Author: Gail Vincent

Post #13 D  Authoritative Parenting

I anticipate that this will be the shortest parenting styles entry.  This is the one we are encouraged to strive after as parents, but to actually affirm that as parents we are golden parents feels a bit uncomfortable, like chest puffing, not quite politically correct or sufficiently self-deprecating. Added to which, the preceding entries reveal, via example after example, and even accounting for natural self-deprecation, our mismanagement of Yasik’s parenting. Can anything be found in my oracle, the journal, to suggest that we might have been parents guided by authoritative parenting skills? Did I like any good reporter only write the breaking news that would horrify, sidelining or shrugging off the positive stories?

Wellll, hopefully not puffing our chests too unnaturally, we did skinny into Authoritative Parenting in the parenting skills quiz we tried back in Post/Entry #13, Introduction to Parenting Styles and certainly it was our ardent desire to be the best parents we knew how to be for this kid we loved.  Had we been offered a lecture on parenting skills in the seminars we participated in pre-adoption, it would have been a no–brainer for us, like every parent in the room, to recognize that Authoritative Parenting was the ideal way to raise a child.

Like Goldilocks, who chose a bowl of just right porridge, did we sometimes manage to hold the parenting teeter totter in a just right balance, not too permissive and not too neglectful? ( Since publishing this post I have discovered that the Goldilocks metaphor is not one that only my brain flagged. Goldilocks and the ‘just right’ message are go-tos for many brains. Dr. Aliza Pressman  in the 5 principles of parenting (Simon Element, 2024,102) tells the reader

Somewhere in the middle, there’s the authoritative parent – high on limits and boundaries and high on sensitivity. Developmental psychologist Dr. Stephanie Carlson calls this position “Goldilocks parenting” – the optimal balance. And the research has remained steady. Goldilocks parenting is associated with the most integrated child developmental outcomes – and more evidence that a middle-of-the-road approach gets better results than the rigid or extreme approaches.

We are aware that we need to teach our children that life is about sharing and caring for each other as they learn to take care of themselves while we as parents try not to be controlling yet stay in charge – to establish boundaries and maintain them, all with a warm, loving and supportive approach.

I begin by retelling one story but rearranging it to look, not at the Permissive or Neglectful or Authoritarian aspects, but to suggest that some intuitive part came from the Authoritative parenting.  It is the story of accompanying Yasik to a school gym to support him as he was now being encouraged to join in more school activities.  At the Christmas program the previous year Yasik was the one kindergartner allowed to remain sitting in the audience rather than being expected to join the rest of his class on stage. Now in his second year at the school, he would be encouraged to no longer sit on the sidelines.  Entering the gym he went into automatic sideline mode.  And as I recount in earlier entries/post, I went into automatic threat and bribe mode. The bribe worked enough to get Yasik on the trampoline but wasn’t enough to entice him into a second turn. I returned to threat mode and up he climbed again. This time I saw a mix of the struggle with fear and a shy enjoyment register on his face. He had conquered the worst of it.  He was on his way. Between the first and second attempts there were tears on my neck to add to all this and, as I watched him get up and try this in front of peers who babied him still, I had to fight tears too.  I was so proud of him and all he attempted and of his stubborn refusals too.  He wasn’t following blindly – he was taking care of himself, and I was balancing the parental teeter totter somewhere between Permissive and Authoritarian.

What if that teeter totter could be balanced by one parent being the ‘demander’ and the other being the ‘warmer’? The journal acknowledges that Dave and I, while perhaps not able to articulate that we wanted to be Authoritative rather than any of the other three styles, would talk over our concerns: me being too permissive and he taking on the role of disciplinarian more often. (Don’t worry. I am aware that ‘Good cop/Bad cop can be read between these lines) We were trying to follow through on areas needing discipline and Yasik seemed happy with it – after the fact.  The journal notes: “He bores easily- so it is a fine line between control and creativity.  He needs support and control”.  We also talked about how to give Yasik more independence, holding our breath on the consequences. Case in point, Dave warning me off jumping into action when Yasik wanted me to help him go sikats (I am no longer certain that is the correct Russian word). Dave was firm that at five he should be taking care of this business on his own, whether the orphanage had prepared Yasik for this independence or not. The reality was no one was going to help him at school.  He had to figure out how to wiggle up on a toilet with pants tying his ankles together and how to stay dry while managing all the steps to follow before making sure the toilet bowl was cleared of debris.

We had, after all, taken the age-appropriate step of putting him in school three weeks after he moved into our lives, society and country. It took several days of accompanying him to school, a situation the other children, having started a week earlier, had already adjusted to but the moment came when his teacher decided it was no longer necessary for us to stay with him even though Yasik had peed his pants in class that morning, too shy or language-deprived to seek help with oncoming sikats. Later the school office called to say he had settled.  The battle, my journal says, to accept attending kindergarten as part of his new life was over. Well almost or sufficiently.  We were out walking that weekend and pointed out the school to Yasik. He wrinkled his nose and stuck out his tongue.  But come Monday he went without a fight.

As much as there are risks evident in the Authoritarian, Neglectful, and Permissive parenting styles, there are risks in Authoritative parenting, not always fun to engage with, but sometimes….. The first time Yasik wanted to drive, he and Dave were in the London Drugs parking lot with lots of others.  Yasik figured he could manage it even though Dave warned him he would hit a car but he said, “No. I can drive.”  He had seen Dave doing it a fair few times by then. So he climbed in the driver’s seat, got the anti-theft steering wheel club off, and then turned to Dave to check on the next step. “This way Poppa?” Poppa Dave shrugged, reminding him that he knew how to drive.   “Poppa says sorry, you are driving”.  Yasik got the key in and Dave then asked him to think through his next move.  “Look out the back window. You are going to smash that car.”  “Nada, nada, me back.  Me stop down there……  How do you stop? Tell me.” And then Yasik did think and handed Dave the key. “Nada. Poppa drive.”   He figured he might smash the car.  But he had driven cars in slot machines, soooo.

Learning to ride a two-wheeler bike without training wheels was another of those independence initiatives that surprised me as a parent for its significance. After beating the symmetry out of the training wheels, Yasik made an appeal to Dave to get them replaced.   Big mistake. He should have addressed his appeal to me. Dave knew it was time to remove them, not replace them, to trust biking without these sidekicks.  He took them off and dumped them. Yasik was decidedly disconcerted, thinking that was the end of biking for him.  Dave coaxed him back on the bike, with a moment of hand steadying. With that moment of support, like any kid with access to a bike, Yasik sensed that internal wonder that, Yes! he could handle this balancing act. And he was off, rounding back to show off to me, singing a garbled ABC song.

And then it was September again, several years later: our routine, a tight weekday schedule of university for Dave, elementary school for Yasik and teaching high school for me interspersed with happy holidays and weekend relaxation was fairly established.  We were once again shedding the happy summer freedom and preparing to buckle into the school regime.  Dave had already driven off to his school; I needed to get Yasik to his school before catching the bus to my school.  Only the second day into this regime and I was already falling into ‘Rush, rush, we gotta go’. Yasik hadn’t yet made the ‘Rush, rush, we gotta go’ adjustment. Still holding on to his slow go, he planted a shaky flag: “You can’t run my life.”  I planted an opposing flag: “Yes I run your life until you are 18 and then you run mine”.  Any hint of Authoritative, warm but demanding, open to opinion on family decision making here?

The rush to the tantalizing year 18 speeds up when puberty is activated. One day Yasik found himself confused by the advances of a neighbourhood girl, telling Dave, “I don’t know. I am not a girl” when Dave helped him extricate himself from said girl’s teasing.  Months, weeks, days, nanoseconds later, (I don’t remember nor am I holding tightly to the journal on this one), Yasik was thrilled when a girl from his school called to say she liked him.  Yasik was still naïve enough to leave the phone on speaker. He had been to birthday party she had invited all their class to, but it seems he was singled out by the birthday girl. When we picked him up after the party, face all aglow, Yasik asked us if we liked this particular classmate on a scale from 1 to 100%. We had merely been introduced to her at one recent school function, yet we went with 100%.  He said, “Me too”. Another day, she invited him to her home; he arrived to find he was the special and only guest.  While her mother thought this arrangement was a viable babysitting option, we stewed over possible problems in our hot tub that night, arguing heartily for varying positions.  At the same stage, Dave’s mother was still hauling him out of parties, and my religion managed to keep me in the land of zero personal experience. We decided that if and when Yasik planned a return invite to his home, we would put in an if/only clause that at least one other classmate be invited as well.

For the spring break of Yasik’s last year in elementary school, the school hosted a 3-day camp for the students as long as each student was accompanied by a parent or caregiver. Whether Dave volunteered or not, he was that parent. At the camp Yasik worked toward and received a babysitting certificate. Word of his new skill travelled down the road and soon he was offered a babysitting job for a neighbour, at $5.00 an hour. No longer did he have to work at home for a piddling $5.00 a week. “Fine”, says parent Dave but “If you want work done for you then, it’s work for work or pay for it”.  I don’t think that was how Yasik initially understood the world of family expectations versus the world of outside employment. We conferenced says unblinking journal and that seemed to work out some misunderstandings.

But there was still lots of fun with Lazer tag, big paint ball tournaments and Dave and Yasik building a paintball web page, sitting down first to pull together a business plan.

Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to underline the following characteristics you identify in the narrative.

Δ   Warm/ High Responsiveness/Nurturing

Supportive, in a secure environment, openly affectionate, with a hands-on approach, valuing open and frequent communication in an egalitarian/partnership, discussing decisions with the children, listening and taking into consideration the children’s thoughts, feeling and opinions before making decisions that affect the children, respecting their point of view, encouraging self-expression and autonomy to develop their own identity. Allowing kids to explore with positive reinforcement to encourage confidence, assisting them in resolving problems, while not intrusive or restrictive, flexible, understanding, recognizing that independence should increase with age.

Δ   Demanding/High Demandingness/tough but fair

Assertive, firm but clear, with realistic boundaries set by the parents, teaching them to regulate themselves, consistently guiding them to learn from their mistakes, with achievable and clearly explained regulations and goals. Discipline is not harsh and control is moderate, with the aim of guidance. Offering freedom to make mistakes without judgement, allowing natural consequences to occur and guiding the children through the consequences.

https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/parenting/what-parenting-style-is-right-for-you/

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/child-psychologist-explains-4-types-of-parenting-and-how-to-tell-which-is-right-for-you.html

https://www.verywellmind.com/parenting-styles-2795072

https://www.parents.com/parenting/better-parenting/style/authoritative-parenting-the-pros-and-cons-according-to-a-child-psychologist/

https://www.healthshots.com/mind/emotional-health/authoritative-parenting-benefits-side-effects/

https://positivepsychology.com/authoritative-parenting/

https://www.joonapp.io/post/what-is-authoritative-parenting-and-is-it-right-for-you

https://parentingscience.com/authoritative-parenting-style/

https://psychcentral.com/health/authoritative-parenting

https://wellspringprevention.org/blog/pros-cons-parenting-styles/

RESOURCES

Fantastic Antoine Succeeds: experiences in educating children with fetal alcohol syndrome.[i]

This book begins by clarifying that “rich, open, unstructured” parenting is not the best for FAS/FAE children. Note that while high responsiveness may be in that phrase, high demandingness is not.

The parenting handbook: your guide to raising resilient children[ii]

Tania Johnson and Tammy Schamuhn offer some age-appropriate ways to encouraging the growth of resilience:

Ages 5-7 Games that involve strategy, physical activities that require attention, fast-moving ball games, guessing games (Yasik and a friend were drawn in by the I Spy books), imaginary play

Ages 8-12 Organized sports, gross motor games that require attention: jump rope, Lazer tag, paintball (I don’t remember Yasik jumping rope much but but check, check, check on Lazer tag and paint ball), playing a musical instrument, dance, (didn’t manage dance and previous posts note how well piano went), brain teasers

Parents who raise mentally strong kids never use these 7 phrases when their children are young.[iii]

To teach children to develop “mental toughness”, “high self-esteem, develop resilience that allows them to stay positive amid challenges and learn from their failures”, avoid the following phrases.1. ‘Calm down!’ Instead let them know it is OK to be upset and then redirect them to something calming. 2. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Instead ask them what they can do about whatever is worrying them. 3. ‘You’ll do fine.’ Because you don’t really know it all will be well, rather encourage them to do their best and then deal with whatever the result is.  4. ‘Don’t ever let me catch you doing that again.’ The reminder here is that if the parent has encouraged honesty in the child, even when the child has done something punishable, an opportunity for growth is more possible.  5. ‘You’re the best!’ Instead of praising the outcome which may not be repeatable, praise children for their process. 6. ‘That’s perfect!’ Again, “praise their effort, rather than the outcome.”   7. ‘You’re making me mad.’ Rather than teaching children how to blame another, teach them by example, to think about how to control their own thoughts, feelings, or actions in frustrating situations.

What Kind of Parent Am I?: self-surveys that reveal the impact of toxic stress and more[iv]

Dr. Letourneau offers a questionnaire you might check out which offers some concrete ideas in Authoritative parenting. Dr. Letourneau takes parents from this questionnaire to the tennis metaphor of “serve and return” to encourage parents, when the child seeks their engagement, to come back with a response, rather than ignoring the child’s overture, whether to get put to bed, or to laugh together over something that amuses the child.

Is Authoritative Parenting the Best Parenting Style?[v]

Summary

Anita Febiyanti and Yeni Rachmawat stress that parenting styles are impacted by cultural context: individualist and collectivist cultures. They contend that while most parenting theory is western (ie Baumrimd), parenting in practice does not always match theory which endorses authoritative over authoritarian parenting.
But are the children always more successful, reliable and responsible in an authoritative environment? It may depend on how children understand themselves in relation to the society they live in. In an individualist culture, the values are “emotional independence, assertiveness, autonomy, and the need for privacy where the individual loosens its bound with the others”.  Parents negotiate; strong control is not acceptable.  In a collectivist culture children “have cultural values where the people are attached to a strong bond and every individual is obligated to maintain group loyalty and focus on the communities in which they live” …. “[prioritizing] socialization, obedience, security, and family integrity”. Parents are strict, with rules and warnings.

How to raise a boy: The first lesson on boundaries starts with the mum — and it’s best drawn as early as possible [vi]

Summary

This article might be seeing things in a context similar to the point being made in Is Authoritative Parenting the Best Parenting Style? though I am not sure that it should be relegated to a cultural context. I think it has universal importance. Pooja Sardana provides this opinion as a mother of a young boy. She begins with the observation that “Managing boundaries is about power in a relationship” and offers Steve Biddulph’s Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different — And How to Help Them Become Happy and Well-Balanced Men as a guide.  She paid attention when she read: “Wherever you see a gang of boys looking unruly, you know the adult leadership is failing”.

Sardana became concerned as she dealt with a son moving through his childhood with ever more effective manipulations starting with tantrums, then employing cuteness tactics. By the time he reached the end of his first decade he was attempting intellectual argument to get what he wanted whether it crossed others’ boundaries or not. She ends the article with “We’ve started building an age-appropriate mechanism that reflects real-life relationships and consequences”.

Hunt, Gather, Parent: what ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy, healthy little humans.[vii]

Summary

Concerned by how things were working out for her and her daughter, Michaeleen Doucleff, accompanied by her young daughter, visited some more traditional cultures to see how they parented differently from the western model she knew was not working well for her or her daughter. Her interpretation of Authoritative stresses the importance of holding to both sides of the definition.

“So [she says] I consulted Dr. Google and decided that “authoritative” was the “optimal parenting approach” that would help with [my daughter’s] tantrums…. From what I could tell authoritative meant being both “firm and kind”. With this start and from her observations of parenting successes in other cultures, she offers Chapter 10, “Introduction to Parenting Tools” for dealing with tantrums, changing behaviours, and transmitting values.

The 5 Principles of Parenting: your essential guide to raising good humans[viii]

Sonia, a single mother of a 3 year old, 7 year old and a 10 year old tended to over compensate by doing more for her children than might have been good for their individual journeys to self-sufficiency out of guilt that they did not have a second parent. She needed to “let them do for themselves what they can do for themselves” …. even “what they can almost do”, perhaps initially showing them how, providing support or doing it together as necessary and then let them at it.

How to Raise An Adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kids for success[ix]

Summary

Julie Lythcott-Haims was a dean of freshmen at Stanford University. Ergo, she has dealt with a variety of young adults who may or may not have been ready to handle college on their own after high school. She has written a book to help parents help their children do just that. She suggests parents start when their children are young preparing them for ever increasing levels of personal development. She offers some examples of the things that can be expected of children at each age level: ages 2-3 – basic chores and grooming, 4-5 – important names and numbers and safety skills, 6-7 – basic cooking, 8-9 – pride in personal belongings, 10-13- becoming independent like being able to stay at home alone, 14-18 – more advanced skills in cleaning, car maintenance, handling prescriptions, job interviews and cooking full meals.

But do so with support. She advises parents to first ask themselves whether or not the directives are about them rather than about their children so encourages parents to notice who their children are, what they love and are good at, not what the parents love, are good at or think is the best path for their children. “Know when to push forward, when to pull back. Prepare them for hard work. Don’t do too much for them.”

The authoritative parenting style: An evidence-based guide[x]

Summary

Headlining with questions, Gwen Dewar defines Authoritative parenting as combining warmth with setting limits leading to successful outcomes in child-raising, setting it apart from the other styles because it is a middle path between Authoritarian and Permissive.

While she does consider pros and cons like the place of culture which she dismisses as likely a matter of semantics, she sees the Authoritative parenting style as leading “to better emotional, cognitive and behavioral outcomes”. It is the style that combines warmth with limits. Authoritative parents “want kids to develop self-discipline, maturity, and a respect for others”.

To help parents take on Authoritative parenting style, Gwen Dewar provides a set of statements, with examples, to try on for size – check her site out if you interested in asking which of these statements ring true for you in your parenting?

She also asks the question I ask: is it possible to be a purist authoritative parent in every situation?

Dewar reminds the reader that, although it is important to remember that one size does not fit all, in studies across cultures, one point remained consistent with Authoritative parenting: “[w]hen their children misbehaved, they talked with them, and explained the reasons for the rules” to “think – constructively and non-selfishly – about how their behavior affects others” for which she uses the term ‘inductive discipline’.

Listening Well: bringing stories of hope to life[xi]

Heather Morris offers helpful tips for good listening skills.

Influence of Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive, and the Uninvolved Parenting

Styles on the Reading Attitudes of Students in Anambra State, Nigeria[xii]

This study compared the reading attitudes of children from each of the parenting styles and found that authoritative parents fostered the most positive reading development in their children.

The Parenting Handbook: your guide to raising resilient children[xiii]. 

I have only begun to read this book, but as the title shows, it will be one I will be summarizing later.

Specific To Adoption           

Attaching in adoption: practical tools for today’s parents[xiv]

Summary

Deborah Gray endorses Authoritative parenting’s high structure and high nurture for adoptees because she says that most parents of adoptees are parenting kids who are “emotionally younger than their chronological ages” … “Recognizing that children have missed dependable nurture, parents are supplying what was missed”. Gray cites parents, who with lots of hugs, first explained to their children and then expected from the children that they must stay close to them until they understood who they were attached to now that they belonged to a family. And until they understood where the sadness within comes from, not from lack of love in the adoptive family nor a lack of material things or food, but from past grief their now family would be seeking to help them deal with the grief by offering nurture and guidelines. This book ENDORSES hugs, snuggles, and kisses.

Parenting Adopted Teenagers: advice for the adolescent years[xv]

Rachel Staff brings forward the same point regarding focusing on the developmental age rather than the chronological age of an adoptee.  They need to be in a safe, structured and nurturing environment, ergo high structure, high nurture, aka, authoritative.

Methods Of Care For Children Living In Orphanages In Saudi Arabia (An Exploratory Field Study)[xvi]  

Summary

This article demonstrates that interest in care of orphans/adoptees is global rather than only western, and more specifically, that Saudi Arabia is trying for healthy parenting styles for children in orphanages by adopting “one or more of the following five methods of care when treating children: attention vs. non-attention, equality vs. discrimination, kindness vs. cruelty, acceptance vs. rejection and democracy vs. authoritarianism”.

These children have “lost their parents and could not be taken care of by other family members and those who were born out of wedlock and have been abandoned (unknown lineage)”. The children live together in a home with one caregiver in shift rotation and its attendant weaknesses), with the intention of providing an environment of more intimate, safe, loving care “guiding the child into adulthood”. The caregivers usually have sufficient life experience or a “mother’s (caregiver’s) instincts and emotions in dealing with children” as they are between 31 and 40; they are also required to have a bachelor’s degree and continuing education in caregiving is offered to them.

8 Ways to Bond with your Adopted Child[xvii]

This site sounds like Authoritative parenting to me!

Child Welfare Information Gateway[xviii]

Child Welfare Information Gateway connects adopters to trusted resources on the child welfare continuum. We provide publications, research, and learning tools selected by experts to support thriving children, youth, families, and communities.

Sharing of an adoptive parent’s experience of key themes …[xix]

Some of the key themes to be aware of when seeking to be both high in responsiveness and high in demandingness:

Loss: Adopted children mourn the loss of their birth parents

Rejection: Adopted children may often feel rejected by their birth

Guilt/Shame: Adopted children often believe there is something intrinsically wrong with them

Grief: There is no ritual to grieve the loss of a birth parent

Identity: Adopted children often feel incomplete and at a loss regarding their identity because of gaps in their genetic and family history

Intimacy: Many adopted children, have difficulty attaching to members of their new family

Mastery and Control: Adopted children sometimes engage in power struggles with their adoptive parents or other authority figures in an attempt to master the loss of control they experienced in adoption

The Adoptive Parents’ Handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster or adopted child[xx].

