Parenting Right From the Start. Vanessa Lapointe
even though the human brain doesn’t fully mature until sometime in the mid to late twenties.
That six-year-old fidgeting at the dinner table is incapable of sustained focus and attention; the three-year-old simply cannot share; the eight-year-old hasn’t developed the self-control needed to stay calm in the face of a roadblock like “chores” when what he really wants to do is shoot hoops; and the fourteen-year-old is bound to lose control of his feelings in the face of big emotions. So settle down, big people. Your kiddos are being and doing just what they are meant to be and do along their entirely normal developmental journey.
The trouble is that waiting for development to occur can be bothersome for us big people raising children in a fast-paced world. We try to hurry development along rather than championing it at every point along the way. But children are not small adults, and we cannot force them into adulthood. Self-regulation will look different in a baby, a toddler, and a preschooler. Babies bite because they know no other way to settle their bodies down. Toddlers have tantrums because they are trying to figure out how to become their own person, even as they lack the ability to settle themselves in the face of heightened emotion. Preschoolers shove, push, hit, and don’t wait their turn because those behavioural niceties are still a foreign language when they are taken over by a big desire or need. We must respect that children are growing a brain at the rate of billions of neural connections a day. That level of growth will need to continue for years before they have any natural ability to manage their impulses and make “good choices” with some semblance of consistency.
Once, after I presented a workshop, a father told me how his nine-year-old son had been struggling to manage his big emotions in response to disappointing news or requests by his parents to complete chores. Every time the child lost it, his parents would reprimand him for his “bad behaviour” and use behaviourist-inspired strategies such as consequences, timeouts, and removal of privileges. One day, after yet another of these incidents, the father asked his son in exasperation, “What is wrong with you? Why can’t you do as you are told and stop reacting like this? I’ve told you a million times!” In his gorgeous, infinite wisdom, the son replied to his father, “Dad, what is wrong with you? You’ve told me a million times and I still can’t do it. Why do you keep telling me the same thing over and over when I can’t do it?” Nailed it.
You cannot make growth and maturity happen faster by demanding its progression. As David Loyst, a child development specialist who works with children with autism, says, “I’ve never seen a plant grow faster by pulling on the top of it.” Instead of demanding development, a parent’s job is to inspire it and champion it. Now recall that connection and attachment are the foundations for healthy child development. When a child is asked to adopt behaviours that are not yet a natural part of their developmental repertoire, that child is forced to reject development in the name of acquiescence so that they can maintain the connection and secure approval from their parent. How many times did this scene play out for you as a child, whether in your home or in a classroom?
Many of us have internalized this scenario, this dance of “do it or else you will pay with a loss of approval, acceptance, or connection.” And now we risk recreating it as parents—unless we are willing to bring it to our awareness and work determinedly to sidestep it. We need to understand wholeheartedly how relationship is essential to healthy child development. And we need to simultaneously reject the option of withdrawing attachment and connection from our children in the name of good behaviour or unrealistic developmental expectations. Growth takes time. Development takes time. Building a strong relationship with our children will ensure that this all goes down exactly as nature intended.
Consciousness
Humans have developed the understanding that our minds are who we are (thanks to Descartes, “I think, therefore I am”), that our minds define us and our concrete reality. We can be led to believe that the thoughts we have about what has made us happy or angry or sad or scared, about why someone looked at us a certain way, about why our child did or did not get into the school we wanted them to attend, and indeed about why our children behave as they do, are a reflection of an absolute truth. But to believe that your thoughts are your concrete reality is probably one of the most torturous misconceptions humans experience.
When my son entered the fifth grade he changed to a school an hour away from our home and had to start taking the school bus. He began to complain about the antics of the older children on the bus, who would sometimes tease and use foul language. One day early in the year this behaviour escalated and prompted me to contact the school so the situation could be turned around. Make no mistake: my mama-bear self was out in full force. I was angry!
On the next school day, I drove my son to the parking lot where the bus picks up all the children. I parked so that anyone looking out of the bus windows would be able to see my face. I even rolled my window down to make sure they could see that I was watching. I watched closely as my son got on the bus and started walking toward the middle to find a seat. Then I saw some of the older boys pointing. My son turned back and walked toward the front of the bus, where he took a seat. I nearly leapt out of my car and onto that bus to tell those awful kids that they weren’t going to dictate where my son sat, much less say or do any of the other unkind things they’d been up to. I held onto myself, though, trusting the bus driver to manage the situation. All day I told myself stories. All day I played out the exact way I would put those boys in their place once and for all.
At the end of the day my son hopped off the bus and into our car for the ride home. I waited for the right moment in the conversation and did my best to be relaxed as I asked him what was up with the older boys on the bus that morning. He looked at me, confused, and so I explained that I’d seen him walk toward the back and then turn around to take a seat near the front after they pointed at him. And then the most fabulous thing happened. He laughed.
Now it was my turn to be confused. He explained that the boys weren’t being mean at all; rather, they were being kind. He said he likes sitting near the front; he gets less motion sick, plus it’s quieter. He didn’t often get that seat because a younger boy sits there. On that day, however, the younger boy was not on the bus and so the older boys had generously let him know the seat was available, should he want it. Well. How had I so misinterpreted what I saw through the windows of the bus that morning?
The answer is that my perception was distorted. Without any distortion, what I would have seen that morning is my son getting on the bus, the boys pointing, and my son turning back to sit down near the front. The end. True, my son’s earlier experiences on the bus had distorted my lens, but the bigger distortion came from my mind, my experiences. In fact, throughout the whole experience, a pre-existing “program” from my subconscious mind was running the show.
When I replay the experience of believing that the older boys on the bus were unkind to my son, I relive feelings of panic, fear, indignation, and shame. I would love to tell you with absolute certainty where those feelings came from, but the truth is I cannot. Perhaps they reflected a previous childhood experience of feeling unsafe around other children, or older kids, or people in a position of power over me. Perhaps they flowed from a time in my childhood when I was in trouble for something, unable to defend myself, and then punished accordingly. Or perhaps it was the result of a buildup of childhood experiences that led me—and perhaps you in your own circumstances—to feel as I did. Here is the important thing to know: the knowledge of where these feelings and thoughts flow from does not have to be crystal clear for you to work through them. You just need to understand that your thoughts are not always grounded in objective reality. And this is where consciousness comes into play.
The subconscious mind is formed by our past experiences. As a result, living consciously requires that we understand that our reactive thoughts and feelings in any given situation, and the resulting behaviours, are going to be a reflection of our past.
In his book The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton tells us that the subconscious mind is running the show, and at twenty million bits of information per second, no less (the conscious mind can process merely forty bits of information per second.)16
Being consciously oriented means bringing the subconscious mind to the surface and making sense of those beliefs