.  It can show up as the reactive no of the toddler, the “You’re aren’t my boss” of the young child, as balkiness when hurried, as disobedience or defiance…(Uh, careful, Neufeld and Mate with that term.  Those of you who read this blog as Frequent Flyers are probably familiar with this back post:https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/09/16/a-few-fast-words-regarding-defiance-in-children-under-the-age-of-6/    )  It is visible in the body language of the adolescent.  Counterwill is also expressed through passivity, in procrastination, or in doing the opposite of what is expected.  It can appear as laziness or lack of motivation.  It may be  communicated through negativity, belligerence, or argumentativeness, often interpreted by adults as insolence.”

The authors’ point in this chapter is that counterwill is normal and with good attachment to parents it can be kept in check. However, if the child is not attached to the parents and instead attach to a peer unit, it goes completely out of control.  The authors tell the stories of adolescents who do horrible things in the name of “doing it because we weren’t supposed to” and to “not let them push us around.”  “Clinicians diagnose such children with oppositional defiant disorder.  Yet it is not the oppositionality- the counterwill- that is out of order but the child’s attachments.”  These children are only being true to their instinct in defying people to whom they do not feel connected.  The more peer-oriented a child, the more resistant to the adults in charge.”

Don’t forget that “counterwill” has two important NORMAL functions:

1.  To keep a child from being influenced by those outside of a child’s attachment circle of family and

2.  To help the child develop internal will and autonomy.

The authors talk about the difference between will and clinging to a desire.  They remark that a child’s oppositionality is actually not an expression of will; that in fact it denotes an absence of will because it only allows a person to react not act from a free and conscious choosing.  Counterwill can be healthy in a “I can do it by myself” kind of independence-asserting sort of way, and counterwill will fade as a child experiences true maturing and growth toward independence.  Counterwill as a result of peer-attachment is very different from the counterwill that is serving the purpose of the child attaining independence.

Carrie here:  This is key in smaller children especially.   Smaller children really do not have free and conscious choosing they way an adult should have, so why do we put this burden on them to make choices, to choose to do X or Y?  Go back to the principles of the Early Years:  imitation, less words, less choice or no choice, let rhythm carry you and when these moments of pushing  against forms happens, be that strong, calm, capable rock to support your child!

On page 82, the authors write:  “It is understandable, when feeling a lack of power ourselves, to project a will to power onto the child.  If I am not in control, the child must be; if I do not have power, the child must have it; if I am not in the driver’s seat, the child has to be….In the extreme, even babies can be seen to have all the power to control one’s schedules, to sabotage one’s plans, to rob’s one sleep, to rule the roost….The problem with seeing our  children as having power is that we miss how much they truly need us.”

If all you can see in your children is the negative, the anger, the resistance, the “they are out to destroy my life, I know it!” then of course all you will respond with is your own anger, your own frustration, your own sadness.  Connect with your children, love your children, hold to the boundaries but out of love and   wanting them to grow up to be good, ethical and moral human beings.  Your connection will help make things better!  It really can go more smoothly when you are not on opposite sides.  Love one another!

Many blessings,

Carrie