Summary

In this book Barbara Cummins Tantrum offers guidance when parenting a traumatized foster or adopted child.  Come into the relationship seeking to “avoid power struggles”, even if the child is using lying as self-protection.  As do most authors I have read on this subject, Tantrum also advocates for routine, reflective listening in whatever way allows children to trust they are being heard, and going into calm mode first before engaging with traumatized children. She warns that these children may have sleep issues coming from a lack of a sense of safety.

Baby We Were Meant For Each Other: in praise of adoption[xxi]

Summary

Scott Simon is for affirming that adoptors offer the best support to their children not by avoiding/dismissing struggles but rather helping their children learn from their struggles.

He also makes the point to adoptors who may feel they don’t quite have the right to claim to be the ‘real’ parents that they will be the ones not only to love, but to change the diapers, get food on the table, take their children to the doctor and offer their children “A reason to come home. …”

The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook.[xxii]

Summary

Chapter 10, “The Kindness of Children” provides an example of a child who was not at his chronological age when he was adopted. In some ways the child did act appropriately for his age but presented as a much younger child in other respects.  Dr. Perry describes this developmental delay as “splintered development” due to deprivation/lack of stimulation of some brain regions. I appreciate and find hope in the phrase ‘or had not yet’. Dr. Perry finishes the sentence off with: “or had not yet received enough stimulation to make up for the earlier neglect”. Dr. Perry encouraged the parents to interact with the child at his developmental level. He talked with them about the impact the child’s emotional stress would have had on his development. With this explanation, Dr. Perry aimed to reduce the parents’ fears that they were “babying” him.

Dr. Perry also tells us about a foster mother who babied children who had experienced trauma and were not at their chronological ages.  She believed in holding them and rocking them long after they had left infancy.

“These children had never received the repeated, patterned physical nurturing needed to develop a well-regulated and responses stress response system. The had never learned that they were loved and safe; …”  “A foundational principle of brain development is that neural systems organize and become functional in a sequential manner”.

What Type of Parent are You? The 4 Types of Parenting Styles Behind The Decisions You Make[xxiii]

Summary

This is a good article to round off the Resources section as baseline and pragmatic information is presented from recognizing that most parents will get their guidance from family, friends and professionals to recognizing that parents’ parenting practices will slide back and forth across the parenting spectrum as the family’s needs change. The writer/s ask parents to ask themselves both what values guide them and what goals direct them.  They understand that these guiding principles are impacted both by internal direction as well as by how they want to be seen as parents. And we are assured that research shows moving across the parenting spectrum may not always be problematic for a family.

Making daily or making more over-reaching parenting moves will be considering “genetic influences, social environment, parental income level, parental education level, the number of active/engaged parental figures and the developmental and/or physical needs of the child” and cultural value.

Conclusion

Here is a situational irony: While anyone can see this is the parenting style loving parents should follow, I, who loves my son, find myself the least engaged in studying it.  It is Goldilocks’s choice, the one any loving parents who love their children would choose. Either because I have an ingrained suspicion of anyone’s capacity to be this good in their relationship to their children or because I am jealous of those who can jump out of bed each morning and maintain Authoritative parenting for the 16 hours of that day or I am making too much of what I read of this style Or I just wish I had known more about it and engaged with it more than I did.  Really don’t know.  I do know that the conversation we should have had with Yasik about whether to move to the country or stay in the neighbourhood he had grown up in we did not think was necessary to share with him.  Our parents never asked our opinion about moving; that was not considered our business. One particular move our parents made got me off a path to problems but set my brother on a path in the other direction. An article I cannot now locate offered a drawback to Authoritative parenting for families living in a “low socio-economic background as the children might be exposed to more violence and aggression and the parents need to be strict with their rules and regulations to establish restrictions on them” (Gfroerer et al., 2004; Rothrauff, Cooney, & An, 2009).

Some writer among the above ended with:  be sure to give yourself grace when you make mistakes, too.

Footnotes

[i] Fantastic Antoine Succeeds: experiences in educating children with fetal alcohol syndrome.  Ed. Judith Kleinfeld and Siobhan Wescott, University of Alaska Press, 1993, 13

[ii] Johnson,Tania, R.Psych, and Tammy Schamuhn, R. Psych. The parenting handbook: your guide to raising resilient children  Barlow Books, 2024, 26,27

[iii] Huddleston, Tom Jr Parents who raise mentally strong kids never use these 7 phrases when their children are young. . Apr 16 2023, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#label/Adoption/FMfcgzGtwWGdxtvgqRbFdKVwwWqTbnWN

[iv] Letourneau, Dr. Nicole. What Kind of Parent Am I?: self-surveys that reveal the impact of toxic stress and more  Dundurn Press, 2018, 51,52-53.

[v] Febiyanti, Anita and Yeni Rachmawat. Is Authoritative Parenting the Best Parenting Style?  Department of Early Childhood Education, School of Postgraduate, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia *Corresponding author. Email: anitafebiyanti@upi.edu Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 538 Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Early Childhood Education (ICECE 2020)

[vi] Sardana, Pooja. How to raise a boy: The first lesson on boundaries starts with the mum — and it’s best drawn as early as possible  Nov 19, 2024 22:48 IST https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/how-to-raise-a-boy-the-first-lesson-on-boundaries-starts-with-the-mum-and-its-best-drawn-as-early-as-possible-9675420/

[vii] Doucleff, Michaeleen. Hunt, Gather, Parent: what ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy, healthy little humans.   Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 2022, 2,3, 198-200

[viii] Pressman, Dr. Aliza. The 5 Principles of Parenting: your essential guide to raising good humans   Simon Element, 2024, 34-36

[ix]Lythcott-Haims, Julie.  How to Raise An Adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kids for success    Holt Paperbacks, 2016, 167-169, 218-225

[x] Dewar, Gwen. The authoritative parenting style: An evidence-based guide   Ph.D., 2010 – 2024  https://www.apa.org/act/resources/fact-sheets/parenting-styles

[xi] Morris, Heather. Listening Well: bringing stories of hope to life  St. Martins Publishing Group, 2022

[xii] Echedom, Anthonia U. (Ph.D), Tochukwu Victor Nwankwo & Evangeline U. Nwankwo.  Influence of Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive, and the Uninvolved Parenting Styles on the Reading Attitudes of Students in Anambra State, Nigeria  Journal of Library and Information Sciences December 2018, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 1-25 ISSN 2374-2372 (Print) 2374-2364 (Online) DOI: 10.15640/jlis.v6n2a1 https://doi.org/10.15640/jlis.v6n2a1

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tochukwu-Nwankwo/publication/330076069_Influence_of_Authoritative_Authoritarian_Permissive_and_the_Uninvolved_Parenting_Styles_on_the_Reading_Attitudes_of_Students_in_Anambra_State_Nigeria/links/5c2bdae6299bf12be3a7223a/Influence-of-Authoritative-Authoritarian-Permissive-and-the-Uninvolved-Parenting-Styles-on-the-Reading-Attitudes-of-Students-in-Anambra-State-Nigeria.pdf

[xiii] Johnson, Tania , R. Psych and Tammy Schamuhn, R. Psych.  The Parenting Handbook: your guide to raising resilient children.  Barlow Books, 2024

[xiv] Gray, Deborah D.  Attaching in adoption: practical tools for today’s parents.  Perspectives Press, Inc., 2002, 28-29, 54,61-64,191, 224-5,229-231,

[xv] Staff,Rachel. Parenting Adopted Teenagers: advice for the adolescent years.  Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2016, 25-26

[xvi] Ashaalan, Latifah, Ibtisam Al-zeiby.  Methods Of Care For Children Living In Orphanages In Saudi Arabia (An Exploratory Field Study)  Journal of International Education Research – First Quarter 2015 Volume 11, Number 1 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1051139.pdf

[xvii] 8 Ways to Bond with your Adopted Child Adoption Choices of Colorado  Jul 8, 2019

[xviii] Child Welfare Information Gateway Child Welfare Information Gateway https://www.childwelfare.gov/

[xix] Sharing of an adoptive parent’s experience of key themes …

Abba Adoptions  https://www.abbaadoptions.co.za › docs › adopt…

[xx] Cummins Tantrum, Barbara.  The Adoptive Parents’ Handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster or adopted child.  North Atlantic books, 2020, 71, 85, 109, 193-197, 233-235

[xxi] Simon, Scott. Baby We Were Meant For Each Other: in praise of adoption.  Random House, 2010 57, 166-8

[xxii] Perry, Bruce D.  MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz. The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook.   Basic Books, 2017, 100-103, 152, 241-58.

[xxiii] What Type of Parent are You? The 4 Types of Parenting Styles Behind The Decisions You Make  https://maisonvieneworleans.com/what-type-of-parent-are-you-the-4-types-of-parenting-styles/

Post #13 C Permissive/ Indulgent/Laissez-faire/Passive Parenting style

I was still trying to sleep this morning at 7:30 am, the retiree’s right, I believe.   I think, Brodie, our Rottie/Shepard-cross hasn’t read the policy which lays that point out quite clearly. He’d just heard potentially exciting noises coming from the trail across the street.  Not really aware that going out the backdoor doesn’t connect him to the front yard, he wanted me to help him check things out. With absolutely no regard for my rights, he confidently strode into our bedroom, came around to my side, nosed my bottom and then sat back on his haunches, expectant that I would now jump obediently out of bed to let him outside. I didn’t roll over, so Plan B. He started whining. 20 minutes of intermittent whining, stalking out of the bedroom, returning to whine and I caved.  Ok, so he did have to pee, but he was out there to warn off potential intruders. Brodie got to indulge the joy of threatening barking. I got to deal with the fallout before the neigbourhood noise patrol might begin shaking their annoyed heads.  I know, I know, any good dog training book I’ve read says we should not give into our dog’s whining or allow him to learn that whining is a way to get what he wants.

And are there any parallels here with how Dave and I might have parented Yasik?  Anything I have read about Permissive parenting might suggest there is.  Actually, there are likely many, many more media sources on Permissive Parenting than on lax parenting of our puppies.

Roger that, let’s get back to seeing what the journal recorded of this aspect of our parenting. Surprisingly, at least to me, I don’t have many journal entries pointing to our experiences with Permissive parenting. Not that we can’t find ourselves often enough in the definition of Permissive parenting.  Just the other night, on a call to Yasik, Dave called him by Dave’s younger brother’s name, something he has done many times over the years.  He mixes Yasik up with his younger brother both because of what a brother signifies and because this brother was one of his closest friends growing up.   Hearing the mix-up, though I have heard it many times before, I ran for note paper as I am now looking at the definition for Permissive parents, that of seeing or wanting to see the child in the light of a friend/buddy relationship rather than in the light of the parent-child relationship. Of course, now, though it is a slip of the tongue, it is also, as these two adults interact, a compliment.

For me the, at times, razor sharp line between playful interaction with my child, wanting him to see me as his friend rather than see me as taking on the business of mothering, began barely a half hour after our driver turned the van back toward Moscow. For Dave it came more apparent later as he and Yasik explored the wonders of the computer together.  For neither of us would this, any more than any of the other parenting styles, have been a conscious parenting style selection.

Yasik was sitting in Dave’s lap but the translator in the front seat continued with Yasik’s immediate care, feeding him while telling us that he was not used to being in a vehicle and might throw food up.  She then showed us this sort of pat-a-cake game. Dave took it over as the front seat-back seat stretch was awkward.  Yasik was getting into the game, relaxing away the tension of saying good-bye to the orphanage.  Initiating is not usually my auto-response when I am in a new situation, but soon I too tried the pat-a-cake slapping hands game.  Four-and-a-half-year-old Yasik, in the middle of a vehicle full of strangers, most of whom are wrapping him in happy attention, was by now feeling the Russian version of Yeah! Alright! This is Cool!  Translation, maybe Yasik’s emotional dial was swinging a bit out of control. There was more haphazard but stronger sting to the slap.  I have never been comfortable saying “No” to much of anything, let alone the first half hour of excited play in my first day with my son.   I allowed the slapping to continue until Dave thought it had gone too far.

Once we felt Yasik was settled into our lifestyle, we set about honouring the suggestion given to us at the orphanage to encourage Yasik’s interest in music.   It was evident watching his wonder listening to music via headphones on the return flight from Moscow.  It was evident watching him soothe himself, alone on the living room couch, rocking and singing songs of his childhood. He loved music. Did we have a rock star or a Mozart in the making? Whatever, we were going to follow up on the orphanage’s directive.  As far as we knew that meant getting him into piano lessons. And for the first while Yasik seemed quite happy with the music lessons, admittedly, maybe more so when he got to play the drums in the class. Never thought to ask the little guy for suggestions.  At his recital, he seemed proud to be dressed in long pants and a nice shirt, playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in front of an audience. Dave and I – well memory balks here – I was in tears.  The practices leading up to this recital had been less tear-inducing, more frustration and laughter inducing as Yasik would flop his head down on the keyboard when asked to hit the keys. Still and all, we were giving him the opportunity to develop a skill we believed had roots somewhere within him.

We were ‘giving him the opportunity’ by bribing him with an allowance. That, and threats always the backup.  Threats and bribes – two side of the same coin? ^[i]

The child will perform for the immediate benefit or pressure, sure.  And we were heaping praise on his efforts as well.  Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star never sounded so amazing to my heart. We believed that we were giving him every opportunity to find his place in the world.

So why was Yasik not embracing the opportunity with the appreciation and thrill we had imagined. The only other little boy in the group seemed proud to be learning to pay the piano. Yasik continued to moan and groan and flop around on the piano seat through the mere 10 to 15 minutes of piano practice before school.  I continued to push, bribing and threatening to contain his conflict with piano practice.  That last sentence might lead you to ask why I put this story in the Permissive parenting post rather than the Authoritarian parenting post for it is a bit of a stretch to see it as illustrating one of the traits in the definition of Permissive parenting:  These parents mostly allow their kids to do what they want and offer limited guidance or direction. They prefer to avoid conflict and will often acquiesce to their children’s pleas at the first sign of distress.^[ii]

The journal records one particularly bad lesson after a week of sketchy practice (some adjustments for the essential story).   I have not recorded (in itself a comment) how Yasik might have been feeling, but I image relief that the class was over and he was going home to TV, computer time or maybe the freedom to go down to the park to play with his friends.  I came away from the awkward class hour feeling self-pity at my unrewarded struggles to get him to practice, probably the driver of the next few minutes. I asked him if he wanted to quit piano.

“Yes”, he said. Groan.

“We’ll have to get rid of your piano you know.”

“Ok.”, this from a kid who had shown signs in the apartment in Moscow of the hoarding trait sometimes noticed in kids who’ve spent time in an orphanage.   I guess the need to hoard was no longer a trigger; maybe competition with his cousin would trigger him.

“We’ll give it to Kyle”, who a couple of years later showed roughly the same interest in piano as Yasik.   “OK.” he said. I’m dead.

On to the next manipulation. I turned off North Road at Foster Ave. to loop around and return to the building housing the piano school.  I told Yasik, now showing some concern, that I was disappointed in his choice. No comment.

But if it was his choice, then “OK, you can quit if that is what you want – but you have to tell Mrs. B. We are going back to the school to catch her before she closes up.”

“OK.”  Maybe it’s for the best I even thought. No more hassle. But I hated to have to tell Mrs B. I hate disappointing authority.  And what if it was a chance he’d never have again.

And into this downward-spirally dream came an inspiration. I had just run a yellow light near Lougheed Mall and he’d told me to be careful.  He had less confidence in my driving abilities than in his father’s.

“OK. If you quit, I can too.  I’m just going to quit driving.  I’m not good at it.  It’s too hard.  We will park in the mall and then we will walk up to the school. You go in to tell Mrs. B. you are quitting and then we will leave the car and walk home.  Dad can come and get the car.”    It was now becoming dark, cold and raining.  We bundled up, got out and started to walk. Seriously.

He was saying we can’t do this.  I said we can and we marched.

We walked almost two blocks when he said, “I was just fooling.  I won’t quit.”

And I said, “OK, I’ll drive.”  I grabbed him and hugged him.  He was embarrassed in the street but I know he was happy for the hug and kiss, and relieved that we were finally just going home.  For a plus, when we reached Lougheed Mall, I let him drive (sitting in my lap of course) around the empty parking lot.   Manipulation or not, I wondered at the time.

I was holding Yasik to piano playing not in a direct authoritarian, no revolt-tolerated plan of action, but with bribes and threats in ‘his best interest’.  Cecile David-Weill, in Parents Under the Influence: words of wisdom from a former bad mother ( P. 57) wonders if a parent might push piano lessons on his or her child to give the child an opportunity the parent felt was missing from his or her own childhood, making the push for lessons “all about her, her own upbringing and her own regrets, rather than about her son and his interests, which don’t even cross her mind.”

Is it possible that both Authoritarian parenting and Permissive parenting come from a place of parent-driven choices for the child, one coming at it from direct demands, the other from threats and bribes? Do Permissive parents really not want to get in their child’s way?  Do they think that a softer approach will get them what they want?  Expected obedience/threats or bribes, are they too just two sides of another coin?

Julie Lythcott-Haims, a former dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising at Stanford University, has written How to Raise an Adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success because she has seen the impact of over-parenting on young people.  

Some students bided their time until they could finally get out from under their parents…. Some expressed anger at their parents. I read the resignation in their eyes.  I sensed their bewilderment at the dawning realization they were living within a landscape full of possibility unavailable to them because they were on a leash and led down a path of their parents’ making – that they’d spent years learning how to reach for and achieve their parents’ ambitious dreams but were not allowed to dream dreams of their own…. Sure there’s the chance that all of this striving for perfection, even in a field the student doesn’t think she likes, will by some measure turn out to be “worth it” in the long run, or that a kid who never mastered anything in particular will later regret being allowed to quit piano.… I’m focusing on what happens when harsh, not-necessarily-fitting expectations have been imposed on children and they have lived up to those expectations.  A great many students experiencing such things sought mental health counseling.  Some dropped out of school for a while. Some fell completely apart. ^[iii]    

Of course this piece seems to fit more precisely into the post on Authoritarian parenting, unless we are flipping a coin here between direct commands and threats or bribes.

Have we ever resolved the question of whether or not it is problematic for little boys to play with guns or how much TV or computer time is damning? Media regularly address one or the other of the concerns, and regularly we hear rumblings the government is going to apply restrictions in the ‘best interests of the child’.  So was it cute or worrisome to come into our living room to find our young man sitting on the couch with his little hockey stick, popping off cars passing by on the street. Little boys, they say, turn anything from carrot sticks to Lego blocks into guns.  I went with being disconcerted while Dave was tempering. Yasik had become what I felt was too interested in shooting bad men.  Yet if we truly believed shooting cars with a hockey stick would lead to a life of crime, our response was lame. Dave and I tried to child-proof the remote with whatever techniques were available at the time, but Yasik figured out how to get all the channels back.

Until the movies came out or until the night I came into Yasik’s bedroom at the end of an evening as I routinely had done since his first nights in our home, to read him to sleepiness, I had been reading him books that progressed from one-sentence per page stories to the magical Harry Potters.

One such night Harry gets into some trouble and Yasik said, “He should have just lied to save himself.” What does a formerly god-fearing, morals-valuing mother say to that?

With all the backbone of someone who hates conflict, I muttered that I didn’t think Harry lied.

Yasik came right back with, “Sure he does.”

Two pages or so later, Harry definitely lies and Yasik said, “See Mom.” There is no record in the journal of any morally-guiding comeback from me.

The Harry Potter movies started to come out when Yasik was around 12; about the same time, for whatever impressions Yasik had picked up, he had come to the decision that the nightly bed time book routine must come to a halt.  Sleeping in a top bunk he shared on the weekends with our client on the bottom bunk, he had barricaded himself or snugged himself up there by draping blankets over the edge of the bunk’s sidings.  He popped his head over his parapet to tell me I didn’t need to read to him anymore. And that was that.  I accepted his decision with hardly a whimper.

Nightly bedtime stories with me were replaced, as was true for all his friends, with computer games, usually set up by his dad for him and for his friends.  I noted in my journal that I wondered (with the bemused word ‘actually’ fronting ‘wondered’) if gaming is like whiling the hours away reading which suggests that however much I may have tried to shrug off Yasik’s gun toting and game playing, I did feel, and at times muttered to Dave, that it might be deleterious to a healthy moral upbringing.

It is less clear in the journal whether we showered Yasik with too many things; certainly he had everything any of his friends had, but was that not par for the course for a middle-class lifestyle?

So let’s go back to those ‘mutterings’. They might segue into a peek under the covers of our marriage.  Which could be a somewhat misleading metaphor.  Rather than where your mind might head if on auto-pilot, focus on the blanket covering our marriage bed, flopping about as the two individuals beneath each seek a don’t-go-to-bed-in-anger relationship and a good night’s sleep.  This to say that if Permissive parenting style defined any part of our parenting, it was more often than not expressed by one or the other of us, not often by both of us together, ergo the image of the blanket covering marital tensions beneath it: Good Cop/Bad Cop parenting.

Starting right from that first hour as parents in the van. Even as Yasik was hitting and later biting, I was reluctant to say “Nyet!” Dave did say “Nyet!” when he thought Yasik was crossing a line.  Within a few weeks, Dave felt he was looking like the bad guy and being rejected for “Nyet!” was coming from him more often than from me.

One evening in that first September as parents, we were taking a walk before bed.  I was holding Yasik’s hand to help him balance as he goose-stepped on top of a small, stone property boundary. I was not paying much attention but perhaps I was letting Yasik stray onto private property.  Dave was disturbed by it. In frustration he said so to me because once again saying “Nyet!” put him in a less favourable light with Yasik.  That metaphoric marriage blanket settled into an uncomfortable silence.

