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

“What keeps parents in the game is attachment.  Commitment and values can go a long way but if it was only that, parenting would be sheer work.  If it wasn’t for attachment, many parents would not be able to stomach the changing of diapers, forgive the interrupted sleep, put up with the noise and the crying, carry out all the tasks that go unappreciated.”

The authors use this chapter to point out that attachment supports parenting in seven ways:

1.  It arranges the parent/child hierarchically – the child is dependent on the parent; children look up to their parents, they turn to their parents for answers, they defer to them.

2.   It makes parents more tolerant of behavior  –“When our children express by actions or words a desire to attach to us, it makes them sweeter and easier to take.”

3.  It causes the child to pay attention to us. “The stronger the attachment is, the easier it is to secure the child’s attention.”

4.  It keeps the child close to the parent.  “If all goes well, the drive for physical proximity with the parent gradually evolves into a need for emotional connection and contact.”

5. It makes the parents a model.  “It is attachment that makes a child want to be like another person, to take on another’s characteristics.”

6.  It causes the parent to be the “primary cue-giver.”  “Until a child becomes capable of self-direction and of following cues from within, he or she needs someone to show the way.”

7.  It makes the child want to be good for the parent. 

With each of these ways that attachment can support parenting, the authors go through and show how these attachments work when a child attaches to peers instead of parents, what that looks like, and what that means for the parent-child relationship.

One interesting quote that may interest many of you, especially those of you with smaller and grades-age children,  was this one: “Children do not internalize values- make them their own-until adolescence.”

I think this quote shows us, and encourages us to keep in the game of parenting past the age when children are “little.”  When I repeatedly say on this blog that children in that second seven-year cycle are still “little”, I mean it.  Seven, eight and nine year olds still need protection.  Ten through thirteen year olds still need the support of parents to guide them.

The authors end the chapter with a final thought regarding a child’s desire to be “good” for a parent and this is that the parent must be trustworthy.  A parent cannot abuse this desire that the child has to work with the parent.  They also caution against using rewards and punishments:  “External motivators for behavior such as rewards and punishments may destroy the precious internal motivation to be good, making leverage by artificial means necessary by default.”

Another interesting chapter; what did you all think about it?

Many blessings,

Carrie