WE DON'T PARENT IN A VACUUM

It’s interesting to me when I hear of a Mother being told, the reason her child is not resilient enough is because they bed share at night, or a parent that seeks contact with education staff regularly about her child is an anxious parent, the misinformation about families choosing alternative routes to educate their children are seen as neglectful. As parents we make choices that we believe to best fit our children and our family, and we don’t parent in a vacuum, those choices are informed by experiences and influences within and beyond the home. It’s time we stopped placing a heavy amount of blame on parenting, there is no X equals Y equation to raising children, the input-outcome model has long been dismissed, there’s more complexity, more shifting variables, more contributing factors. Children bring themselves to their relationship with their parents, just as much as parents bring their values and wishes to raising their children, it’s a responsive interaction, one that evolves over time and is in constant reflection with the world outside the home. There’s more than one way to raise a child, western culture seems to believe it has it all figured out, especially when compared to other countries and cultures.

As a Speech and Language Therapist you often receive four years in University training, and for me that followed with 15 years in post graduate study and clinical practice, the mindset that I had it figured out could sneak up unnoticed. Helpful maybe to believe I was an “expert” in communication development, and with that came the ability to place targets and expectations on the development of children and families. Yes I have a background in some of the science of development, communication and interaction, but not the full picture, no professional discipline does. It seems too easy to forget the only expert on any child is the child themselves, and then their immediate care givers, I held information about development sure, but how it applied in the lives of a child and their family is a evolving, reflective, constantly changing relationship, not a linear set of checkpoints.

There’s a danger in ceasing to ask questions to understand and instead listening for the answers that fit with our knowledge and biases. Asking to understand instead may lead us into conversation, one that explains a child as an individual, as families as complex moving parts and considerations, one completely different to our own, or quite frankly, the right to choose differently. It would lead to opening doors on differences, acceptance of how parents desire to be responsive to their child in different ways, as opposed to comparing people to a majority, somehow now referred to as ‘the norm’ that can provide a guide for us but shouldn’t dictate. Check out Urie Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory if you're interest wants to go further, it provides a humbling perspective of how social environments impact on human development.

“Bronfenbrenner´s theory is the very systems theory that allows tackling numerous environmental factors and numerous persons in different interaction relationships, roles, actions and processes.“

There seem to be a lot of “shoulds'' that come with becoming a parent. ‘This strategy should happen at that age’, ‘this behaviour should stop by this time’, ‘you should do this when that behaviour happens’. In my experience of working with countless families, and my own experience as a Mother, these shoulds don’t allow for children to bring themselves to the equation, and for us to see responding as a piece of ourselves as a parent. They bring comparison, doubt and fear with them. Akilah Richards describes this point beautifully in Raising Free People, “You cannot raise a child without the input of that child. You cannot be the best teacher or guide for that young learner if you are deciding for them instead of with them”.

 Each parent-child relationship is unique, each brings with it its own mosaic of genetics, family history, foundational needs as a family, and temperaments as individuals. Frameworks for our choices is of course a helpful starting point, whilst structures that include flexibility have the potential to not only allow for individual differences, but anchor our nervous systems in regulation through the poignant piece that is when people feel they have a choice. From here judgement, blame and comparison could relax into options and agency. If we feel the pull of a ‘should’ or a ‘need to’, we could consider where these beliefs came from in the first place, were they part of our immediate relationships growing up, family or education, and do they fit with our own wishes and desires now as a parent and adult? We could go beyond to the wider influences on parenthood, including financial needs, employment commitments, access to community support, and further to policy and political climate. There are many variables placed on parents, numerous environmental factors and numerous individuals in different interaction relationships, roles, actions and processes. That decision you made wasn’t just on you, after all, we don't parenting in a vacuum.

NOTES

Härkönen, U. 2007. The Bronfenbrenner ecological systems theory of human development. Scientific Articles of V International Conference PERSON.COLOR.NATURE.MUSIC.

Edwards, A. (2020). Raising Free People. PM Press. Oakland.