Parents Under the Influence author, Cecile David-Weill, suggests that infants/children develop a “sixth sense” of their caregivers’ “state of mind” and “may feel responsible for the tensions around them”.^[iv]  Did Yasik sense the tension between his parents? Had he become adept at sensing tensions around him very early in life?  Maybe, for when we got home to bathe him, he turned very specifically to Dave. And then they were checking out the wonders of Toy Story together before bed.  The interactions within a family are five minutes of this and then, spin, and it is five minutes of something totally different. A fine line between fun and tension, yet something to take note of.

We were each pulling for our share of the blanket when Yasik needed to go ‘sikats’ on his own.  I wanted to help that little penis point in the right direction but Dave felt Yasik was ready to practice aiming on his own.  I think Yasik did figure out where to point.

It wasn’t all awkwardness or tension as Dave and I tugged for cover over permissiveness or strictness under the marriage blanket.  There were funny moments too.  Times like one afternoon. Dave had come skulking around when he felt I was being too easy on Yasik for an impudence or tantrum. All 40 some inches and 40 lbs. were trying to stand up to Dave and I. When it ended with Yasik crying, Dave turned and went back to the computer set up in the kitchen. I followed him and Dave, with his back still to me, said, “And I don’t care what you think”.  Then he wheeled around and demanded, “What do you think?”  Partly delay tactic, partly not knowing what to say and wanting to avoid conflict or feeling the moment was not right for talk, I returned with a confused, “I haven’t thought anything yet”.

In sum, Dave and I concluded that he expected too much and I expected too little; this was probably in terms of differing priorities because I suspect that while Dave wanted Yasik to learn to behave appropriately and respectfully, I wanted him to do well at school. Depending on which priority was being tested by Yasik, one or the other of us donned the cop uniform we felt necessary for the moment concerned. Sometimes Permissive, sometimes Authoritarian?     

But all this high-minded talk of priorities can get very personal and somewhat less the look of child-centered parenting. At the time it felt to Dave like the two of us are siding against him.   When Yasik and Dave were on the computer, I felt like I was left out.  But did we see more clearly what the problem and solution were? Not really – we weren’t able to step outside ourselves to look at the problem.  The journal suggests I did realize I had a husband who was fascinated with how things work and what they lead to when they work; at that time, it was the computer which combines technology and art potential and it kept one step ahead of him. Besides which he was learning things we all needed to know.  I got a chance at a good education later in life and I valued it as one of life’s highest gifts.  We also had a young son who wanted our attention most of the time even if his emotions degenerated into hitting out in over excited play or anger, responses that should not be excused or ignored.

John Brooks and his wife Erica dealt with angry outbursts from their daughter and came at this struggle in ways similar to Dave and mine:

Feeling like miserable failures. Erica and I turned on each other.  We came from very different parenting models. Erika’s immigrant parents had always been strict and controlling, like their parents, whereas mine were fairly laid-back, like Ward and June Cleaver. Erika accused me of being too easy on Casey while I felt that Erika needed to give her a longer leash. She believed firmly-and rightly so- that we need a united front in complete alignment against such a willful child and she was ever watchful for any threat to the alliance.^[v]

Was he getting spoiled as Dave suggested? How is ‘getting spoiled’ even defined?  Amy Anderson came from a family of 10 while her husband, Chip, was ostensibly an only child. They started their life together with only his step-son but later added two they produced together. To Amy allowing their children choice in school lunches seemed overkill whereas Chip couldn’t see what the big deal was. So one kid wants a choice of mustard, pickle or cheese and the next one doesn’t?  Not an issue unless there wasn’t time or resources for that kind of choice when 10 lunches needed to be made. ^[vi]

The one explanation that cannot be countenanced in a question of becoming spoiled by our Permissive parenting is the accusation that a child is being manipulative.  One evening when Yasik was a few years older, my journal says ‘Last night after Yasik worked on manipulating me by saying, “You guys never play with me.” I agreed to play a board game with him. Dave came in to say, “No, we should teach him not to say ‘Never’ and guilt trip us. He should know to just straight out ask to play”.

The common thought, most of my adult life has been that children are capable of manipulation. Recently I have noticed writers take a paragraph or two to caution against that assumption for a child needs a developed pre-frontal cortex to manage the executive function I suggested he was employing, something not operating until the child is no longer a child.  Check out the addresses in footnote #vii for more on that inappropriate accusation of a child’s tantrum, a tantrum being the child’s way to express frustration.^[vii]

Dave and I have always been determined not to give up and close the door on trust of each other so after some stewing time we would talk about issues of expecting too much or too little and how to give Yasik more independence because we do believe in not taking our disagreements to bed, lucky for the blanket.

So what did we have in the end? A tenderhearted man who was frustrated by feelings of guilt and fear of being left out, a son who was just being a kid, playing with those he loved, and a woman who struggled between a daydream and reality, wanting to enjoy picture perfect and knowing there are realities, some of which I accepted and some I didn’t. Work and school’s priority I understood, but Dave and Yasik wanting time on the computer to play computer games, not so much. Dave understood playing on computer but a kid having a tantrum, not so acceptable.

Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to underline the following characteristics you identify in the narrative.

Δ   High Responsiveness: warm, loving, non-controlling, accepting, relaxed, indulgent, affirmative, involved, but not in a traditional way.   In carrying out their responsibility for their children, these parents are more likely to treat their children as friends rather than acting as authority figures with their children who need discipline. They communicate openly, are highly involved in their children’s lives, going to great lengths to fulfill their children’s desires whenever possible, sometimes at their own expense.

Δ   Low Demandingness: offer limited, inconsistent guidance or direction, have a hard time setting limits with the children, usually with minimal expectations, structure or rules either not set or rarely enforced giving in against their better judgment when their children get upset so as not to disappoint or upset the children, non-punitive. These low levels of expectation seldom result in using discipline. The children are allowed to exercise full autonomy, being left to explore the world all by themselves and decide for themselves. Not wanting to say “No” or disappoint their children, they support their children almost blindly, allowing them to push boundaries and “get away with” poor behavior. Children can avoid punishment by begging because permissive parents are lenient and forgiving. This can be the result of the parents having grown up with an Authoritarian parenting style in their own household and not wanting to put their children through it.

The parents are often liberal, middle-class professionals, thus are rewarded for taking initiative, being self-directed, and assertive in their jobs.  These parents encourage their children to have those qualities as well by rewarding independence and self-reliance.

Sites referred to for the definitions are in footnote #viii^[viii]:

What do my collection of the experts say?  

Good Cop/Bad Cop

Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents   Deborah D. Gray deals with it early on in the book for it may lead to an unhealthy parent-child relationship which might feel good to a child initially but may lead to a sense of insecurity in the child.^[ix]

Some parents find themselves replaying the “good cop, bad cop” style that their parents used…. But for parents having a hard time connecting with children, playing a role as the mushy confidante can seem appealing… In portraying one parent as the “bad cop”, parents are telling their child that one parent is insensitive, unfair, and inadequate…. The logical conclusion for the child is that the tough parent is not safe for attachment. At the same time, the parent who is the “soft touch” does not seem strong or effective to a child. If children … know that they are themselves in charge, not their parents… [t]his makes them anxious.

Bribes/Threats/Manipulation

When Is a Child’s Reward Actually a Bribe? Reinforcing motivation and self-esteem versus manipulative behavior.^[x]

Rewards are a positive consequence for your child’s behavior that has already occurred…. Bribes, however, are persuasion-based offers of something in advance of the moment to stop your child’s current negative behaviors. Rewards are meant to encourage motivation and reinforce positive behavior. Bribes, on the other hand, can undermine a child’s intrinsic motivation and lead to entitlement or manipulative behavior.

Manipulative Parents^[xi]

In most cases, manipulative parents refer to parents who use covert psychological methods to control the child’s activities and behavior in such a way as to prevent the child from becoming an independent adult apart from their control.

Emotional manipulation by parents: love withdrawal, guilt induction, silent treatment, gaslighting.

Fear exploitation: coercion, humiliation, social comparison, financial manipulation

Permissive Parenting Pros and Cons

Permissive parenting: An evidence-based guide^[xii].

Permissive parents don’t present themselves as authority figures or role models. They might use reason or manipulation to get what they want. But they avoid exercising overt power (Baumrind 1966).

The positive and negative effects of permissive parenting

…[O]n the positive side, children with permissive parents are better off than kids whose parents are uninvolved. In addition, kids raised by permissive caregivers tend to have high self-esteem, and they may be more resourceful than kids raised by uninvolved or authoritarian parents (e.g., Turkel and Tezer 2008; Rothrauff et al 2009; Lamborn et al 1991)….

But, on the negative side, there is also a lot of research supporting the claim that “indulged” kids tend to be less self-disciplined and less responsible than are children with authoritative parents….

But there are exceptions.

For example, on the one hand, it’s not clear that permissiveness is always inferior to authoritative parenting. Several studies, conducted in Spain and Latin America, have reported no differences between teenagers raised by permissive or authoritative parents (e.g., Garcia and Gracia 2009)….

Why do different studies report conflicting results? It may be that parenting styles have different effects depending on the local culture (Chao 1994). But it’s probably also a question of methodology….

So by using different screening tools, researchers are, in effect, defining “permissive” parenting very differently. Is one definition better than the other? Not really. It doesn’t matter how we label people — not as long as we understand each other’s definitions…. 

I think the important takeaway from all studies is that “ignoring bad behavior” is generally linked with suboptimal child outcomes. By contrast, being very controlling or bossy — like insisting that a teenager do every task in a specific order — isn’t associated with the best child outcomes….

In defense of permissiveness

… Baumrind’s permissive parents don’t sound like people who routinely let their kids get away with antisocial behavior — not, at any rate, behavior that I find objectionable, like deliberate rudeness, or violations of other people’s rights and feelings.

Instead, Baumrind’s permissive parents sound more like radical democrats. People who believe that parents and kids should exercise equal power.

… I wonder if the evidence against permissive parenting is really evidence against a relatively extreme, “anything goes” type of permissiveness.

… The adolescents who scored as being the best-adjusted — and the most supportive of prosocial values — were the ones whose parents rejected punishment and scolding as a means of disciplining kids (Garcia et al 2019). And as I’ve argued elsewhere, kids are more likely to develop as innovative, creative, critical thinkers when we let them experiment and tinker. If you want to raise a scientist, let your child ask offbeat questions, get dirty, and take things apart.

The Psychology Behind Different Types of Parenting Styles^[xiii]

… [A] growing body of research suggests that parenting’s influence on the children’s psychosocial adjustment can also vary as a function of the cultural context….

[F]urther, research findings regarding change in the parental dimensions of warmth and strictness across generations suggest a tendency toward an increase in parental warmth and a decrease in parental strictness [43,44], although it is not clear which specific practices of warmth and strictness are changing across generations [38,42]….

The present study examines cross-generational differences in parental practices …. Overall, results showed cross-generational differences in parental practices [showed][t]he indulgent style (warmth but not strictness) was related to equal or even better results on psychosocial adjustment outcomes than authoritative parenting (warmth and strictness), ….

Nevertheless, findings from the present study do not agree with some evidence from other cultural contexts where parental strictness is a necessary component of parental socialization in order to obtain children with good psychosocial adjustment.

Respectful Parenting Is Not Permissive Parenting^[xiv]

These parents might worry that their child’s spirit will be crushed or she’ll stop loving or trusting them if there is a conflict of will. They coax or distract their child into the behavior they want (or out of the behavior they don’t want) rather than risk being the mean guy who says “no”.

“Basically, most parents are afraid of disciplining their children because they are afraid of the power struggle. They are afraid of overpowering the child, afraid they will destroy the child’s free will and personality. This is an erroneous attitude. “         –Magda Gerber

Permissive Parenting Is Non-Intervention Because of Fear!^[xv]

1. The parent’s own fear of not being loved!
2. The parent’s own existential fear of being restricted and losing freedom
3. The parent’s own fear of losing inner stability and peace of mind!

Humankind: a hopeful history   Rutger Bregman makes a strong argument for unrestrained play, room for freedom and creativity. “[K]ids can be trusted with an abundance of freedom”.… The question is not: can our kids handle the freedom? The question is: do we have the courage to give it to them?”^[xvi]

Hunt, Gather, Parent: what ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy, helpful little humans^[xvii]

…our culture often has things backward when it comes to kids: We interfere too much. We don’t have enough confidence in our children. We don’t trust their innate ability to know what they need to grow.  And in many instances, we don’t speak their language.

  In particular, our culture focuses almost entirely on one aspect of the parent-child relationship. That’s control – how much control the parent exerts over the child, and how much control the child tries to exert over the parent. The most common parenting “styles” all revolve around control. Helicopter parents exert maximal control. Free-range parents exert minimal. Our culture thinks either the adult is in control or the child is in control.

  There’s a major problem with this view of parenting. It sets us up for power struggles, with fights, screaming and tears. Nobody likes to be controlled. Both the children and parents rebel against it. So when we interact with our children in terms of control – whether it’s a parent controlling the child or vice versa – we establish an adversarial relationship.

Why parents shouldn’t always be ‘in sync’ with their children^[xviii] 

My colleagues and I carried out research which showed that brain-to-brain synchrony between parent and child can be helpful for children’s attachment, and tends to rise when a parent and child play, talk or solve problems together. Recently, however, we started wondering whether more synchrony is always better…. Our recent study, published in Developmental Science, suggests it can sometimes be a sign of relationship difficulties….

… For example, research revealed that for about 50-70% of the time, parents and children are not “in sync”. During these times, they may be doing separate activities, such as a child exploring something on their own or a parent working. They rather engage in a constant “social dance” comprising being attuned to each other, failing to do so and repairing this disconnect….

And it’s this flow of connection, disconnection and reconnection that offers children an ideal mixture of parental support and moderate, useful stress that helps growing children’s social brains….

… [P]arents and children constantly being tuned in to each other…. can increase stress on the relationship and raise the risk for insecure child attachment….

In our new study, we actually observed that mothers who had an insecure, anxious or avoidant attachment type showed more neural synchrony with their children….

Great Myths of Child Development^[xix]

Myth #48 – Rewards usually decrease the desirable behavior they’re intended to increase

…[W]hile decreases in desirable behavior can occur following rewards, rewards quite often are followed by sustained increases in desirable behavior. This increase is quite frequently maintained once the reward is faded out.

Myth #49   Praise undermines children’s ability to be successful

…Critics of praise often point to laboratory research showing that after children experience a failure, they respond differently to different types of praise…. Even the praise critics encourage the use of some praise; they just call it “encouragement” instead of “praise.” 

Myth #50 Parents were not permissive when I was a kid

…people like to complain about the new-fangled problem of permissive parenting. Nevertheless, there have always been parents with high degrees of permissiveness, and there probably always will be. Indeed, there will also always be someone there to complain about them. 

In chapter 4 of Scientific Parenting: what science reveals about parental influence, Dr. Nicole Letourneau with Justin Joschko look at studies of mice and the impact of both their genes and their environment in terms of how they came to deal with the worlds they found themselves in. When itty bitty mice born to “scaredy-mouse” mothers were then fostered by “tougher” mother mice, they showed a resilience not expressed by their bio-mothers.^[xx]

Might tuck in here a reminder of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1798) and his theory of child raising that supported allowing children to be free and unfettered to learn from experience naturally, unrestrained by adult direction and books.

In How to raise an adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success, ^[xxi] Julie Lythcott-Haims  offers an observation to parents from Stacy Budin, a psychiatrist: “You can’t have a healthy family life if you’re so focused on the kids that you lose connection with each other”.

Lythcott-Haim also offers this:

Kids- – particularly adolescent boys – often make poor choices as a normal part of development as humans; they’ve got an impulse to do the bad or crazy things but their prefrontal cortex is still developing, which means they can’t yet appreciate the danger involved and so can’t use what we would call “good judgement”…. Enforcing consequence for our own kids is essential.

Fish don’t climb trees: a whole new look at dyslexia^[xxii]

… if a child wants to have a goldfish, and the parents are adamant that it will be the child’s sole responsibility, the child has to be willing and able to buy the fish food, feed the fish and clean the tank. That part is usually easy to establish. The parents now have to make peace with the idea of watching the fish tank getting greener and greener, and the fish dying in its watery dungeon, because the minute they give in and decide to change the state of the hungry fish, into a fed fish, they have assumed control. This means that there is now joint responsibility for the goldfish, and their offspring will not take the sole responsibility back.

Others’ parenting experiences, speaking to at least some aspects of the Permissive Parenting Style.

How to raise an adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success^[xxiii]

… [W]hen it came to raising their two children, they couldn’t have been less like-minded about how to help their kids “make it”. Don’s wife wanted to help their kids as much as possible, which to her meant letting the kids enjoy their free time instead of doing chores, and hovering over them to ensure their homework was done.  Don saw both of these seemingly helpful things as quite the opposite. “I’ve looked back at my life and I believe one hundred percent that the responsibilities I had taught me how to be self-sufficient, and that sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do but you suck it up and do it anyway, and that’s what teaches you humility, work ethic, responsibility, and follow-through.

“My ex felt like she always had to observe our son and daughter, tell them what to do, and remind them of this or that. And when they didn’t do the things she was constantly reminding them to do, she’d get frustrated and keep telling the kids, ‘You need to start your homework’ – nothing would happen- ‘You really need to start your homework’ – nothing would happen. These repetitive reminders and requests went in one ear and out the other. And there were no consequences”. …. “My child should be accountable for their work…. At work we call it micromanaging versus empowerment”.

Mom Who Tried To Gentle Parent Her 5-Year-Old Daughter Says She Raised A ‘Little Monster’ — ‘Everything Is A Fight’^[xxiv]

One mother … was struggling with this internal battle with her 5-year-old daughter. Originally, she’d casually tried the “gentle parenting” technique, but quickly realized her daughter was growing into a “little monster.”

…Not only does her daughter expect her parents to do everything for her, but the mom admitted that parenting has been a constant battle. 

…“I don’t expect her to magically be able to do everything,” she clarified, “just some small things like eat independently or put her own shoes on.”

…“We’ve had something similar recently with our little guy,” one mom added under the post. “You have to call their bluff — their power in the situation comes from the fact that they think/know that you will ultimately dress them because you wouldn’t send them to daycare/school like that.”

Detachment: an adoption memoir ^[xxv]

“These kids seemed more like wild dogs who needed me to establish dominance over the pack, not exactly my strong suit”….

One of Mierau’s sons saw someone on a bus with a mohawk haircut and wanted it.  Mierau edged past the request by temporizing that they might talk to mom about getting one. Later Mierau said, “I was scared that Bohdan would actually remember this conversation….” 

When his kids wouldn’t go to sleep one evening while they were on a visit to his parents, Mierau “spent half an hour threatening, negotiating, cajoling them. In the end I said fine, do what you want, and fell onto my bed for a few hours of exhausted sleep”.

“’Peter, you have to go down the hill right now. Or else.” I had no idea what or else meant, …”

The Girl Behind the Door: a father’s guest to understand his daughter’s suicide ^[xxvi]

As time went on, parenting Casey often felt like breaking a wild stallion. They instinctively protect their space and dominate their handlers. Sometimes they have limited patience, lash out and bite. Only the most experienced handlers can train them. There is no single method of training that works, because every stallion is different.  In each case, handlers have to project confidence and speak with authority to gain the stallion’s respect…. I wish I’d had a gift for understanding my own daughter. As infuriating as her behavior was we had no reference point to determine if this was normal, because we had no other children. Instead we’d allowed our child to manipulate us into giving her whatever she wanted in order to avert her tears. It had to be us. We were incompetent parents.   

A perspective on Permissive Parenting specific to adoption:

What must also be considered is the impact of adoption on a child who struggles with self-regulation or has learned a regulation that may not work in the world he or she is in.  Or is simply in the emotional upheaval of a new world, one that doesn’t usually deal with the emotional immaturity or lack of confidence or whatever the adoptee’s emotional, mental, etc. state is in face of the expectations of something like piano lessons.    Yasik may have tinkered with a piano because he loved to listen to music and perhaps it had a calming effect but regular practice may have been a whole other, decidedly less calming aspect of music for him.   What was the fight he was having with piano that we believing we had been given a young Mozart into our care did not understand?

Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents ^[xxvii]

Parents whose own parents were too rigid tend to see roles as either being rigid or unstructured. They like to choose the unstructured, since it feels loving. Of course, lack of structure does not bring out the best in children. It is a harmful parenting style for children who need a lot of structure to succeed. Almost without exception, children who are described in this book need high nurture along with high structure. If they want to assure themselves that they are parenting in a kind way, not a rigid way, parents can look hard at the nurturing they are doing along with their structure.

The Adoptive Parents’ Handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster or adopted child^[xxviii]

I’m sitting in my office, doing an intake for what looks like a very nice couple who are coming in because they are very concerned about their five-year-old adopted son. I listen to the facts that are sadly so familiar to me – two years of trauma with his bio-mom before his removal, a few different foster homes, and then adoption by this family who earnestly wants the best for him. But then they say the “M” word and I find myself nearly flinching.

“Everything he does is just trying to get attention,” the mom insisted. “He’s trying to manipulate me.”

…The truth is that children aren’t capable of manipulation until adolescence, because to be able to manipulate, you need a more developed prefrontal cortex…. [According to the dictionary] in order for one person to manipulate another, an action has to done to control another with clear purpose by unfair or artful means.

Most children that have been traumatized just don’t have the developmental maturity to be able to do this. Even typical children can’t do this until at least early adolescence (around nine or ten), and generally speaking, children with trauma tend to have developmental delays in the areas of emotional and social maturity.

So, if it’s not manipulation, what is it when a child does things to get certain reactions, leaving us feeling manipulated? These actions are survival strategies for the child; strategies that they’ve had to learn to survive very difficult circumstances.  And when we as adults see these strategies, we often interpret them through our lens and ascribe adult meanings and motivations to the behavior….

One of the keys [to handling the behavior better] can be looking at it from the child’s perspective, and asking what need they’re trying to meet with the behavior.

And then there is this:

At the point of entry into the teen years, Yasik was almost as tall as I was. The 40” x 40 lbs. long gone. He was finding his way into manhood, hair as long as he could get it to grow and flipped outward in the front but wavy in the back. His acne was under control and he was smoothly tanned. He wore T shirts, boarder pants which looked to me like retro-fitted old men’s golfing pants. He had biked into town and bought them himself at a friend’s mother’s store, 2 pairs too big for him I thought, but his pants, his choice.

Footnotes

[i] https://www.childproofparenting.com/blog/threats-bribes  Threats & Bribes: Two Sides of The Same Coin

[ii] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/child-psychologist-explains-4-types-of-parenting-and-how-to-tell-which-is-right-for-you.html  A psychologist shares the 4 styles of parenting—and the type that researchers say is the most successful

[iii] Lythcott-Haims, Julie. How to Raise an Adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success.  Henry Holt & Company, 2015, 99-100.

[iv] David-Weill, Cecile. Parents Under the Influence.  Penguin Random House, 2019, 9,10.

[v] Brooks, John. The Girl Behind the Door: a father’s quest to understand his daughter’s suicide. Scribner, 2016, 64.

[vi] Anderson, Amy, “Counting on Cousins” from Rebecca Walker, ed. One Big Happy Family.  Penguin Group, 2009, 63.

[vii] https://www.knoxvillecounselingservices.com/courtneys-blog/2018/10/25/al6ou5mqr2oip3tobptcw8bgg65tux  https://raisedgood.com/toddlers-meltdowns-brain-development-ditch-traditional-discipline/

[viii] https://jessup.edu/blog/academic-success/the-psychology-behind-different-types-of-parenting-styles/

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a26987389/types-of-parenting-styles/

https://themindsjournal.com/4-common-parenting-styles/

https://openpress.usask.ca/lifespandevelopment/chapter/parenting-styles/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK568743/

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/child-psychologist-explains-4-types-of-parenting-and-how-to-tell-which-is-right-for-you.html

https://www.psychologs.com/7-types-of-parenting-styles-you-might-wanna-steer-clear-from/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/basics/parenting/parenting-styles

https://parentingscience.com/permissive-parenting/

https://www.parentingforbrain.com/4-baumrind-parenting-styles/

https://www.positive-parenting-ally.com/permissive-parenting-style.html

[ix] Gray, Deborah, D. Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2002, 97.

[x] Bernstein, Jeffrey Ph.D.       https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/liking-the-child-you-love/202303/when-is-a-childs-reward-actually-a-bribe  Posted March 22, 2023 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

[xi] https://www.parentingforbrain.com/manipulative-parents/

[xii] Dewar, Gwen, Ph.D. https://parentingscience.com/permissive-parenting/   © 2010 – 2022

[xiii] https://jessup.edu/blog/academic-success/the-psychology-behind-different-types-of-parenting-styles/

[xiv]https://www.janetlansbury.com/2012/09/respectful-parenting-is-not-permissive-parenting/

[xv] https://www.positive-parenting-ally.com/permissive-parenting-style.html

[xvi] Bregman, Rutger. Humankind: a hopeful history.   Bloomsbury, 2020, 286 – 295.

[xvii] Doucleff, Michaeleen, Ph.D. Hunt, Gather, Parent: what ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy, helpful little humans.  Avid Reader Press, 2022, P9.

[xviii] Vrticka, Pascal.  https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240524-why-neural-synchrony-between-parents-and-children-isnt-always-ideal   

[xix]  Hupp, Stephen and Jeremy Jewell Great Myths of Child Development. Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.

[xx] Letourneau, Dr. Nicole with Justin Joschko   Scientific Parenting: what science reveals about parental influence. Dundern Press, 2013, 62-76.

[xxi] Lythcott-Haims, Julie.  How to raise an adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success  Henry Holt & Company, 2015,  121, 64-65.

[xxii]  Blyth Hall, Sue.  Fish don’t climb trees: a whole new look at dyslexia. Friesen Press, 2020, 196.

[xxiii] Lythcott-Haims, Julie.  How to raise an adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success.   Henry Holt & Company, 2015, 122-123.

[xxiv]  Slabbekoorn, Zayda. https://www.yourtango.com/self/therapist-explains-why-good-kids-spend-whole-adult-lives-recovering    Written on Jul 27, 2024

[xxv]Mierau, Maurice.  Detachment: an adoption memoir.  Freehand Books, 2014, 101,145,153.

[xxvi]Brooks, John. The Girl Behind the Door: a father’s quest to understand his daughter’s suicide. Scribner, 2016, 62-63.

[xxvii] Gray, Deborah, D. Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents.Jessica Kingsey Publishers, 2002, 97.

[xxviii]  Tantrum, Barbara Cumins.   The Adoptive Parents’ Handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster or adopted child. North Atlantic Books, 2020, 104-105.

Post #13B Neglectful/Uninvolved Parenting Style

This parenting style, it seems to me, is the most difficult to consider.  Some of the definitions online assess the benefits and drawbacks for the parenting styles.  For this one, Uninvolved/Neglectful they state quite baldly, there are no benefits.

Approaching motherhood, my journal tells me, “I felt I was up to mommying”.  And if ‘mommying/daddying’ for someone working and someone taking a full university class load and working part-time, would, as a friend noted, allow us to avoid the diaper stage, so much the better. Would any traces of Uninvolved/Neglectful parenting show up in our parenting?

Riding the sky train to work in ’96, a year before our adoption, I saw a poster without the Uncle Sam pointing finger but catching my notice nonetheless. I don’t remember what was being advertised, but its focus was ‘the new priority’ – job, family, you. Now I truly wonder what organization would want that as a sales pitch, unless it was a bid for irony. And good on me.  As I read it, I thought if job did take priority during the week I would try very hard to keep weekends free.

So let me state straight up at the start of this post: only once (as I have said in earlier posts) did we leave him at school day care. Kudos to us.

Then where do the following journal entries fit in?

At the end of our very short parental leave I started back to work, teaching a 5:00 pm class on the first day of the new semester. Dave was taking advantage of some studio time after one of his classes. Lucky for us, still new perhaps to juggling schedules, my mother and sister happened to be visiting or maybe I had reeled them in as they lived only an hour away. Yasik had spent about 2 or 3 hours with my family up to that evening.  I was pretty sure he knew they were gift bearers and friendly, and I knew he would be more than safe and cared for by them. But I had no idea what might be roiling in this little heart that had now known 3 weeks of belonging against 4 and half years of insecurity.  I made sure he had strapped himself into the bumper seat in the back, my sister and mom took the front seats, I slipped in beside Yasik and we drove off to Vancouver. 5:00 p.m. is full -on rush hour and my school is situated on a tightly organized street. There was only a moment to double park, pop a quick kiss and jump out. My heart holds the memory I caught as I turned to wave good-bye to this little boy alone now in the back, watching me wave and turn away.  I remember his confused face, I remember him turning to my sister, I guess hoping for the best. Both she and my mother quickly offered reassurances as they turned back into the street. Of course it was all Ok. He was taken back to our home; my husband picked me up after class and by the end of the evening we were all ‘happy families’ again ( the positive, not the negative connotation).

And so began the daily battle of what we often refer to as modern day parenting: parenting demands pitted against work expectations.   Read across the decades; such battles are endlessly recorded. And the underlying motives for such battles? Many hope sincerely to be up to the challenge of holding two dreams at the same time: work and family.   I became an Adult Ed. teacher because cut and paste and kiddie stories were not my thing. Adult level classes interest me but Adult Ed. schools are not found on every corner nor do they always offer classes that run parallel to kindergarten hours.  My husband had secured a long hoped for dream of attending art school. We believed we could juggle effectively.

Yasik’s first day of kindergarten: here it is verbatim from my journal to maintain the attitude emanating from my record.

Sept’97, Thursday, I bathed, fed him and took him to kinder where he stayed outside the door for 45 minutes and I sat inside – bored with the woman’s cutsie voice and inane activities – weather and silly questions – but she speaks Russian, knows what she is doing and handles them all well – so I sat it out and then got him and walked in the hall and edged him in and he knew where he was going – so we looked at the rabbit, he resisted a bit where he could but a helper sucked him in with a book and then slide projector and computer and he was in and sat with me on the rug and again resisted but I held him to it and we made it thru a long 2 ½ hours – I know how long it was because I watched the clock desperate to get out.

By noting that I bathed and fed him I guess I am recording that I had done my duty. But what was with leaving him outside in the hall while I sat in the classroom?  Was that the teacher’s suggestion? Was that my contest with him?

The teacher’s voice really was remarkably little kid like.  But obviously, my mood was bare minimum motherly.  When I either got fed up or kicked into mother mode, I went out into the hall with him and drew him along to the classroom, luring him in with a chance to pet a rabbit kept in a cage in the classroom.  God bless the teacher’s aide who seems to have taken it from there, dangling technology and books before him. I was less generous, holding him to keep him from escaping. This kid had only a few words of English, was prematurely peer-oriented without knowing what he was dealing with among this new set of peers, and still uncertain if his parents really were people he could count on.  Every fiber of his little body must have been desperate to get out of there. And I was hrumphing about having to be there for 2 and half hours of kiddy stuff.

The last weekend of October, ’97, just before Yasik’s fifth birthday and our first with him, we took him for his first visit to my parents’ home on Vancouver Island.  This would also be his first Hallowe’en adventure.  It did not disappoint any of us. At first the thrill for Yasik was getting to run up and ring the doorbell. And then the wonders of freely dipping into a bowl for a handful of candy.  And for us the wonders of watching the wonders that were his.  We put him to bed in my parent’s large bedroom, up and away from the rest of the house, still in that glow, but sticking to our parental responsibility and planning on some adult time with family downstairs. While we were laughing and talking together, my sister, who is more attuned to young children, slipped up to check on Yasik. She found this little mite, swallowed up by the bed, and staring wide-eyed into the darkness.  She slipped in beside him and whispered with him until he fell asleep.  Again, the memory stays with me.

On Saturday afternoon, November ’97, my day off and after my marking was finished for the week, I took Yasik shopping at the nearby mall, just after his 5^th birthday. He was now our child for 3 months.

I took him to the mall to get long pants for the cooler weather. Soon he was pleading to go home. Dave would have been pleading too by this point, but he had already learned to avoid following me around a mall.

“Momma, Yasik go home. Momma Yasik GO home”. (Well, it would have been something like that.)

“Just wait, please Yasik. I’m just checking this one more store”. Trying to accommodate, I ran ahead of him to a shop lured by a rack of clothing on sale. I have never been certain that for a moment, with all those clothes crowding my vision, I didn’t forget about him.  I seemed to have assumed that he was right behind me and could see where I was headed, he of 40 inches tall, barely reaching the mid-point on the rack.  But, of course, unused to malls, limited in English, he missed my side-step around the rack.

I clicked back into parenting within what seemed to me mere moments, though the journal says somewhere between 2 and a whole 7 minutes or more, and stuck my head around the rack to check on him. He was not there.

As it was created to do, the urban myth about the child kidnapped in a mall, went all breaking news in my brain. I started scanning in every direction and frantically checkout the nearby shops and then called out to a security guard walking past. And he did his job, trying to calm me, calling for other guards to watch and striding off to look. I heard Yasik crying before I saw him. There he was holding a guard rail in front of The Bay on the opposite end of that level of the mall. His face was stricken. He was standing there with big tears, and once seen, made no further sound.  I gathered him to me, and held on for dear life. I thanked the relieved guard and led Yasik to the closest clothing store, to a change stall. There I pulled him into my lap and we cried, sitting on that change bench until he quieted. And then we got out of that mall as fast as our shaky legs could go.

It can happen just as they say, so fast.

And I wonder why I think I might be an imposter mom?

It is possible to think that Dr. Gordon Neufeld, had he watched this scene, would have understood Yasik’s frightened cries to have exposed his deep understanding of abandonment.  In a class lecture Neufeld made the point: “There is no experience that has more impact upon us as humans than that of facing separation”.[i]  

A long-time colleague and friend came to visit during those early days of parenting. Like my sister, she was someone far more naturally attuned to parenting than I and had always loved being with little ones.  One afternoon during her visit, she and I, with Yasik in tow, picked up my sister-in-law and her two kids for a mid-morning swim at a community pool which offered a kiddies’ pool and an adult pool.  We had been told that Yasik was not a stranger to swimming as the orphanage took the kids to a community pool in Yaroslavl.

I, who loves to swim, and my sister-in-law, not a fan of swimming, got ourselves and the kids into swimming gear. My friend, not having packed a bathing suit, relegated herself to the poolside.

My niece and nephew were already quite accustomed to pools and happily followed their mother into the children’s pool. I walked with Yasik over to the same pool.  I was not aware of any agitation emanating from him.  I stepped into the pool near where his cousins were already splashing and laughing. And once again, just as with the way he would not try out the swings and teeter-totters at the playground until we went sliding with him, and with his resistance at kindergarten until we enticed him with the rabbit, Yasik would not come into my arms to get a lift into the pool.  I tried to persuade him several times with a voice moving from “Come sweetie” calm to one attempting to hold down rising tension. My sister-in-law, my nephew and niece, my friend and likely others in the pool were within hearing. Yasik stood above me mute but definitely not planning to be persuaded into the pool. Sensing the awkwardness, my friend came to the pool’s edge, put her arms around Yasik and led him back to her chair, saying (need I say, with a calming tone), “He can sit with me for a while”.

I turned to my sister-in-law.  She and the kids seemed happy doing their own thing. I climbed out of the kiddies’ pool and went over to the adult pool for a nice long swim.  It is the feeling of shame that remains.

Recently I asked this friend if she had memories of her visit and the swim outing. Very much to her surprise she did find that she had made a journal note after the visit:

It is so much rush, rush in their lives. Little Yasik is a dear. It is almost overwhelming all he faces. We went swimming this a.m. – he was afraid to…. He is so totally dependent on adults & his new parents. They’re ‘elderly’ to be taking him on. I do hope it works out.[ii]

Epilogue: the following summer, Yasik readily worked through all the children’s levels for swimming down at the park.

Some of these examples of times of neglectful parenting can be chalked up to being new parents, still learning the new reality, but the following examples cover times when lack of experience doesn’t hold water as well.

For me, the weakest link in my parenting was the many times we let our son have overnights with school mates before our first year with him was even up.  He was at the age for which it is common. It solved babysitting strains for several families.  Yasik was well-attuned to playing with other little kids having spent most of his time until he became ours with many little playmates.  And as I have repeatedly reminded readers in our defense, we did put him in the school-run daycare ONLY one afternoon. However, those rationalization were long ago countered for me by a story I thought might have been in my nearly worn-out copy of Deborah D. Gary’s widely respected, Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents, but I can’t find it there (update: just found it on page 62). This story I have for so long worried over is about a couple who did not allow any allo-parenting for the first two years with their children in order to secure the children’s attachment to themselves.  They did not allow their children to have sleep overs or be babysat by others. The children went everywhere with them and were cared for solely by themselves, wanting to ensure that the children were well-attached to themselves and could understand, after previous experiences of insecure relationships, what the meaning of family now was.

Dave and I were not yet deeply aware how weak his bonds of attachment to us were.  We were parents about whom Dr. Bruce Perry would say: “… the limited experience many people have with young children before they have their own still puts far too many parents and their children at risk”.[iii]

Yet, I think your average parenting book will encourage allo-parenting, the ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ concept.  Hunt, Gather, Parent: what ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy, helpful little humans. (Avid Reader Press, 2021),  by Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD. shows its value in many cultures. But most of these books will be looking at children whose attachments are being secured from day one. For these children the option of living in a society where allo-parenting is encouraged is almost certainly ideal.

For children whose early years have offered little in secure attachment perhaps nuclear attachments are essential before taking the child into a wider social circle, a developmental stage our son was chronologically expected to be ready for.  Yet we can assume Yasik had cycled through a large variety of care-givers before becoming part of our lives and family.  It is reasonable to suggest his attachment had become prematurely peer-oriented. His understanding of family unclear.  As many articles in Orphanage Risk Factors point out, a big problem for orphans is the constant change of caregivers on shift work offering inconsistent care-giving leading to an insecure attachment experience for children.

Here though I insert the opposing view of Peter Lovenheim. In The Attachment Effect: exploring the powerful ways our earliest bond shapes our relationships and lives (A TarchgerPerigee Book, 2018, 71-73), Lovenheim counters some of John Bowlby’s strong emphasis on the caregiver, for as social beings we are not necessarily damaged by receiving care from more than one caregiver in order to establish a secure sense of attachment.

Our week days were well packed with school and work and the commutes tying it all together. As we saw it, that meant lots of left over demands for the weekends. If the neighbour wanted Yasik to have a sleep over at her house to free her from the demands of keeping her son entertained and if Yasik was eager to play with his friend, allowing Dave time for to complete assignments and for me to get 27 essays marked, this was a win-win all the way around.

“‘When you are in a jam, it’s hard to remember that you are in a relationship with a person, not just trying to get someone out the door in ten minutes. Problem is, we have our own agendas and sometime we see the kid as an impediment’”. [iv]

Bouncing back from Peter Lovenheim, I, still uncertain whether or not to shake off my sense of guilt about jumping too quickly into allo-parenting,  return to the arguments of Gordon Neufeld, PhD. and Gabor Mate, M.D in their book Hold On To Your Kids: why parents need to matter more peers. They begin the book’s argument for securing parent-child attachment before allowing the child free-range with peers by drawing parents in with “…in the short term, peer orientation appears to be a godsend”. And as a salve to any worries, Dr. Neufeld acknowledges that “At first glance peer-oriented children appear to be more independent, less clingy, more schoolable, more sociable and sophisticated”. But then Neufeld and Mate give the reader 264 pages to say, “WRONG! IT IS NOT A GODSEND!”.[v]   Yasik was simply not yet secure enough in his attachment to us. Sleep-overs in the first years as a family were not a win-win for us.

It also cost us precious memories like being the ones who took him to the PNE for the first time. I marked papers, Dave completed university assignments and Yasik went to the PNE with the buddy and his parents.

Later I recognized that I shouldn’t have added a new course to my schedule, one that required extra hours to pull together in Yasik’s first year with us.  We also had a new debt load as we began to pay off the costs of adoption.  But did we think carefully enough, were we even aware of what trade-offs we were going to have to deal with? About all the awareness I can find in the journal was ‘we are all just caught in a big pressure pool and we’ve got to help each other.’

Dave’s contribution when I read the definitions to him: “I was triggered by Yasik and you and the dog to be involved but at times would have rather indulged in my own interests and engagements”. That is Dave, easily guilted into taking care of others’ needs, even when he wants to do his own thing.

Yasik’s input when I read the definitions to him: “I think you know the answer to that. Yes, there were times when I was left to fend for myself”. (though he was mainly referring to times later than this period). “Look where it led me”.

Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to underline the following characteristics you identify in the narrative.

Δ   Cold/Low Responsiveness/Emotionally Absent/Unsupportive/Unconcerned: Parents are neglectful even when they might provide food, shelter and basic amenities for their children. They show lack of warmth, connectivity and care, interest or attention or affection towards their children, not interacting with their children much at all.

Δ   Low demandingness/ Disconnected/ Undemanding/ Indifferent/ Disengaged/ Detached/ Uninvolved/ Overwhelmed with other things: Children are often left to fend for themselves, even taking on a limited parenting role. These parents offer little nurturance, guidance and attention to the child’s social-emotional and behavioural needs, have limited engagement with their children, don’t converse or interact with their children much, don’t attend their children’s activities or events and don’t strive for any kind of emotional connection but do not discipline them either, and rarely implement rules or structure.

Sites referred to for the definitions:

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a26987389/types-of-parenting-styles/

https://www.parentingforbrain.com/4-baumrind-parenting-styles/

https://themindsjournal.com/4-common-parenting-styles/

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/child-psychologist-explains-4-types-of-parenting-and-how-to-tell-which-is-right-for-you.html    A psychologist shares the 4 styles of parenting—and the type that researchers say is the most successful

https://jessup.edu/blog/academic-success/the-psychology-behind-different-types-of-parenting-styles/https://jessup.edu/blog/academic-success/the-psychology-behind-different-types-of-parenting-styles/

https://openpress.usask.ca/lifespandevelopment/chapter/parenting-styles/

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-uninvolved-parenting-2794958

What do my collection of the experts say?

Born for Love: why empathy is essential – and endangered.  This book has several stories of child neglect rising out of parents’ lack of care due to ignorance or struggles, as well as, stories of abuse even when parents thought they were doing the best they could for their children. The family story in Chapter Six has all the accoutrements of the good life. The child is well provided for,

Ryan didn’t spend his early life in a neglectful orphanage like Eugenia.[vi]He wasn’t raised by a family of con artists like Danny.[vii]He wasn’t beaten or staved or witness to domestic violence or wartime trauma. He grew up in a stable two-parent home.[viii]

Yet in terms of consistency of care, Ryan’s early care was as unstable as the shift workers’ changes in an orphanage. “Ryan’s parents had never been educated about the social needs of infants”.[ix]  When infant Ryan became attached to a caregiver, the caregiver was replaced because his mother would become concerned that Ryan seemed more attached to the caregiver than to her. “This made no sense to [the mother]. She couldn’t understand what was wrong and why her own baby didn’t seem to like her”. So she fired them, eighteen caregivers, before Ryan entered preschool.[x]  By the time Ryan was 3 he had begun to shut down his emotions. When he was 17, he could not understand why raping a developmentally-disabled girl was problematic.[xi]

Scientific Parenting: what science reveals about parental influence looks at a study examining causes for problematic behaviour or negative emotional responses in children. The researchers used the Maternal Sensitivity Scale which measures “a mother’s awareness of her child’s signals of needs or wants, her accurate interpretation of those signals, the appropriateness of her response, and how promptly she responded”, either with high or low sensitivity to their child’s needs.  The chapter inserts a defense of mothers who showed low sensitivity:

Keep in mind that the women in the low-sensitivity group were not necessarily bad mothers. The study did not recruit parents accused of child abuse or neglect, nor did it focus on families from groups generally considered to be high-risk (impoverished, uneducated, suffering from alcoholism or drug addiction, prone to violence, etc.) Low -sensitivity mothers didn’t leave their children home alone for hours on end to go party, or drink themselves sick, or bully their children with taunts or smacks or insults.  Some of them were absent-minded. Many of them were overworked and exhausted and didn’t have the energy or patience required to meet their children’s every immediate need, but loved their children all the same and wanted nothing but the best for them.  The vast majority were probably doing their best, and would be horrified at the thought that their actions might be hurting their children. And yet, their children were over twice as likely to display aggressive or violent behaviour as those of high-sensitivity mothers …. It shows that in parenting the little things matter just as much as the big ones.[xii]

On P. 175 Scientific Parenting:what science reveals about parental influence also says:

Certainly, neglectful parenting has an adverse effect on children’s development. Our neural gardens need more than fresh soil to truly flourish. They need pruning and weeding and watering.  An untended garden may grow thick and green if the sun is shining and rain comes often enough, but it will be a wild, chaotic patch of earth, fruitful perhaps, but also cluttered and choked with weeds. The same goes with young minds…. Infants need more than food and warmth and safety; they need stimulation and interaction and play, and the more of it they get, the better they’ll be at thinking and reasoning and, above all, feeling.

Great Myths of Child Development, Myth #42: daycare damages the attachment between children and parents: the writers question Spock, Bowlby, Ainsworth and Schlessinger’s dire warning of leaving a child to the insecure attachments that may result for daycare exposure.  The concerns their views generated remain in the wanting-to-do-it-ALL-right parental psyche, even as these parents see no option but to enter the work force or have the desire for a career, as well as, parent.  These writers quite strongly dispute the dangers of daycare,

“The preponderance of research says that [daycare] does not [damage children]”. It may even be beneficial in parent child interactions, giving parents greater income, lessening their stresses and helping to make children more school ready. These kids may get more illness, ergo, they will develop a greater immunity to illness….

Yasik certainly came packaged in immunity to illness.  (What I am also saying /suggesting? That orphanage life may have had some real pluses for Yasik?  Yes, of course, it did; the difference is that in a day-care setting, the child is home developing a secure attachment to the parents to balance the time away from the parents.   Yasik didn’t get to go home at night to that other element in the need for secure attachment, his own parents.)

Myth #42 goes on to say

The argument seems to be that “if a mother is not with her child almost all day, then she can’t really be a loving parent. Although it’s true that a daycare worker won’t love and care for a child just like a parent will, sending a child to a daycare doesn’t mean the parent stops loving or caring for their child. The same point could be made about fathers, but the anti-daycare crowd rarely seems to argue that fathers should stay home.” So to all those anxious parents in the world, we say don’t fret. Human babies are not geese, and they won’t “imprint” on a daycare worker instead of you.[xiii]

Perhaps because our faith in the traditional family is deeply embedded, studies have been called for to examine the question of the outcomes for children raised by working mothers versus stay-at-home mothers. The findings: “evidence suggests that children of working moms grow up to be just as happy as children of stay-at-home moms. In fact, having a working mom comes with potential benefits for adult children”.[xiv]

And that observation about the focus on mothers, ignoring the role and responsibilities of fathers:

One of the hugely overlooked truths of parenting is that parenting involves both parents and their equal contributions make up for a suitable condition that ensures an overall general development of the child. It’s a myth that the mother has a bigger role to play in raising a child. Absence of a father can have drastic effects on the emotional, social and economic well-being of the child. Therefore, both of their involvement is crucial.[xv]

And Dr Perry’s question in The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog – Can a child raised in serious abuse have capacity for further development, could his neural system be shaped by patterned, repetitive experience in a safe and predictable environment?[xvi]

[Neglected] children need patterned, repetitive experiences appropriate to their developmental needs, needs that reflect the age at which they’d missed important stimuli or had been traumatized, not their current chronological age…. A foundational principle of brain development is that neural systems organize and become functional in a sequential manner…. If one system doesn’t get what it needs when it needs it, those that rely upon it many not function well either, even if the stimuli that the later developing system needs are being provided appropriately. The key to healthy development is getting the right experiences in the right amounts at the right time.[xvii]

And the needs-to-be-restated preliminary to that is the need for parents to be better informed of the needs of the children they set out to raise. “… the limited experience many people have with young children before they have their own still puts far too many parents and their children at risk”.[xviii]Later in The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog, Dr. Perry makes the point several times that such development comes with therapy in a caring environment, perhaps a given.

The stories of survivors of Uninvolved/Neglectful parenting range from abuse to resilience. These children can struggle with a sense of low-self-esteem, abandonment, depression, forming close relationships, hostility, delinquency, substance abuse and a weak sense of empathy.[xix]

People who grew up with very little affection tend to develop these 10 traits later in life (according to psychology) 

Remember, these trends don’t apply to everyone, but they do provide insight into some of the ways our upbringing can influence our adult behaviors….

1) Emotional Self-Sufficiency

Those who grew up with little affection often build walls around themselves. They develop a sense of emotional self-sufficiency, an ability to navigate through life relying primarily on their own emotional strength.…Their childhood experiences often leave them feeling that they cannot depend on others for emotional support, leading them to rely heavily on themselves.  Remember, this doesn’t mean these individuals are incapable of forming emotional bonds. It just means they’ve learnt to rely on themselves first and foremost.

2) Difficulty Trusting Others

Trust is a tricky thing, isn’t it? Especially for those who grew up with very little affection.

3) Craving for Affection

Here’s something raw and honest: people who grew up with very little affection often nurse a deep, unspoken craving for it in their adult lives….This longing often manifests in different forms – some might seek validation consistently, others might strive to excel in everything they do, hoping to earn the approval and affection they crave.

4) Strong Independence

This strong sense of independence can be empowering, but it can also make it challenging to accept help from others. It’s as if accepting help or support is a sign of weakness, a betrayal of the self-reliance we’ve cultivated over the years…. Being independent doesn’t mean you have to do everything alone.

5) Unusual Empathy

Here’s something you might not expect: those who grew up with little affection often develop a heightened sense of empathy…. Having experienced emotional scarcity in their own lives, they tend to be more attuned to the emotional needs of others. They can pick up on subtle cues, feel the pain of others, and offer compassion because they know what it’s like to feel emotionally neglected.[xx]

What is Distracted Parenting?

Cell phones, tablets, and computers are everywhere.  Almost 70% of Canadian adults own a smartphone.

However, the use of hand-held devices can get in the way of the day-to-day interactions parents have with their children. At times, many adults may turn to their phones when they feel down or they may become consumed with waiting for a message or e-mail.  The distraction may get in the way of meeting children’s needs and may impact their healthy development.

Smartphone use may be behind a 10% increase in unintentional childhood injuries. The mere presence of a cell phone on the table makes those sitting around the table feel more disconnected. 

Parenting in the Digital Age:  The Importance of Secure Attachment Responsive, face-to-face parent-child interactions during early childhood is important in the development of a child’s language, cognitive, and self-regulation abilities. We are wired for human interaction. +[xxi]

A perspective on Uninvolved/Neglectful Parenting specific to adoption: It is hard to image an adoption life story that didn’t begin with some kind of abandonment, whether intentional or otherwise. Thus Betty Jean Lifton would say of adoptees:

They are self-negating. They may look secure but they suffer from feelings of shame, inner badness, and defectiveness. They fear homelessness, betrayal, disintegration, and going mad. But, most of all they fear abandonment.  The message adoptees give to friends and spouses is: “Do anything you want to me, but don’t abandon me”.[xxii]

Others’ parenting experiences, speaking to at least some aspects of the Negative Parenting Style.

For likely as long as the novelist has become aware of the working mother dilemma, novels have built the working mother trope with bits like in Scott Turow’s novel, The Laws of Our Fathers.   The protagonist is a busy judge starting a high-profile case whose young daughter does not want to go to school so the judge cajoles, threatens, manipulates and promises future impossible temptations.

Someday, I always promise, it will be as she asks…. But not, of course, today. Today there is duty…. I must go off to my other world…. telling myself I am not my mother, [who apparently left her alone when she went off to work] that I am somehow on the road to conquering what remains of her in me.[xxiii]

The End of Mom Guilt: why a mother’s ambition is good for her family For Lara Bazelon, the mother, the conflict between career and parenting seems more divisive than for the father but she believes “prioritizing your career- not all the time, but some of the time – models… for the children…independence and resilience.”[xxiv]

Teacher Says The New Wave Of Parents Are ‘Roommate Parenting’ — ‘I Can’t Believe The Decline In Quality, Involved Families’

One teacher argued parents are not invested in interactions and relationships anymore.

https://www.yourtango.com/self/teacher-says-new-wave-parents-are-roommate-parenting

A Quora question: Why isn’t love enough in parenting an adopted child?

I’ll tell you the story of my sister. She was 18 months old when she came to us. I was 4. Of course my parents didn’t share the situation that brought my sister to us with me. But one of my earliest memories is me asking my mom what is wrong with this baby. Even at 4 I could tell this baby was broken. Later I learned the gritty details. I don’t ever use the word hate. It’s a strong word reserved for specific things. I hate my sister’s bio family. They are evil people. They intentionally broke this innocent baby. They starved her in every way you can. No love. No food. No nothing. Their family dog treated my sister better than they did. They would sit my sister in a room by herself during dinner and would throw scraps to the dog. The dog took the scraps to my sister. That dog was a better mother to her than the humans in that house. In child development the first year is critical in developing a child’s trust and security. This is achieved through the love and care we give out infants. We feed them, hold them, bathe them, cuddle them when they are sad, we talk to them with sweet words and show them that no matter what we are there for them. My sister got none of that. Zero, zip, nada. She got neglect on every level. I do not know if they ever physically hurt her by hitting. But they broke her trust and capacity to understand love. She never recovered because they did it at the most critical time in her development. When she was helpless and completely dependent on those who were supposed to care. My parents and us kids love her deeply. And she cares for us, but she is incapable of trusting us to not hurt her. We never have. My parents changed the entire way they parented me and our older brother to accommodate her needs. We used to have a fairly strict snack and meal schedule. Suddenly we had free reign of a section of the pantry and was always stocked. They gave her extra time and attention that we didn’t get, we were never neglected and didn’t lack love and attention, but she did demand more. There were other changes, but I can’t remember them. Those were just the ones that impacted me the most. Love wasn’t enough to keep her with us. When she turned 18 she ran. She has gone no contact for years at a time. We often describe her as a person that lives in a made for TV movie, or after school special. She doesn’t live in reality. The problems she creates for herself are always someone else’s fault. She refuses to have any personal accountability for her life. The way she is can all be traced back to that first 18 months of her life when people were monsters and a dog was her mother. I hate her bio family. Don’t abuse your children. Love them unconditionally. And for the love of everything if you take on a broken baby don’t make it about you. Just love them and accept them for who they are. Not all adopted kids are broken. For some, like me, love is enough. But there is a large chunk of adopted kids that have very real, very damaging trauma. Those are the ones that need the most love, but will never thank you for it. Just give it to them.[xxv]

Baby, We Were Meant For Each Other: in praise of adoption, Scott Simon, Simon Schuster, 2010, 142-3

Neglectful parenting could be saying something about the parents experience of being parented.  Because of his own experience of being parented, Steve Sagri has not had a “successful family life“.

“… even with my daughters, even when they were adorable little kids, I never felt real comfortable,” he says, “I never knew how to behave around them. I didn’t now how to be a parent. How would I? I’d never seen it done…”. “Maybe my real fear is of getting hurt,” he muses,  “Maybe that is why I’ve built so many ten-foot walls around me. Maybe it’s because I was rejected as a kid that I don’t want to give anyone the chance to reject me now. So I just keep moving…”

Love Works Like This  Random House, 2002,Lauren Slater P. 169. Goodreads describes this writer’s experience of parenting with:  “career-oriented“, looks at having a child and the need to “reconcile the needs of self with the demands of others“.

It has come to the point where I cannot listen to Eva cry unless she is crying in my arms. I suppose this is a form of love, but not the kind I would most wish for. It is instinctual, biological, love on a cellular level. Intimacy, I am coming to understand, is corporeal.  It has to do with the distance between bodies. I wish for more. I wish for a passion that transcends space. When I am with Eva, she is my heart. When I am gone from her, at work, or with a friend, she ceases to exist.

And then there is this:

I saw an ad for the BEST dishwasher soap for loving parents. It did have to remind parents they might need to buy a dishwasher first, of course.

The plot to zing the ad’s proposition straight into parental hearts was built around a mother sitting on the floor holding out encouraging arms to her infant taking her first step. The camera then slides from the middle of the floor over to the kitchen area. There a young father is bent over the sink washing dishes, his back turned away from mother and child.  OMG, he was hand washing dishes. Only when the last dish has been washed does he turn back to his little family. But too late, handwashing dishes has denied him that precious moment parents wait for with bated breath, missing his child’s first step. The judgment or false pity is in the narrator’s tone: for handwashing dishes he has been charged with being negligent and missing out on one of  life’s truly important moments.

 Footnotes:

[i] Easterly, Sara, Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, Lori Holden.  Adoption Unfiltered: revelations from adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and allies, “Referring to Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s words… (Gordon Neufeld, PhD, “Session One: Becoming Attached,” Recorded Class Lecture (The Art & Science of Transplanting Children Course, 2011).  2024, 142

[ii] Pegg, Lois.  Journal Entry.  Dec. 7’97

[iii] Perry, MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz. The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook.  Basic Books, 2017, 168.

[iv] Neufeld, Gordon, PH.D. and Gabor Mate, M.D. Hold On To Your Kids: why parents need to matter more than peers.  Vintage Canada, 2004, 196.

[v] Neufeld, Gordon, PH.D. and Gabor Mate, M.D. Hold On To Your Kids: why parents need to matter more than peers.  Vintage Canada, 2004, 235, 237.

[vi] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.  Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered   William Morrow, 2010, Chapter 3, 45 – 71.

[vii] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.  Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered   William Morrow, 2010, Chapter 5, 96-119.

[viii] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.  Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered   William Morrow, 2010, 121.

[ix] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.  Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered   William Morrow, 2010, 142.

[x] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.  Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered   2010, P. 125-126

[xi] Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.  Born For Love: why empathy is essential- and endangered   William Morrow, 2010, Chapter Six, 120- 144.

[xii] Letourneau, Dr. Nicole with Justin Joshko.  Scientific Parenting: what science reveals about parental influence.  Dundern Press, 2013, 85-87.

[xiii] Hupp, Stephen and Jeremy Jewell. Great Myths of Child Development, Myth #42: daycare damage, Kindle version, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.

[xiv] Cuttita, Nicole, Ms.Ed., MHC-LP

Are Stay-at-Home Moms Better for Our Kids than Working Moms?

https://www.newyorkbehavioralhealth.com/are-stay-at-home-moms-better-for-our-kids-than-working-moms/

https://www.hbs.edu/news/articles/Pages/mcginn-working-mom.aspx

[xv] Debnath, Shreyasi.   https://themindsjournal.com/4-common-parenting-styles/ The 4 Common Parenting Styles and Their Effects on Kids/

[xvi] Perry, MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz. The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook.  2017, P. 145

[xvii] Perry, MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz. The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook.  2017, P.152

[xviii] Perry, MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz. The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook.  2017, P.168  

[xix] Debnath, Shreyasi.   https://themindsjournal.com/4-common-parenting-styles/ The 4 Common Parenting Styles and Their Effects on Kids/

https://wellbeingscounselling.ca/uninvolved-parenting-psychological-effects-on-children/

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-uninvolved-parenting-2794958

https://www.regain.us/advice/parenting/the-risks-of-having-an-uninvolved-parenting-style/

[xx] Fey, Tina. https://geediting.com/people-who-grew-up-with-very-little-affection-tend-to-develop-these-10-traits-later-in-life-according-to-psychology/  May 26, 2024, 10:06 am

[xxi] https://www.mjw-cydc.uwo.ca/docs/brochure_distracted_parenting.pdf  Tips for Limiting Hand-Held

[xxii] Lifton, Betty Jean.  Journey of the Adopted Self: a quest for wholeness.  Basic Books, 1994, 110.

[xxiii] Turow, Scott.  The Laws of Our Fathers.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996, 66.

[xxiv] Bazelon, Lara. The Atlantic “The End of Mom Guilt: why a mother’s ambition is good for her family” May 2022

[xxv] https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-love-enough-in-parenting-an-adopted-child

Post #13 A    AUTHORITARIAN PARENTING STYLE

I think we managed ‘happy families’ (Vera Stanhope gave me that one) for about as long as our parental leave lasted (3 days) or maybe until we signed Yasik up for school – roughly 3 weeks.  Maybe ‘happy families ‘ is code for unhapy families….  The journal says Week 3 was ‘one heavy duty week’. Yasik was, in parenting jargon, ‘testing boundaries’ in ways I have read are not unusual for institutionalized adoptees, or, for that matter, children from a great variety of family settings. His arsenal, sans effective verbal skills at the time, was physical: kicking, slapping, pinching, punching when we frustrated his desires with a “No”.   Surprised that the little cutie wasn’t seeing things our way, and having not prepared ourselves for that possibility, we went full ‘do what our parents did’; I shut down and Dave threatened tortures like loss of TV privileges and hugs, much the same as how we dealt at the time with disagreements between ourselves. And then, we spanked Yasik.  In our defense the journal testifies, only one smack to his bottom. Yasik cried but the smack quieted him, so I guess it slipped under the wire for not being abuse. Perhaps the crying though shook us up because we did some serious weighing of the pros and cons. We knew we were not comfortable talking about our autopilot choice to spank with anyone else, at all. Is spanking just politically incorrect or emotionally damaging? Is it faster and tidier? Does it teach him to hit to make a point?  But he needs to pay attention to our authority. He can’t be hitting back or talking smart we felt. But then again, we have to watch the expectations we have that set him off.  Right from the start, putting him in kindergarten, I  was rushing him and we were regularly late to school, igniting volcanoes of frustration between us. Cecile David-Weill in Parents Under the Influence: words of wisdom from a former bad mother (63,64) considers it important to clarify the basis of a choice to spank: if it is not a “malevolent impulse” or cause “lasting pain” it maybe fine. For her it is quite another matter if it is regular and the ‘go-to’ response to the child’s behavior. Leaving long term negative consequences, it is abuse.

Dave and I were a couple born in the traditional parenting era, and now in our own middle years, we were coping with a daily experience more often the purview of a young couple (a common experience for adoptors), and parenting a child with limited communication experience in English and very new to developing a sense of secure attachment to parents.  This is not a ‘poor-us’ plea. We simply knew we had to begin the process people in Recovery refer to as Live Life on Life’s Terms.  We were going try something more appropriate, wanting to do the ‘right thing’, again based on what we had picked up around us about disciplining.

My only spanking experience up to this time had come when I was in my mid-twenties, still unquestioningly believing in “Spare the rod, Spoil the child”. I was babysitting for a couple who were raised, like me, in a traditional and religious society and who regularly turned to spanking to rein in their active adoptee. Being left with the responsibility to ensure that this four or five year old child was not ruined while the couple were out of town, I kept the lid on anything I understood to be an infraction  according to the couple’s set of unacceptable behaviours. And I spanked away each of these misbehaviours as heartily as they did.  One such infraction unfortunately, in the short term, but rewarding in the long-term for me, occurred one morning when friends were visiting.  The child misbehaved; I carried him into the bedroom and between whacks, screaming and crying filled the household. After all was returned to quiet and smiles, the woman visiting commented either directly to me or to another friend, “It seems to me that people are harder on children who are not their own.” That observation struck hard against a firmly unquestioned belief.

Sensitivity to the comment was still there twenty years later to rattle my ideas about disciplining Yasik.  ‘Time Outs’ seemed to be bandied about among knowing parents we were in touch with as the ‘done thing’. Dave said that was how Dennis the Menace was disciplined, sounded like a good recommendation I guess. We embraced it as a discipline we could admit to among our circle of friends and anyway we had a child’s wooden chair as yet unfulfilled in its destiny.  One afternoon in our couple-only period we spent an afternoon shopping antique shops on Main Street.  We bought the little chair for family who were expecting, not thinking it might be a hassle to carry home on a plane.  They side stepped the gift and now we had a reason of our own to use it.  We swung it into a corner of the hallway, getting into position to do battle.  I remember experiencing less emotion or stress when disciplining was simply the smack. Now we were starting the disciplining process with a tussle to get him on the chair as he and we were still amped up. Next was the stand on guard to keep him on the chair. Dave would very firmly place him on the chair and I would smack his bottom when I couldn’t get him to stay on the chair. Once he even said, “Ouch”.  At least once each we let him knock himself over in his fight to resist the chair. But he did acquiesce, even if at times with tight-lipped giving in that could be read as ‘I will bid my time until I am bigger’. Other times it was hard to keep a straight face. When once he had to give in, he would turn to us to humbly plea, “No look,” before he stood up and went off to do what we ask. There was also the time I held him in my lap until he gave in and sat on the chair quietly and then he slipped over to me and we kissed and hugged. Wish I’d done it that way more often.

In fact, most of the time he responded well to this discipline and moved on, affirms the journal.

And miracle of miracles, in short order just the threat of the chair was enough to get compliance.

Check that method off and move on.  It seems we still were not giving discipline a meta perspective.  A couple of cases in point: one evening after work, I was tired, impatient and would not wait for him to play in the tub.

Yasik was finding endless wonders in the tub.  I wanted the bed time routine over so I could turn off and tune out.

“Come on Yasik, bath time is over. Now get out of the tub and come into the bedroom to get your pajamas on.”

Playing sounded like it was slowing down, and silence was taking over. Yasik had shown shyness about being naked, suggesting the way things might have been handled in the orphanage. But I was not trying to understand his no show in the bedroom.

“Come on Yasik, get in here.”

And now there was a wail. Yasik was sitting in the tub, alone and crying in real anger.

Sighing in self-pity, I was about to drag myself off his bed and into the bathroom to scoop him out of the tub.  That self-pitying tiredness now curling at the edges with anger.

Yasik did not want to run naked from the tub to the bedroom, a stretch of maybe 10 feet.

Dave must have been hovering near by, for he magically appeared at the bedroom door.

“Don’t!”, with a warning eyeball.  Getting a 5-year-old to sprint naked from the bathroom to the bedroom was what we expected. We were not going to cave. He was going to obey. He was going to sprint naked from the bathroom to the bedroom.

Yelling, “No look!” Yasik snuck to the door to see if I was looking before running to the bed.

Again it was hopeless not to see the funny. I popped out a “Boo!” and we both laughed.

And here I interject a piece from The Adoptive Parents’ Handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster or adopted child by Barbara Cummins Tantrum who notes on P. 18, “[It] could be that the abuse [being discussed] happened at bedtime or in a bath (common for sexual abuse), it could be that it feels vulnerable to try to turn their brain off to sleep, and it could be that Mom and Dad feel far away“.

Another time, when he was a bit older, Yasik and the other two in his bestie triad had been to Roger’s Arena to watch moto-cross races. The races were exciting, the treats soaked in sugar and the night hours sleep-deprived. By the time he was dropped off mid-morning, still high from the fun, he was likely more spent than he knew. The interaction may have gone something close to the following, though when I read it to Yasik while writing this piece, he was a tad scornful, couldn’t buy that he would have talked like that.

So while Yasik was still wrapped in the high of his overnight, Dave and I were not finishing off a fun night but rather into the demands of our day.

Yasik came in the back door and dropped his bag.

No give him a moment to slump on a chair.  No “Hey kid did you have fun? What did you do?” Instead, we turned from doing the dishes to offer a smile, “Hi.” We are after all trained in the graces to some extent.

Yasik didn’t smile back. “I’m hungry. Is there anything to eat?”

Tuned to a different wave length than he, we dismissed this.

“Just put your bag away.  It’s too close to lunch anyway.”

“I’m not showering. I gotta eat.”

“Uh, uh….  No, get cleaned up.  Then I think you still have homework. And you definitely have piano practice.”

“Aaaggh. Noooo. That’s all I ever do. Piano, piano, piano. Homework, homework, homework.”

“Yasik. Just do it and get it over with. You have to do it before you can be on the computer anyway.”

Yasik was downright snarky the journal says.   What did we expect?

Had we become complacent or tired of what corporeal punishment or its more politically correct cousin, ‘Time Out’ demanded? Or did we honestly think that having experienced spanking and the chair that Yasik was only needing the reminder of such consequences or some threat to the things he loved? Whatever our awareness, we now slipped into threat mode at signs of eruption.  Predictably I suppose, if we had not taken the time to think through what we were hoping for or how best to get there.  It could backfire.

One morning as usual we running late to drop Yasik off at his school. Checking for lunch box and bag, I noticed he hadn’t quite finished his homework. That was a BIG no-no to a couple, one teaching high school with the expectation of homework, the other finally getting a chance at higher-ed and both wanting to keep up appearance as parents who have their parenting together. With minutes to spare before we really, really had to go, we went into threat mode: “You won’t be going to T-ball tomorrow if you don’t hurry up and just do this last page!”

The wail seemed to deflate his entire body.  Taking the high ground against this outburst, we brooked no argument, “Yasik, you gotta do your homework.”

“Whhhhy? NOBODY in my class has to do homework?”

(True enough, being second language, or whatever the current term is, and struggling with reading, Yasik did have a heavier homework burden than his classmates.)

Nonetheless, in my best no-nonsense voice, I carefully enunciated: “You. Won’t. Be. Going. To. T-Ball. Tomorrow. if you don’t get it done.”  Dave backed me up with a ‘No debate’ nod.

He failed to do so. Following through on our threat is always considered admirable. We didn’t take him to the game. He felt the pain for disobedience all right.

Thing was, we had the date wrong.  It was two days away and he got to go because he’d already gone through the wailing and missing-the-game pain the day before.

I kind of think he could hardly wait to get home that evening to say, “Hey you guys, the game is tomorrow night, James said.”

I looked at Dave. Dave looked at me. “What can we do? We got the days screwed up and he got the punishment.”

Yasik also got the last big grin.

And so the first couple of years went; learning effective anything takes a while I would observe at this juncture. Yasik’s school had a huge park across the street but had no indoor gym; it was a little community school going off to another school for indoor physical activities. Two years into our parenting, encouraged by school staff, one morning, I went with Yasik on the school bus to help him get involved in gym as through the first year, he’d merely been watching rather than taking part. We chose not to push him to join in gym play the first year as most days there were so many other firsts in his life. Now just like deciding to take the worn training wheels off his bike and pushing him to try biking without that support, we decided to push him to join in the activities in the gym period.

We stepped into the gym, kids running ahead of us, teachers taking charge, me thinking I must look in charge too. It is what competent mothers exude, right? Slipping into this vibe, I tried to get him to do things just because magically I was along.  But my presence did not hold the weight I was assuming. He wouldn’t budge from his chosen place near the door. We were in a room full of kids he played with at the park, teachers who assured us he was doing well. Translation: I can’t have anyone thinking something might not be working as it should appear but neither can I take any action that would look or sound out of control. That is the possible beauty of threats. They can be whispered with what appears like a calm (read:repressed anger) interaction.  So I started to whisper threats. “Get out there and play right now or there goes today’s computer and TV.”  I gave a hint that if he waited any longer, tomorrow’s TV was going too.

And then what Gail?  But I persisted and he adamantly refused.  A teacher thoughtfully slipped over to suggest that I and Yasik go to the trampoline because she told us being on the boys’ team with Yasik’s more confident counterparts may be too hard for him. He may feel safer playing with the girls and they were on the trampoline.  He wanted to but wouldn’t.  Was he embarrassed about being relegated to the girl’s team, as well?

I continued to cajole and threat.  Finally, I promised a prize, ergo bribe, and he got on for the first time, smiling in shyness, still uncertain, because it was great.

Inevitably a few bounces in he fell and wanted down in a bit and then he wouldn’t go again.  This was a 6-year-old boy who was struggling with processing failure. I was responding by telling him I was proud of him and a prize was coming his way. But that fall overwhelmed him. When it came around for his next turn, he refused to climb back up on the trampoline.  I who had not thought that perhaps let it be was enough, or perhaps there was a private trampoline somewhere that he could test out before the next gym outing, threw out the bribes and went back to dire threats of returning to spanking.  And I could have managed that because there was a convenient bathroom off the gym.

And in the moment I won. Yasik gave in and got on the trampoline. I saw a mix of shy enjoyment and a struggle with fear for between the 1^st and 2^nd attempt there were tears on my neck. As I watched him get up and try the trampoline again in front of peers who babied him still, I had to fight tears too. Yet he conquered the worst of it.  He was on his way. I was proud of him and of his stubborn refusals too.  He wasn’t going to follow blindly, I note in the journal.  But the question remains about how I handled my role in his struggle. I hope I at least followed through on the prize.

Dave too holds memories of times he is concerned about how he shepherded. As I have mentioned several times, not only did Dave look forward to sharing his own love of the computer with Yasik as we prepared to adopt him, but in a very short while, after we returned from Russia, Dave and Yasik were poking the keyboard, learning that Yasik believed he had come from the moon and seeing that very quickly and steadily Yasik was becoming proficient at working his way around the internet.  An excitement at a son’s quickness gradually U-turned into a concern about what his child might become exposed to.  To ward off danger, Dave secretly set in a path from which he would maintain control. Of course, sensible parents applaud, but Dave voiced concern over his handling of his control, secretively rather than in open discussion with his son.

Yasik is visiting this weekend. In preparation I have written down a couple questions on my clipboard to tease out some input from him that might be triggered by the definition of Authoritarian parenting style.  He hasn’t yet come up with specific examples but he said he definitely remembers times I handled interactions with “Because I said so” or “Don’t ask questions, just do it!” expectations.  I hope I tried for slightly more subtle language.  Yasik also remembers discovering Dave’s computer controls and working around them, but without any discussion on either side.

Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to underline the following characteristics you identify in the narrative.

Δ   Cold: low responsiveness, aloof and distant, affection is given sparingly, if at all; boundaries are maintained between parent and child.

Δ      Demanding/Unbending: strict, making non-negotiable rules, not considering the child’s needs or desires, “My way or the highway”, accompanied by harsh criticisms on making mistakes, or the more PC, emotional manipulation.  The child’s strong will must be broken.

Δ     Control: to foster obedience and implement discipline.  Parents monitor child’s behaviour, activities inside and outside the house.

Δ     Punitive discipline/highly negative consequences often justified as “tough love”: threatening, beating, spanking, thrashing, pulling, pricking, kicking, punching, and emotional punishment like neglect, yelling, scolding for not doing things “right”, silent treatment, stonewalling.

Sites referred to for the definitions:

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a26987389/types-of-parenting-styles/

https://jessup.edu/blog/academic-success/the-psychology-behind-different-types-of-parenting-styles/

https://www.parentingforbrain.com/4-baumrind-parenting-styles/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK568743/

https://publichealthpost.org/health-equity/authoritarian-parenting/

What do my collection of the experts say?

We may have begun to parent a child already brewed in Authoritarian parenting. We do not know what Authoritarian parenting meant on a daily basis for Yasik but the article I include in Post 13 Intro suggests it is possible Yasik was being nurtured with “toughened attachment” which seems another label for Authoritarian parenting style. We do know that when meeting us for the first time in the little waiting room of the Yaroslavl orphanage became too stressful for Yasik, he turned to the sweet doctor and folded himself in her arms, arms that willingly accepted him, letting him sob into her neck. But did that moment speak to the orphanage’s daily parenting style? Did Yasik know it was safe to turn into the little doctor’s shoulder as a security he knew he could trust or was the moment meeting us so overwhelming he took the first outlet available. Certainly the woman at the desk and the woman who brought Yasik into the room were not stepping in: out of shyness, uncertainty or the expectations of ‘toughened attachment’?

Whatever parenting he experienced, he would have learned ways to respond. If his early experiences of parenting were traumatic or at least authoritarian, then the way he expressed his frustrations to our discipline may have been techniques he had learned to defend himself when receiving ‘toughened attachment’. Or maybe his responses were defenses against what his imagination understood about having a mama and papa.  He was told that evening after meeting us that now he had a mama and papa.  Did that mean to him that life would be different from life in the orphanage; he need not suffer discipline and insecurity anymore? Or, as the honeymoon period receded into the hurley-burley of everyday life, did some of our parenting seem to him just like ‘toughened attachment’?

Russia at the time argued for this style of parenting because in the shifting time of the 90s it was the more well known, and therefore, more dependable style for orphans. The Soviets/Socialists were working on making a ‘new man/human’, answerable to society, not encouraged to be independent, the Soviet way or the highway.  Religions have been trying to do the same for a very long time, operating from the stance that people are sinners and needing harsh redemption via authoritarian leadership, Hobbesian style. And we, even in the West, do not remain immune from it.  Traditional parenting or ‘Trad parents’ check off authoritarian definition boxes above.  It starts with the assumption that small children are capable of manipulating their parents – a sign, I guess of the evil that resides within – and that effective disciplining must incorporate some pain. https://generationcedar.com/2024/03/05/gentle-parenting-vs-traditional-parenting-a-word-to-todays-young-mother/   or  https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/parentingfamilydiversity/chapter/overindulgent-helicopter-styles/

To quote a response to that one: “The truth is that children aren’t capable of manipulation until adolescence, because to be able to manipulate, you need a more developed prefrontal cortex.”  The Adoptive Parents’ handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster or adopted child, Barbara Cummins Tantrum, 2020, 105

It is also seen as a wise choice among working class parents who know that to be good employees, children need to know how to be obedient and develop a strong work ethic.  Some also see that at times Authoritarian parenting helps when children are falling into bad company and making choices that will hurt their future.  It might also be an interventionist tool when a child veers off course, choosing friends that take the child on a path away from education and healthy lifestyle choices. But studies have shown that a meta view of the outcomes of authoritarian parenting produce children with low self-esteem and self-doubt, turning to peers for guidance and sometimes acting out behind their parents’ backs or struggling to take on adulthood’s need for internal direction. https://openpress.usask.ca/lifespandevelopment/chapter/parenting-styles/

A voice that seems to support Authoritarian parenting, Dr. Gordon Neufeld and Dr. Gabor Mate say in Hold on to your kids: why parents need to matter more than peers (60),

The first business of attachment is to arrange adults and children in a hierarchical order.  When humans enter a relationship, their attachment brain automatically ranks the participants in order of dominance…. that divide roughly into dominant and dependent, care-giving and care-seeking, the one who provides and the one who receives.

But, of course, having read the entire book, I know that he brings this aspect of authority in as opposed to the empty and often disastrous peer-oriented authority.

A voice that seems to questions Authoritarian parenting, Born for Love: why empathy is essential—and endangered by Maia Szalavitz and Bruce Perry (313) says,

Needless to say, spanking or any other form of harsh discipline does not and cannot encourage empathy: empathy is learned by having the experience of being treated kindly, not by being made to suffer…. most bullies do have the experience of being victimized – and it makes them want to get even, not help others….

Research shows that children who receive corporal punishment are more aggressive, more likely to be antisocial as teenagers …. Ninety percent of the research on spanking shows negative effects.

A voice that finds a middling spot on the spectrum of parenting is Jean Mercer in her book, Thinking Critically about Child Development: examining myths & misunderstandings (206). Research has shown her that spanking (“as properly defined, not to blows with a paddle or other physical punishments”) is not ineffective in the short term but “questions remain about its long-term effect.”

Some explanation is offered in Great Myths of Child Development put together by Stephen Hupp and Jeremy Jewell to those who believe God has endorsed physical punishment as a loving thing to do. My father certainly believed ‘Spare the Rod, spoil the child’ was a direct message from God to guide his parenting. Taking us to the bathroom, sitting himself down on the edge of the tub, “Spare the rod, spoil the child” was Dad’s invocation, followed by a confusing excuse, “This hurts me more than you” to set our bare bums on alert as we lay across Dad’s lap. According to Hupp and Jewell, modern translations of the proverb say the ‘rod’ was more likely the symbolic shepherd’s staff for guiding, as a shepherd guides a sheep (Myth #40).  Relying on older translations, some leaders of the church, supported its message of the pain route to obedience. https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/parentingfamilydiversity/chapter/overindulgent-helicopter-styles/

Myth #41, also in Great Myths of Child Development addresses ‘Time-outs’ showing that brief time-outs are usually too weak to help decrease real behavior problems and may also teach children what not to do, but without positive ‘Time-in’, does not teach the child what to do.

They also tackle the gender question of parental discipline. Data shows that mothers use corporeal punishment or spanking as often as fathers (Myth #47). And they visit the argument for letting babies ‘cry it out’ when being put to bed (Myth # 13). Reviewing the various arguments for and against, they conclude “… so long as the child is over 5 or 6 months old, safe and well-cared for, it’s reasonable to stop responding to cries to be held or rocked during the night, allowing the child to develop self-soothing skills’.

Others’ parenting experiences, speaking to at least some aspects of the Authoritarian parenting style

• The book, Hunt, Gather Parent: what ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy, helpful little humans by Michaeleen Doucleff
• Mom Feels Like A ‘Failure’ After Spanking Her Daughter By Nia Tipton Feb 04, 2024  https://www.yourtango.com/family/mom-feels-failure-after-spanking-daught

A mom has admitted to feeling incredibly guilty about the way she handled her unruly daughter and is seeking advice on how to not react the same way in the future…. the young mother explained that she had been cleaning the bathtub when her 3-year-old daughter wandered in. Concerned for her safety, she calmly told her daughter to either leave the bathroom or stand by the door since she was using bleach and their bathroom was quite small.

…. With her daughter continuing to not listen, she picked her up and began carrying her out of the bathroom herself.

However, while carrying her daughter, the little girl began throwing a tantrum…. At this point, she immediately put her daughter in a time-out, sitting her on a chair in the corner of the room.

The time-out didn’t work though, and her daughter began to run around the room. Fed up with her daughter’s behavior, she grabbed her and spanked her. As soon as she did it, the young mom admitted to feeling incredibly “low” and a “failure” as a parent….

“What could I have done differently in this situation? I couldn’t leave her in the bathroom to calm down because I had chemicals in the tub. Maybe the best solution is not doing things that she can’t help with when she’s awake, I guess.”

[Readers responded] “Give yourself some grace. Try hard not [to] do it again,”….

“Also, try to lower your expectations just a little bit. She’s a kid …. it won’t turn her into a monster. Pick your battles.”

Another user added, “… You didn’t beat her or anything. You spanked her.”

…. At the end of the day, no parent is perfect, and there are moments throughout child rearing when certain things don’t go to plan.

• The Atlantic, July/August issue 2022, 87-89, speaks to fathers and the liminal space they find themselves in as fathers today, once filling the understood role of administrator of discipline was theirs, still confronted by children acting out of control, and no longer sure how to proceed.
• Mierau, Maurice. Detachment: an adoption memoir   152-4

Peter who is 8 and Bohdan who is 7 had been adopted by Maurice and Betsy Mierau three years earlier.  The Mireau’s were well into their own parenting style with the boys.  One winter afternoon, Mierau took the boys sledding, armed with hot chocolate. Because of copyright protection you will need to read the story for yourself, an incident that checks the boxes for Authoritarian, although overall, the memoir shows that this couple work hard at being warm and supportive Authoritative parents.

• Lesbian and Gay Foster Care and Adoption by Stephen Hicks and Janet McDermott, P. 216, 230 recount an interview with a counselor and social worker couple, both working with children and families. At the time of the interview for the book they had been adoptors for 12 years. The children were a brother and sister whose early life was traumatic, and before being adopted, the children had been in a “difficult” foster situation. This is how they end their interview:

We’ve ended up being much stricter parents than I ever expected we would be, which has been a bit of a downside in some ways. I end up being somebody I almost don’t know, as a parent of adopted children. You don’t recognize yourself. If somebody had told me this was the kind of parent I’d be I’d have said: “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going to be like that, I’m going to be my liberal, fun self.”

But that had to change. I think all parents probably have that fantasy. I remember my dad saying he couldn’t believe how I was with the children – my sister called me Attila the Hun! But after a while my dad said I had been right to be tough. But it didn’t come easily to either of us.

• I have just started listening to the audio book, I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. Seconds into the book, I am hearing notes of Authoritarian parenting though, checking out a summary of the book, I already know that this memoir is about much more than parenting style, still … it checks off some of the boxes, even if the control is more often achieved with PC emotional manipulation.

Post #13    INTRODUCTION TO PARENTING STYLES

Before heading to Russia, as I have written about in earlier blogs, we set up our idea of a child’s dream room and downloaded computer games, indulging in a parental fantasy that has never entirely dissipated. In fact, even to the present day, we keep running ahead of each future possibility with fantasies.  Dave would say, “Speak for yourself.” But…

When we returned to Canada, we took him here and there to show him off.  Dave bought him a glove and bat too big for him, convinced he had to learn how to deal with the real thing. Yasik couldn’t lift the bat.  When Yasik approached his teens, he and his dad made plans to fix up my little Civic when I moved on to a newer model. I imagined Yasik playing the piano and singing “O Canada” to open hockey games before his childhood buddy took to the ice to play goalie for the Canucks.

Of course, there is a ‘but’ coming. We may have been playing dollies with Yasik for the first day or two, dressing him up and bouncing him around like children with a Ken doll as they try to bridge the gap between fantasy and reality, but even while doing ‘tourist’ around Moscow there were indications that our priority was not the thrill of the art museum but that we must constantly watch this little sprite darting about. With all Moscow offered tourists, we were at MacDonald’s feeding Big Macs to the birds.

Could we have articulated what we wanted to do as parents? Was writing out goals part of the pre-adoption course we took? If it was, I don’t remember but we probably would have nodded enthusiastically to suggestions that we might want to deliver into adulthood a good and happy human being, stably independent and contributing to society, enjoying healthy relationships with others.  We were not even challenged to think about how we planned to parent by the social worker who did our post-adoption interviews.  We were asked about Yasik’s medical visits, physical and mental development, eating and sleeping habits, his personality, our child care plans and family adjustments but nary a question about how we were dealing with discipline and helping him with the character development needed to develop into  a good and happy human being.

Could we have articulated how we would parent our little man developing into such a normal vision? Certainly, no manual was tucked into the non-existent bag sent along with Yasik as he left the orphanage. Nor did we expect one. If the local radio journalist who interviewed us outside the courthouse in Yaroslavl had asked us how we planned to parent, we would have planted a look on our faces that tried for “We’ve got this.”, hoping she didn’t look too deeply into our eyes where something less confident, somewhat quizzical was starting to show through. But the question never came up, everyone benignly assuming our son of one hour was in good hands because we would ‘just know what to do’.

And we did have resources. As noted in Post 12 A, it doesn’t take a Google search to know that we humans parent like our parents parented us. Yes, we may have tried to update their technique or improvise in situations in which their methods were found wanting or because there were two sets of parents speaking to our parenting, maybe the techniques were debated, but our parents had up to 20 years to worm their techniques into our hearts and minds.  We may not have been able to easily identify what exactly they did that we now found ourselves doing, but try to find solid confirmation that their techniques had not found some ground in our methods. What is even scarier is trying to objectively recognize that this is what they did, even if as children we heartily disapproved, and then we went right ahead and reverted to as well.  They spanked, and yes, we spanked Yasik.  The time out chair was after their time.[i] We did it, but it is unlikely Yasik will continue that practice for it is not much more acceptable now than spanking.  Now there is “time in”.[ii]  We fought to have meals together as was regular with my parents and siblings, but scheduling and television often lured us from that technique.  We helped Yasik with homework, put him in sports.  Our parents could not easily afford sports nor had much homework help been modeled for them in their homes (and my grandmother was a school teacher!). That is not to say that they didn’t try to help or at least hope that we could manage.

Other resources were at hand as well. The Origins of You: how childhood shapes later life dedicates a whole chapter, Chapter 5, to presenting their study or “adventure” in “Why Parents Parent the Way They Do” or a study of “intergenerational transmission of parenting”.[iii]

Parenting is multiply determined. In addition to a parent’s own child-rearing history, parents’ health and well-being, their occupational experiences, the quality of their intimate relationship, and the social support they secure from friends, neighbors, relatives, and co-workers may all influence how parents parent…. too … how children themselves behave matters when accounting for why parents parent the way they do.

I am including the infographic below for it is a good summary of how expansive the considerations for a child’s setting are.[iv]

Gabor Mate goes further, assuring us that “all of us, by virtue of being human, are endowed with a natural drive and talent for child-rearing…. Both men and women have latent child-nurturing circuits in their brains, …”  Mate was referring to “the body’s natural opiates – all of which awaken in parents nurturing habits that are essential to the survival of the young.”[v]  That is a relief.  Parents come equipped.

Adopters too?  Yes, although we may not have dramatic hormone changes, bio-fathers, adoptors and other consistent care-givers “show bonding to the same degree as biological mothers” which “awaken in parents nurturing habits that are essential to the survival of the young”.[vi]

Gordon Neufeld points out that by the time of our adoption there was lots of research and information available, as well, had we thought there was a need to go beyond our naïve confidence in our readiness to parent.[vii]

It is beginning to look like we came into parenting with some juice in our brains to vitalize a motivation to parent and we came into parenting with input from the worlds we inhabited, a quite expansive setting for Yasik’s set of development or journey into his life.

I am going to interject here, because I have heard it so often, that if anything should not work out according to the fantasy, adoptors have a nice little ‘escape hatch/cop out’ from responsibility for their parenting, especially parents of older adoptees, should they accept it: the tsk, tsking of onlookers who intone, “Well it’s in the blood”, or those who shake their heads in commiseration to remind us, “Well those first 3 years are the most important.”

Bruce Perry appears to agree: “Since much of the brain develops early in life, the way we are parented has a dramatic influence on brain development. And so, … a good “brain” history of a child begins with a history of caregiver’s childhood and early experience.”[viii]

As recounted in earlier posts, Yasik’s parenting begins first with his bio-parents and then a hospital staff followed by the orphanage so that for the first and crucial (they say) four years we and our styles can be absolved from responsibility for outcomes, right? Yasik was not quite 3 months short of 5 when we entered his life.  By the age of 3 a child’s brain is 80% developed.[ix]    Well what can a hapless adoptor do about that? Everything has been sewed up before they even start. Can’t fault their parenting styles.  But it looks like Perry has more to say: The adoptors need then to recognize the delay in development or the hard-wiring in place and work not with the chronological age of the child but with the child’s actual stage of development.[x] We are not off the hook. Our parenting styles matter. To turn a quote from Gabor Mate around: “no, [parents] did not create the world in which they must parent [their children]. Yes, parents are responsible for their children;”[xi]

As the very long page, Orphanage Risk Factors, has made me quite aware, the world of adoption has spent time reporting on the conditions and the effects of the orphanage ‘alloparenting’.  What world did Yasik, who was in orphanage care in Russia from 1993 to 1997, come from? I asked Google a specifically Russian orphanage parenting style question. An article written by Rachel Stryker in Global Studies of Childhood, Volume 2, Number 2, 2012 called “Emotion Socialization and Attachment in Russian Children’s Homes”  (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2304/gsch.2012.2.2.85) notes that Russian children raised by their biological parents are usually raised in the authoritative parenting style. Children raised in orphanages in the 1990s, the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union with its socialism guided parenting and the time of economic struggle, were raised in what was called “toughened attachment”, considered necessary to preparing them for the harsh world they would be turned out to at the age of 18, toughened enough to deal with the economic struggle and the need to get along in such a world.

[The article] argues that … detdoma [orphanage] workers’ … [prioritized]… 1) [socializing] children’s attachment in an attempt to establish economic and emotional security for children in uncertain times after the fall of the Soviet Union; and 2) [shaping] children’s understandings of attachment within transnational contexts….

Orphanage workers thus understood that children raised in detdoma during perestroika and the years immediately following led very liminal lives…. that state of being between caregivers as well as between economic and political systems – justified a particular form of attachment socialization referred to in the orphanages as ‘toughened attachment.’… [The] philosophy of toughened attachment is characterized by the understanding that the best forms of attachment behavior are non-responsive. The rationale is that non-responsive care trains children to be resourceful and thus increases their chances for survival in bleak times…. -namely, a relationship whereby children from an early age could be taught to best maximize opportunities in resource-lean environments. In particular, detdoma workers encouraged children with very limited economic prospects to make multiple, flexible, and peer-based relationships with others….

In 1996 then, ‘toughened attachment,’ or purposely non-responsive infant and child care, was thought to instill in children a more practical approach to relating to others in uncertain circumstances. The concept of toughened attachment had much of its basis in the traditional practice in Soviet-style childcare collectives of ‘toughening’ children’s bodies in institutions – for example, … systematically exposing children to cold air and cold water so they develop resistance to winter weather…. Orphanage workers believed that just as one could toughen children’s bodies to make them more fit to survive the natural elements and disease, so could toughening children’s understanding and expression of attachment aid them in the challenging and uncertain times after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Such attachments were socialized in a variety of ways, including swaddling (thought to encourage self-soothing), delaying responses to child crying, encouraging children to ask peers rather than adults for help when they had problems, or telling children in consciously cheerful or humiliating ways, to discover the answers to questions on their own somewhere in the orphanage. Throughout this process, those children who were compliant and cheerful about such interactions were rewarded verbally or by being given some important status or role in the orphanage, although not with touch. Those children who did not comply and expressed anger, sadness, and despair were discouraged using the socialization techniques… mentioned in this section above.

Not aware of how Yasik had been parented in his first world, did not as Gabor Mate says let us off the hook.  We were still responsible to parent him in way that gave him a good start to life in our world.  Accepting that responsibility as we understood it, how would our parenting be judged by those who have studied parenting and what can be learned from our parenting journey?  The judging is based on the work of Diana Baumrind, a developmental psychologist who began her research in the 1960s, providing three of the basic parenting styles. In the 1980s, Stanford researchers, Eleanor Maccoby and John Martin added the fourth style.[xii] These four styles are authoritarian, neglectful/unengaged, permissive and authoritative. As is evident by the list of styles mentioned earlier, these four shots are only the ‘opening volleys across the bow’ of the discussion on parenting styles.   Depending on how we come packaged into parenthood, in these times, we can choose to parent from a buffet of styles. An article in ThecIrish Times, which I accessed through my library’s online data offerings, provided a list of styles parents might choose: Helicopter, Drone, Lawn Mower/Bulldozer/Snow Plough, Free Range, Tiger, Dolphin, Koala, Jellyfish, Lighthouse, Gentle, Crunchy/Silky/Scrunchy, Concierge or as noted above, Conscious.[xiii]  Seriously.

Howevvver, I am not going to fill my plate from that buffet.  The 4 original styles will satisfy.

I know it seems facetious exploration to go over well known and likely self-help level material but Jean Mercer brings forward these considerations. After reminding readers that the adoption process is stressful for many, but not all, children, she goes on to say “The effects of adoption depend on three highly significant factors that may be quite different for different adopted children: the child’s age at separation, the circumstances surrounding the adoption, and the care-giving abilities of the adoptive parents.”[xiv] On with the judging of our parenting styles.

As an appetizer/mood setter/ tension builder, I have included a little quiz I found and indulged in, based on the four parenting styles. If you are a tad curious for yourself you will find the quiz (one of several on Google) at the end of this post.

But be aware: because both parents must be considered for their styles and input,[xv] I appealed to the better angels of Dave’s nature, getting him to take the quiz just after I completed it.  Maybe it was nearing suppertime and I was fogging over; whatever, I managed to add up the numbers each of us chose for each question instead of the number values given to each. And then I spent the next 24 hours angsting over the designations these numbers offered.  One of us was borderline Neglectful and the other, Permissive.  Maybe Permissive could be met with a bit of a shrug and giggle, but Neglectful?  That one elicits, at the very least, a grimace and groan.  I wanted to delete the quiz, shoving the results under the rug, but I also want to honestly explore our parenting.  In the morning, I went back over the quiz looking for a way to ease it into my determination to be open and honest in my search and, whew. I saw my mistake and I recounted.

For some of the questions I was on the fence, thinking it depends on the situation, choosing the middle option, #3. And while Dave did not stay on the same fence for as many question responses as I, we came out with exactly the same scores, barely inside Warm in the first set and barely inside Demanding for the second set. Whew again! We managed to raise Yasik according to the nice sounding parenting style – Authoritative.

But I cannot ignore the impact of my emotional response to the three negative styles and what my image of myself and Dave would have had to acknowledge had we landed in any of these styles that are less than admirable and certainly not trending currently.

The following infographic provides definitions of each of the parenting styles.[xvi]

The following infographic provides a chronology of the trend in parenting.[xvii]

And remember, If you are in danger of taking all this too seriously check out this address:  https://www.verywellfamily.com/parenting-styles-from-around-the-world-4162019

Add it all up and our parenting styles come from all that is swirling about in our brains, bodies and emotions, the parents who parented us, the times and the environment in which that parenting played out, and our values for, as is the habit of values, they take shape influenced by this mix of nature and nurture.  And we are off, skipping along the yellow brick road, off to ask the wizard what kind of setting we provided for Yasik.

 This address will take you to the  parenting style quiz Dave and I worked through.

Practical Psychology  “Parenting Style Quiz (Free Test + Instant Results)”  Feb 1, 2024 https://practicalpie.com/parenting-style-quiz/.[xviii]

To make some sense of the designations Warm, Cold, Demanding and Undemanding the site the quiz is taken from lists Authoritarian as Cold and Demanding, Permissive as Warm and Undemanding, Neglectful as Cold and Undemanding and Authoritative as Warm and Demanding.

Please also note though before you do so that there is a caveat: although provided for another context, Bruce K. Alexander reminds his readers in The Globalization of Addiction: a study in poverty of the spirit “clinical assessments are not hard data, even when dressed up in numbers.  Furthermore, it is difficult for clinical researchers to prove…. Human motives are always mixed and at least partly concealed, hence, endlessly arguable”.[xix]

Footnotes

[i] “Time-out (parenting)”  2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-out_(parenting) 

[ii] Holden, George, Tricia Gower, Sharyl E. Wee, Rachel Gaspar, and Rose Ashraf  “Is It Time for “Time-In”?: A Pilot Test of the Child-Rearing Technique”  Pediatr Rep. 2022 Jun; 14(2): 244–253. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9149873/

[iii] Belsky, Jay, Avshalom Caspi, Terri E. Moffit, Richie Poulton.  The Origins of You: how childhood shapes later life.  Harvard University Press, 2020, 110.

[iv] Lang, Diana and Marissa L. Diener  “Influences on Parenting”  2020  https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/parentingfamilydiversity/chapter/influences-on-parenting/

[v] Mate, Gabor MD and Daniel Mate   The Myth of Normal: trauma, illness, and healing in a toxic culture.  Knopf Canada, 2022, 160, 165

[vi] Mercer, Jean. Understanding Attachment: parenting, child care and emotional development. Praeger Publishers, 2006,  74

[vii] Neufeld, Gordon, PH.D. and Gabor Mate, M.D.  Hold On To Your Kids: why parents need to matter more than peers  Vintage Canada, 2004,  5

[viii] Perry, Bruce and Maia Szalavitz  The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook.  Basic Books, 2017, 89

[ix]Brain Development 2024 https://www.firstthingsfirst.org/early-childhood-matters/brain-development/

[x]Perry, Bruce and Maia Szalavitz  The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook  Basic Books, 2017, 250

[xi] Mate, Gabor with Daniel Mate.  The Myth of Normal: trauma, illness & healing in a toxic culture.  Knopf Canada, 2022, 179

[xii] “The Psychology Behind Different Types of Parenting Styles”  https://jessup.edu/blog/academic-success/the-psychology-behind-different-types-of-parenting-styles/

[xiii] The Irish Times The Irish Times  “Helicopter? Free-range? Concierge? What kind of parent are you? How do you parent? There’s a meme for that amid the modern obsession with dissecting and defining parenting styles”  July 18, 2023 July 18, 2023 https://www.proquest.com/central/docview/2838432152/3D22720E0AA34700PQ/10?accountid=48753&sourcetype=Newspapers

[xiv] Mercer, Jean. Thinking Critically about Child Development: examining myths & misunderstanding. Praeger Publishers, 2016, 246

[xv] Francis, Richard C.  Epigenetics: the ultimate mystery of inheritance.  WW Norton, 2011, 72-73

[xvi] Zeltser, Francyne  “A psychologist shares the 4  styles of parenting – and the type that researchers say is the most successful”  Jun 29, 2021 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/child-psychologist-explains-4-types-of-parenting-and-how-to-tell-which-is-right-for-you.html

[xvii] “Parenting Styles and their Evolution: Old, New, Recent Studies and Recommendations”  Oct 17, 2023 https://www.consciousmommy.com/post/parenting-styles-and-their-evolution

[xviii] Practical Psychology  “Parenting Style Quiz (Free Test + Instant Results)”  Feb 1, 2024 https://practicalpie.com/parenting-style-quiz/

[xix] Alexander, Bruce K.  The Globalization of Addiction: a study in poverty of the spirit.  2008, p. 154

Preface

A hair stylist tipped my head back and told me ever since she was six, she wanted to style hair.  Apparently it would surprise us to know how many people become aware of their life focus/purpose quite early in life. My desire to become an adoptive parent, as I have written earlier, began with a childhood dream.  Reaching adulthood, I, still at the teething stage of maturity, tried chewing like any curious puppy on a couple of what might have been initiations into the world of adoption.

One of the winters I Iived in the Canadian north I shared a squatter’s log cabin with a school teacher teaching elementary children who spoke little English outside the classroom. Because my religious community believed I was ‘doing God’s work’, I was financed by family, friends and some church groups in the south, receiving from this collective something north (a blatant pun) of $100.00 per month which to me, in the seventies, seemed enough for food and the roof over my head. Who knows how much my roommate was covering.  I in financial naiveté never noticed.  I was the protestant fundamentalist equivalent of a hippie, though too otherworldly to cotton on when others were talking free love, it wasn’t God’s free and redemptive love.

One afternoon while I was going through the motions of language study while my roommate spent the day addressing the needs of 40 clamouring children, I was interrupted by a knock at the door.  A man, maybe in his twenties, stood in the porch; in one hand, he held a baby girl under one year old and in the other, a baby bottle. The baby was wrapped in a blanket: thank God for little mercies. The man, her father, held the baby out to me, telling me her name was Gladys.    As I absolutely unhesitatingly took the baby from his arms, I did have the presence of mind to ask how long he wanted to leave Gladys with us.  “Oh, a day, or a week, a year… ”, he squinted as he slipped back out the door.  This was a Friday afternoon. My roommate with end-of-the-week plans for a child-free weekend, came home to find me dragging a dresser drawer out on the floor next to the kitchen table, turning it into a make shift cradle –‘enthusiastically’ she quite generously observed.   Finances, wherewithal, and most seriously, legalities never given a moment’s attention, I was fussing over what to do with a name like Gladys.  Gladys’ young mother had her priorities more clearly in order.  Within a couple of hours, she came to the door to ask if we had her daughter; with hardly another word she walked over to the drawer on the kitchen floor and lifted Gladys into her arms.  In a small town, word mercifully travels quickly.  The aborted first attempt to follow my dream summed up by my roommate: “Even you were relieved you’d dodged that bullet.”

A few years later I was visiting someone who lived above the market in a provincial town in the Philippines. A visitor came to the door who may have heard an ‘Americana’ was visiting.  My coping skills in the language, Tagalog, were not enviable, but I could pick out enough words to know the person in the doorway was asking if I would like to buy a child.  Buying a child was doable, and done in those years, with apparently little legal difficulty within the local community.  It was quite another thing for an expatriate on a work visa.  Maybe my prefrontal cortex was by then in the final stages of development or I had heard some scary stories for I had sufficient good sense to say, “Salamat po, pero hindi naman.”  (“Thank you, but not really.”)

What you know of me so far is that I was at best comfortable with no stable income or clearly articulated reason for actually living a life on earth – something Joe and Josephine Normal think is foundational.  I had daydreams but played out each day as though only life after death had value.  I felt like a dopey bystander to life active around me.  Generously you might call me a late-bloomer.  OK.

‘In the fullness of time’ as it says in Galatians 4:4 of the old King James Bible the finances, wherewithal and legalities began to fall into place, and I could now begin to present myself as a viable candidate for adoption.  Still single and beginning a career as a school teacher, I admit I still needed a bit of a nudge from my sister with whom I had often talked of my interest in adoption.  A friend told her of an older, and sweet, foster boy.  Succinctly summarized, as I was only beginning to evolve into what parenting might entail, I think he got a much better home with a couple in a small town on Vancouver Island.  Still I had taken the first step: I shook off the vague daydream, now actively seeking to adopt.

The poet and Instagram personality, Yung Pueblo, encourages people to find “a partner who supports your dreams”, not an essential in adoption, but wow for lots of reasons, a very good thing. Jessica O’Dwyer, writes of her process in adoption in Mamalita: an adoption memoir. For O’Dwyer menopause arrived at 32.  In time, she decided to adopt.  The last sentence of Chapter One: “But first, I wanted a husband.” I agree! And along came Dave.  We took the next steps together.  For most, these steps are paperwork, orientation and about two years of aborted adoptions; a few possible adoptions fell through before we were offered Yasik.

I am writing this post to preface the story of our adoption as family, a story I will write on the template of Joseph Campbell’s interpretation of the ‘Hero’s Journey’.  Even the vague and naïve experiences above can be seen as part of a template for such a journey.  The Hero’s Journey is extrapolated from ancient stories as an explanation for why people have human experiences.  I chose a common outline for many myths as a template because I embraced the Hero’s Journey as the way I want to understand why I am on earth: hopefully I am working my way toward becoming a person who can live a life I am at home with.  As I understand the human experience as interpreted by myths like the Odyssey and many others, we as humans encounter shipwrecks, monsters, deep sleeps on some island and conflicts in our search for home, a stable life or to learn how to be human. Maybe as was Odysseus’ experience, many of us for a vast variety of reasons, do not take the most direct route to return to our homes or places of maturity.  Perhaps I took the slow boat to find what I wanted to experience in my life.  In Book 3 of the Odyssey, Athena puts Odysseus into a deep sleep in a cave.  I too may have gotten stuck on some island and put into a deep sleep.  I do know I certainly have always felt I didn’t fully awake or fully begin to experience life until I began taking realistic steps toward adoption.  I once heard a preacher say we better get our lives together because by 45 we are set in our ways as surely as if we‘d been poured in concrete.  We now know we are not hardwired; our brains, minds, even our bodies are rewiring, changing throughout our lives.  We continue to evolve on our human journeys.  We can become the people we want to be, may even planned to be as we set out on our human journey.  Sidebar: research done by Dr. Daniel Gilbert found “… over a ten-year period of time, you’re not going to be the same person” (Personality Isn’t Permanent, Benjamin Hardy p 37).

An abundance of myths worldwide give weight to this explanation of life on earth. Why we find ourselves on earth and taking such a journey is less substantiated.  I may have slipped the bonds of sanity, but I have decided to go with the assertions made by Natalie Sudman in The Application of Impossible Things: my near death experience in Iraq (2012).   Sudman had a near death experience when her convoy drove over a bomb in Iraq. I use the word ‘assertion’ as her perspective.  I have not had an NDE so for me it can be no more than a belief.  Sudman said the experience revealed to her we choose the experiences we enter into when we come from another place.  It is assumed by many Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” So maybe.  Kate Atkinson in her 2002 Not the End of the World collection of short stories has one called “The Bodies Vest” about a man, Vincent, who has observed death up close and personal: his father, his first wife and her father. On the last page of the short story (P. 192), the narrator says as he lay dying himself that he wants to assure his two sons for whom he wanted better things he had come to realize   “… everything was all right but he couldn’t speak and besides he had no logical evidence on which to base that belief.” I have no ‘logical evidence’ either.  It just works for me to choose to believe we are spiritual beings who have come to earth to have a human experience.  That I might have dreamed up a plan to come to earth to deal with adoption and soon after I arrived I was reminded of my purpose in a dream works for me. Whatever.  At best we can say we are here. What do we do with that reality?

All this to say I approach my search to understand the world of adoption from the perspective I may have come to earth to experience a journey in adoption, hopefully continually learning a better way, likely less for myself and Dave now as something I might share with those who are considering becoming, have become and are still in the middle of being birth parents, adoptees, and adopters, or are looking back to seek understanding.

I go as far out on a limb as I can to find support when I seek to show it is not just the Luke Sky Walkers, Harry Potters or those we deem highly successful in the non-fiction world who are on a hero’s or heroine’s journey, but also birth or bio parents, adoptees and adopters who struggle with the baggage of adoption.  And to be even more specific, I am not only talking about those who begin life in institutional care, become adopted and go on to international success like Russian-born, American-raised, Jessica Long, but I am also hoping to make a case for the seven year old boy sent back to Russia by his adoptive mother, and of course, my son, Yasik.

The plot line for the ‘Hero`s Journey’ is a three act play: separation, initiation/disintegration, return/re-integration.  So simple a plot outline must surely allow for liberty of detail: is the main character the only one who gets a full on hero’s or heroine’s journey? Odysseus was noble born and secure in a family, with a loving wife and son.  What of the crew members who died when Zeus decided to pin cocky Odysseus’ ears back a bit? Are they merely stock characters or foils summarily drowned off, or are they too on a journey with different purposes in their human experiences, finishing equally as well, yet not registering on our mainstream scale of success?

In his interview with Bill Moyer, Joseph Campbell makes clear the hero is not limited to our ideas about a classical hero but is for all of us the path of maturation all evolving humans follow. If Campbell is right, Odysseus’ crew too were on a hero’s journey.  The young fellow who dies early in a freak accident or in an act of gun violence, or someone one’s cherished daughter who dies of an overdose on her first experiment with drugs, or the child who languishes in institutional care: have they too not come to have a human experience on a hero’s or heroine’s journey?  What about the child caught in an abusive foster home until self-worth has died?   What gods came to her rescue? Yet Campbell says the hero’s journey is for all of us. In Ernie Crey and Suzanne Fournier’s book, Stolen From Our Embrace, he shares details from the life experiences of two of his siblings who were taken from their families and put into foster care. The following is the piece about the life journeys of two of his sisters.

Frances and Jane had fared no better in their foster homes [than others among his siblings].  The fundamentalist Christian foster parents [they were placed with] exerted strict “discipline” through whippings, psychological terror and heavy farm labour.  The girls were told if they didn’t submit to discipline they’d burn in hell along with all the other pagan Indians.  As adults, my sisters told us with tears flowing down their faces about their foster father’s favoured punishment.  For any imagined infraction he’d march the girls in the middle of the night down to the poultry barns to shovel out chicken shit until dawn.  Both Frances and Jane carried deep shame throughout their lives about being Indian and a lot of anger towards white adults.  After Frances began drinking heavily as a young mother, her baby daughter, Roberta, was apprehended by social workers, again without any notification of family members.  The loss of a second generation of Crey children was well underway.  It seemed like nothing could ever repair the abandonment and grief Frances felt, and her guilt for failing Roberta.  In the late 1980s she died of a heroin overdose.

 As an adult, Jane told me of being sexually abused by her foster parent’s son, who was never charged and is now a Christian missionary in Africa.  In her late teens, Jane gave birth to a son who was adopted…. Jane now spends most of her time on Vancouver’s meanest  streets in a methadone- maintenance program but receiving no psychiatric care or counseling to help her cope with the immense losses  in her life (42,43).

I think I will add here that the foster father (if it is decent to use the word ‘father’) was an ‘upstanding’ member of the church I grew up in.

Just now as I update this post I am listening to ‘The Daily Show‘ being moderated by D.L. Hughley (1/30/23).  He is interviewing Ben Crump, a lawyer, after the death of Tyre Nichols.  In talking about how Tyre Nichol’s mother is coping with her son’s death, he told Hughley that the mother said,”I believe that my son was sent for an assignment and now he’s back in heaven with God because he’s completed that assignment.  That’s the only way I can cope with this tragedy.  A greater good is going to happen with what happened to my son.”

There has to be more to understand about the Hero’s journey and how the end goal of maturation is understood if each of us is truly on such a journey.  I choose to hope there is a story with more widely open arms, being careful not to massage the story to fit the Hero’s Journey plotline.

An Update:

June 6’20, a Saturday morning.  Translation: in no rush to get out of bed, time to run a finger over my tablet snooping for Trump gossip and slipping passed Covid tracking graphs. It wouldn’t have entered my head to check for any activity on my website.  Just days before Dave had installed a spam blocker on my site. Within minutes my ego which had been swelling in wonder at the numbers of hits I was getting on my site was a spurting, sputtering balloon. Not one real hit remained.  OK, so I really am writing only to myself, not just pretending to journal my way to a personal understanding of adoption.

But Gmail, yes.  I check it daily.  A tap on my Gmail and there was a little surprise. Gmail had alerted me to a comment on my website.  The comment, you can check it – as of Feb 19’21 it is still the only comment, reiterating ‘in your face’ how non-existent traffic to my site is.  It reads, “I believe we adopted Yaroslav’s older sister, Svetlana!”

For me this is one of those ‘time stops’ moments. I had given some thought over the years to Yasik’s ‘bio’ family, wondering how we might help him get in contact with them if he ever showed interest in finding them.  He had not yet expressed interest, at least to Dave and I.  Sometime in his later teens, I asked him if he wanted to look for his mother whom I believed must have cared for him enough to have taken him to a hospital, returning to visit a couple of times.  His response, “She never cared about me, so why should I care about her.’” I think that was a flat statement, not a question.   Still, we had the parents’ names and from time to time I googled them.  We had lost the one paper in Russian with a list of Yasik’s siblings’ names.

That morning I showed no restraint hitting articles on Trump, yet now I was restrained.  I rolled over and with eyes in full stun mode looked carefully at the alert, trying to comprehend that I even had one.

“Daaaavve, look at this.” I opened the website to pull up the comment.  And there it was.  Yasik might have a sibling trying to get in touch with him.

Restraint again.  What if this was just another way in for spam?  A Nigerian prince wanting us to rescue him as he drained out our bank account?

We let this electrifying comment hover over us all day like a drone trying to see if we were going to respond, waiting for or taunting us to get over our silly cautiousness and deal with it.

Meanwhile the sender of the comment was on “pins and needles” so certain was she of her message.

You see I had started putting out posts from my journal about our adoption experience.  In Journal Entry #1 I provide Yasik’s full birth name, Yaroslav Guerin Nicolavich, and the name of the city he was living in at the time of our adoption, Yaroslavl.  The comment sender, Cherie, had been looking for her adopted daughter’s younger brother since 2000, shortly after their adoption and with the aid of a set of documents not provided at the time of our adoption.  Good ole’ Google – as obscure as my site is – found the match.  Cherie put in the comment and crossed her fingers.  On our end we dithered until the evening.  Finally, we returned the email with a tentative response.  She phoned.  And sent pictures of her daughter.  The evidence was in the pictures.    Svetlana is Yasik’s sister.  Turns out the other two, though half brother and sister to Yasik and his sister, look amazing like Svetlana and Yasik as well.

And this may not sound particularly PC coming from an adoptor rather than an adoptee from whom the observation usually comes, but as this discovery started to shift our thinking, I began to sense that in some hardly fathomable way, Yasik has some kind of fuller substance, is more substantial as a human being, a reality, a history with a bio family.  No longer a ghost as some adoptees describe feeling of themselves.   I don’t understand why this is and maybe it is an idea from societal constructs, still it impacts.

Next step: now we needed to get in touch with Yasik about this life–altering news.  Cherie says “our kids are complicated and guarded”.   And when Dave and I try to get in touch with him to share news that deserves a flashing Breaking News tag, we agree once again.  It takes nearly a month to finally get him on the phone.   I sent him phone messages, wrote letters –one letter was one sentence in bold, in  caps, as tall as the page allows: IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN SOME LIFE-CHANGING NEWS … CALL THESE NUMBERS: numbers he knew well.  His sister and her family were getting as antsy as we were.

Near the end of the month, Dave and I had an optometrist appointment at Costco.  Dave went in first and I waited for my turn on a plastic chair along side a busy aisle of product and shoppers.  With some finger twiddling moments to fill, my default brain mode in times of Yasik stress is to try twisting God’s arm to get him involved, never certain that I have his ear.   “God could you please get Yasik to call.”  In this very poor excuse for a waiting room, God may have done something. My cell rang.  I fumbled to find it and turn it off, certain it was a robo call in a foreign language.  I didn’t recognize the number. But I answered it: curiosity? boredom? auto pilot kicking in? a prompt from God? maybe, certainly not because it would normally have been a good idea.

A receptionist was on the line, calling from some medical office and wanting to know if we would be willing to offer our home address to give Yasik an address in order for him to receive MSP.

“Of, course. Our address is —.  And uhmmm, would it be possible for you to get a message to Yasik for us.”

“Want to talk to him? He’s right here.”

“Oh, yes.”

Fumble, mumble. “Hi, Mom.”

“Yasik, I don’t want to tell you now. We are at appointments.  But please, phone tonight. We have unbelievable news.”  Or something to that effect.

Yasik interpreted all this to mean that we were at a doctor’s office and Dave must be having some medical issue, having no idea that I was going to be telling him he has siblings.  One as nearby as the US.

I was so excited myself that I burbled to the receptionist, who was trying to prepare me for my eye exam, something to the effect that tonight my son was going to be finding out that he has a sister in North America.  In the most blandly receptionist tone possible, she responded, “Oh, that would be weird.”   Really?  This is some of the best news I have heard in my life time.  Cherie says Svetlana was over the moon at another point in their developing relationship.  I was over the moon at this moment. But like Dave says, just because it is filling your heart and mind, it might not be registering in quite the same way to a stranger…..   Duh.

Yasik called in the early evening.

“Are you sitting down?” I asked in announcer mode.

He thought Dave must be seriously ill.

“Yasik we got an email and pictures and everything. You have a sister and she lives in the US.” And whatever other details came bubbling up.

“So what do you think?”

With a chuckle, “That sounds interesting.” There was happiness in his voice.  But no “Wow! Holy Shit! You have got to be kidding!”  Just – “That sounds interesting”.  Interesting?  It’s mind blowing to me from a perspective that was nurtured from infancy to express emotions with the confidence that they would be acknowledged.   Again as Cherie noted, these two siblings are complex and guarded.  If from infancy, a display of emotions has been ignored or even discouraged, a guarded response is deeply ingrained.  Only the note of happiness in his voice was allowed to slip through.

Svetlana had called that afternoon.  Like Dave and I, she and her mom were barely holding their breaths as well.  She wanted to know when she could call Yasik and I said, “It just so happens…. He called just today.” We were able to let her know we had finally connected with Yasik and that he would be calling us in the evening.  She gave us her phone number stat.

I gave her phone number to Yasik.   He called her without hesitation later that evening.  Pictures were sent back and forth, pictures of Svetlana and Anya and Nicolai, that could have been Yasik at different times; especially in the younger pictures, the similarities are obvious.  Cherie and Svetlana also sent copies of the documents we had not been given.  Svetlana’s passport picture at the time of adoption could have been Yasik’s.  So begins a new chapter of their lives.

I will include other details, especially from the documents they received, of their lives in chronologically appropriate journal entries.

Entry #12A   Set and Setting

Yasik was now a Canadian Vincent.  It was time to move from his Russian nurture to his nurture in our family, not ignoring that he would be bringing his Russian-transferring-to-Canadian nature along.

Even though Dr. Spock said parents know more than they think they do[i], let me begin this group of posts about parenting by straight up saying Dave and I had the awareness of Donald Rumsfeld when we took on parenting; there were “known knowns” and “known unknowns“, but then there also are those “unknown unknowns”.[ii] The “known knowns” would be similar to what SNL suggested Kevin Federline might have known: 1. Always feed your children. 2. Children are ‘babe magnets’.  3. For the rest, Federline suggested parents should call him to babysit.[iii]

We didn’t have Federline’s phone number so that was a non-starter.  But like Federline, Dave quickly picked up on how much of a babe magnet Yasik was for women gave him their seats on the bus and fawned over Yasik.  So that was good. And we did know to feed our kid. But maybe for that one we were simply following the Golden Rule of ‘do unto others as you would have done for yourself’.

But from where did we know to do the other things we so quickly fell into doing? I ‘conducted’, or less pompously, ‘asked around’ about the assumption that we parent like our parents which perhaps more pompously is called the ‘intergenerational transmission of parenting’.[iv] The responses I got ranged from vehemently ‘Never’ to ‘Yes, my parents’ way worked for me’, but most also added on reflection, that the times are different. In the everyday details of life which have been part of our society for a century or two, Dave and I did things as our parents did:  maybe hugging was not yet a comfortable expression of love for our parents but feeding, clothing and sending us off to school was held as a daily routine; vacations were pilgrimages to visit the relatives or combine fruit gathering or job hunting with some relaxation.

Whether I was comfortable with it or not, I know for a time Yasik carried my little Bible around and sat with it on the couch watching TV.  He prayed with me at night – “Dear God”, named all his cousins and aunts and uncles, “Amen” and made us laugh.  It seems to me that was a holdover from my childhood and my own religious upbringing although, of course, perhaps Yasik went so willingly along with prayers and carried the little kid size Bible like a toy or icon because of some religious activities encouraged in the orphanage.[v]  Dave has always found a tool box to be a special kind of candy box, so whether he worried about his tools or not, he may have passed the toolbox’s wonders on to Yasik.  Or did Yasik come from a long line of mechanics?  It is hard to be definitive about where our inclinations have come from, but for both Dave and I some childhood experiences were valued and continued: eating the evening meal together (when work schedules allowed) was important for it was the time of togetherness and laughter.  Going to the lake or going for drives up the mountains were also important as were weekend get-togethers with family and friends.  Having parents equally involved in our home care was also respected.  If my Mom was working, then my Dad burnt the pancakes. Dave’s dad cooked with the salt and pepper shaker. In both families, gender did not dictate chore assignment; each kid was expected to wash dishes or mow the lawn.  Wearing hand-me-downs was a given; no noses got stuck in the air when we were offered hand-me-downs for Yasik. Interests were encouraged as far as the dollar could reach. Pets and bicycles were musts, even if it meant an opportunity to encourage sharing.  In my family, all four of us truly tried to ride our lone two-wheeler together. Dave’s dad bought a bike for each of his kids. Dave’s mom bought art supplies for him and even sent one of his cartoons into a drawing contest.  I still hear the Hallelujah chorus when I remember the day my Mom took me to the library.

Like it or not, consciously or not, we fall back on neuronal pathways well-trod unless the experiences associated are too negative or rendered useless by the march of time.  Gabor Mate in The Myth of Normal: trauma, illness & healing in a toxic culture, in a tone that sounds quite confident, says, “It turns out that our innate parenting instinct is perfectly calibrated to ensure the provision of the thing many “experts” would have us ignore: the child’s developmental needs”.[vi]  And Mate is backed up by Bruce D. Perry who says

The brain is an historical organ…. Our life experiences shape who we become by creating our brain’s catalog of template memories, which guide our behavior, sometimes in ways we can consciously recognize, more often via processes beyond our awareness…. Since much of the brain develops early in life, the way we are parented has a dramatic influence on brain development. And so, since we tend to care for our children the way we were cared for ourselves during our own childhoods, a good “brain” history of a child begins with a history of the caregiver’s childhood and early experience.[vii]

Cecile David-Weill, in Parents Under the Influence: words of wisdom from a former bad mother, will agree: “Our childhood continues to manifest and affect us as we get older, shaping our choices in every facet of our lives(24).

According to the Pew Research Center we would more easily recognize that we do indeed parent like our parents at times if we see categories of parenting.[viii]

Dave and I were middle-aged parents who had lived in a variety of environments.  We had whatever our parents had taught us, and we had ample time to observe ways that other parents parent; we must have had some trending input from reading or other media.  We had also taken the 9-week adoption prep required by BC’s social services: about all I remember from that seminar was information on the adoption process for domestic adoption and struggles adoptors may experience with special needs children.  I recently found notes Dave made at the orientation meetings.  Turns out we were given a basic overview of Attachment Theory. Perhaps though, abstract notes could not secure solid ground in our hearts and minds amidst the case histories of families with special needs adoptees or the boggling but potentially exciting procedural information for the adoption process. In the flurry of such an experience and despite the advice of adoption experts, “The adoptors who were most successful were prepared, had educated themselves, and had ties to support services”[ix], parenting as a life challenge I was about to engage in and more specifically, Attachment Theory, sounded like ‘news to me’ when I began reading in adoption years later. I also now know we were not the only not-so-super parents out there for Scott Simon in Baby We Were Meant For Each Other: in praise of adoption takes pains to note that some otherwise excellent parents showed neither interest nor made the time for books or support groups while raising their very happy child.[x]

But now I am taking a look backwards.  Recently I was taxiing the neighbour kids to the Dollar Store, a trip the neighbour, in the house between us and the kids, said they made sound like a trip to Disneyland. They range from 2 years old to 15.  On the way I asked them what they thought a parent was. The 11-year-old without hesitation listed off pretty much everything a Google search would offer: protect and provide.  The 15-year-old topped the list up with “and have fun”.

Google offers up numbers, letters and alliterated titles like 1,2,3 Magic Parenting, the 3 As of parenting: Authoritative, Attachment, and Acceptance or the 3 Fs of Positive Parenting: Firm, Fair and Friendly or the 3 Ts Parenting: Tune In, Talk more, Take Turns.   Actually 3 seems the favourite as it often is in many realms, for here is yet another 3, 3 Principles: Love, Limits and Latitude. The # 4 offers some competition with 4 Cs: Choices, Consequences, Consistency, Compassion or the 4 Rs of Parenting: Respect, Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Restraint in the process of raising children. Gentle parenting is built on 4 Basic Pillars: Empathy, Respect, Understanding, and Boundaries.  The 5Cs of Neurodiverse Parenting are Self-Control, Compassion, Collaboration, Consistency and Celebration.  And then there are the 6 Parenting Dimensions: Warmth, Rejection, Autonomy support, Coercion, Structure, and Chaos. And so it goes until at least 10 unless you consider Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life but only one of those rules is directly related to parenting: #5 – Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.  No, that is not true. # 11 also applies – Do not bother children while they are skateboarding.[xi] Is it all summed up in the Parenting Golden Rule: “Treat your child as you would like to be treated if you were in the same position”, which is apparently simple, straightforward, and effective? Ok, like the neigbour kids said, protect, provide, and have fun.

I heard Dr. Phil once say, in a context I may be misconstruing, that it (life/relationships) is all about perspective or perception.  It seems to me that life’s experiences have another and equal dimension. More specifically for this post, adoption has another and equal dimension. And let me say right here that this could get a bit messy as I worked this out in the middle of the night, but at the time it sounded sane to me so here goes.  Set, as in ‘mindset’, and setting are terms for a theory that refers to the psychological, social and cultural parameters which shape the response to psychedelic experience.[xii]  I would like to apply that thought to adoption as family with ‘mindset’ being both the genetics and the perspective or perceptions the adoptee brings to family and ‘setting’ as all that impacts the development of the adoptee’s ‘mindset’: social, cultural, historical, political, physical, economic and spiritual environment that impacts the relationship (even with a list like that I probably missed something). Or as I put it in Entry #11 (with help from Google) we as persons are physical and mental beings who develop networks of beliefs that impact how we calculate and think about our environment and social relationships, using reflection and language to make autonomous choices and engage in actions, with the right to be accountable for our choices.

To have a good trip both mindset and setting must be taken into account. Jerome Kagan, a developmental psychologist at Harvard, put the idea this way: “Genes and family may determine the foundation of a house, but time and place determine its form” for as Dr. Nicole Letourneau says on the preceding page, “Genetics may determine how easy it is to push a person’s buttons, but the finger that actually pushes them belongs to the early caregiving environment – how a person was parented.”  ” … regardless of who raised them“.[xiii]

Dr. Nicole Letourneau and Justin Joschko explain it as entwined in this way:

To divide traits into genetically determined and environmentally determined compartments is to misunderstand how genes work.  Consider hair colour, a trait that, on the surface, seems to be determined solely by a person’s genes.  A child’s hair is seldom a colour that does not have some familial precedent.  By contrast, the influence of the environment on one’s hair seems nonexistent.  Blonde Nordic children adopted by Chinese families do not spontaneously develop black hair.  However, this does not mean genes alone are responsible for a person/hair colour.  After all, genes can really only do one thing: instruct cells, by way of an interpreter called RNA, to create a series of amino acids, which then link together to form proteins.  Now, this one function is extremely, unbelievably important. Proteins are the body’s proletariat, the workers who carry out the myriad tasks which allow us, the society in which they dwell, to function.  But genes cannot on their own, dictate, the colour of a person’s hair.  Hair colour is determined by melanin, which is the end product of the amino acid tyrosine.  Now, genes do code for tyrosine, hence the genetic influence.  However, in hair the degree of melanin accumulation is decided in part by the concentration of copper to the cells producing that hair.  When that cell has more copper, the hair is darker.  Should the intake of copper be reduced to below a certain threshold, hair generated by the same follicle will be lighter than it was previously, when copper supplies were plentiful…. Such is the case with thousands of environmental factors we take for granted.  It isn’t until a radical change in the environment depletes once-plentiful resources that we realize how much those resources contributed to our development…

I guess all of this allows me to continue to use the set and setting metaphor. We have considered the world Yasik came from and how that was impacting his mindset, who he is as a person with his unique perceptions, and now we will begin to consider the world Yasik moved into with adoption, our family, with Dave and I as parents, the setting.  As we strove to parent in a way that we thought offered love and care to Yasik, what perception was he forming of family? When we took this person, Yasik, to the park to ride the teeter totter, he was a tidy little package of 40 inches by 40 pounds and whichever one of us got on the opposite side of the teeter totter that stood a mere 2 feet above ground was north of 3 times 40 by 40. Sometimes Yasik was in danger of being tossed into the air; other times he could be stuck on the ground as we and all that pertained to his new world of family strove to find a good experience on life’s teeter-totter. The parent-child relationship works for a balance with those dynamics. Riding together with tiny on one side and extra-large on the other can still be wonderful fun if extra-large is caring and responsible and the mechanism that holds the teeter totter together and the playground it has been set in are copacetic (a weird word Dave used to love).

I will look at our set and setting in the next posts by laying out our setting of family via adoption with the hopes of culling some awareness of the perceptions Yasik was developing.

Maybe the only gift is a chance to inquire,

to know nothing for certain.

An inheritance of wonder and nothing more.

― William Least Heat Moon[xiv]

Footnotes at the end of Entry# 12D