Step back from whackamole power struggles and step into stress-reducing autonomy-savvy parenting…
Sometimes being a parent can feel like an uphill struggle. If only our kids would listen to us. If only they would just follow our advice!!
Whether it is battles over what to wear with young children, or arguments about homework and procrastination with teens, it can be help periodically to just take a step back, take a view, and triage what you’ll go to war on, and what you can – and possibly should let go of.
There’s a reason why Mel Robbins’ ‘Let Them Theory’ is such a hit. Though the book isn’t written explicitly for parents, there are many aspects of it that apply and often we would do better to apply.
It’s hard to stand back and ‘let’ our kids make mistakes…But mistakes are part of the business of childhood and adolescence. They are often the price of wisdom.
Our lives are so entwined with those of our children and teens. We invest heavily in their happiness and success. We take responsibility for them – sometimes far too much. For instance feeling responsible for a four-year old’s tantrum is simply piling on suffering on top of the inconvenience of the inevitability of a small child being able to self-regulate. We worry that their mistakes will reflect badly on us. That other parents, friends or family will judge us and find us wanting.
Gabor Mate speaks very beautifully on the development of counterwill in children – that very early in their verbal lives, they learn to say no. Most often they say no much sooner than they learn to say yes. And he reckons that this is an important sequence – that we are not able to give an authentic yes if we haven’t first learned to say no.
Saying no is the hallmark of the ‘terrible twos’ and this stage gets revisited in the teenage years. Especially in the early and mid-teens as we have to renegotiate our boundaries with them as they require more independence and autonomy and we are responsible for judging their readiness for it! For children who are neurodiverse and perhaps end up being more ordered, supported and scaffolded by their parents and caregivers, a persistent or pervasive demand for autonomy can emerge. (PDA or persistent demand avoidance).
The development of our autonomy runs side by side – and creates friction with the competing need for intimacy and connection. Children need to be close to their caregivers. As do adolescents…But they also have a compelling psychological need to exert their self-hood. And this is where we can find ourselves locked into power struggles. Especially when governed by expectations that children should listen…and respect their parents…Just as we did back in the day…
This tension between intimacy and autonomy is one that needs navigation throughout our relational lives. I remember once, a few years into married life, returning home rather later than planned and rather the worse for wear after a reunion with former colleagues, to find my lovely husband waiting up, grumpy and worried. It was a sobering flashback to my teens!
The road to accountability, love, and respect in healthy adult to adult relationships is a long one. True, rewarding intimacy, without excessive self-sacrifice and being known and respected a separate self with agency and autonomy is hard won. And it may well begin with the refusal to wear socks.
In peaceful Parent, Happy Kids, Dr Laura Markham says this:
“Kids who have to fight to assert their individuality and independence keep fighting later in life, even when it’s not appropriate. Kids who are allowed to make appropriate decisions early in life — “Do you want to wear the green shirt or the red shirt?” “Today is Saturday so you need to clean up your room. Do you want to do it before lunch or right after?” — don’t have to reflexively assert their own will, because they have been allowed to develop it throughout their childhood.”
Equally children who learn to capitulate and comply and sacrifice their autonomy for fear of losing their parents love and approval -or inciting their anger – will use appeasement to avoid argument in later life. This reflexive compliance does not equip them for being on the receiving end of controlling or toxic behaviour from peers. Or for being able to be both an individual and self-advocate for your own needs in a relationship with a partner.
The price of people-pleasing is a both a lack of autonomy, and a lack of intimacy, as your fuller, wholer self is curbed and sacrificed to compliance. So when kids and teens show up as being very strong-minded or oppositional, or insistent on doing things their way, that counter-will and practice in pushing back with us their parents is part of a process that can be seen as protective, even if it can be wearing and persecutory! It’s a reframe that might reduce the second dart of suffering (the stories we tell ourselves) when worn down by arguments and power struggles with a headstrong child!
Being able to negotiate balance between closeness, harmony, intimacy in connection with autonomy, free will, and independence is the secret sauce to navigating healthy and productive relationships. This recipe requires lots of learning from cycles of rupture and repair. It also requires agility and discerning responsiveness to change and circumstance from us as our kids grow. Too much rigidity and either the counterwill or appeasement patterns will become the go-to response that the child is not able to grow out of.
So the challenge is to take a step back and consider. What power struggles could – and should – you walk away from. What patterns of correction could you focus on more strategically if you weren’t playing whackamole? That’s often part of what I work on in my coaching with parents when things feel like they are getting a bit much or a bit stuck.
Where are your ‘red line issues’?
These are your non-negotiables. These might be around respect, digital boundaries, curfews, health and safety. It is helpful to be super-clear about these if you’re going to break cycles of conflict or flare-ups over relatively trivial stuff whilst the more important issues don’t get the focus they truly need…
Where can you ‘Let them’ have their choice – even if it means they do not follow your suggestion. Where can you stand down from the battlefield where you could – if they would let you- manage things better? How important is it that they don’t cut up food properly, or talk when they are eating – does that need to be a battle fought every time…Especially when there are bigger, more thorny issues to tackle…You want to keep your powder dry for that, rather than the bag-dump / shoe drift in the hallway/ kitchen / staircase…
You might want to stick to your guns in imposing a laundry break for well-worn and smelly clothes when your teen insists on one more wear… But if you want them to really learn about why you value cleanliness and personal hygiene, it might be faster and more expedient to let them learn from the natural consequences of wearing dirty clothes. Sometimes they just need to hear it from someone else that they smell rank or that crusty food stains are gross…
They have our voice on rinse and repeat on these day-to-day sticking points…but sometimes being noticed and called out by voices further from home can land and be the prompt to the action we’ve been looking for. Sometimes we have to let them make their mistake, and help steer them towards productive action and self-compassion so that they can learn.
When we do this we help them develop a more intrinsic motivation to act. Helping them see their choice and the consequences of using their autonomy helps that experiential learning. It reduces our stress when we separate ‘our stuff’ from ‘their stuff’ -giving them choice (within reasonable measure and where it is safe to do so) reduces their stress too. Ironically lowering the bar of what we ‘need’ them to be or do – helps them raise their game…
As long as it’s not a matter of health and safety, we can advise, we can suggest…but we can do so with less attachment, with less of an urgent need for compliance, and we can let them make their own choices – with the information from us – and trust that they will learn.
Consider building in choice and respecting agency wherever possible.
This can be in the small things – like choosing a snack after school, the order in which homework and household tasks get done, ordering their own choice of food at a restaurant…Choosing which coat to wear.
Giving them choice doesn’t mean a free-for-all. Letting them make informed choices is the essence of it all – and trusting that they will learn from the consequences.
If there are constant power struggles about certain extra-curricular activities you want them to pursue, consider the extent to which you can give them choice. The question is who really wants it? Is it you? Is it them? Ultimately as parents we can’t force our kids to do things they really don’t want to do. We can’t force a teenager to work hard. We can’t force a tantrum-ing child to do their piano practice.
We are able to – at a calmer moment – ask them about what they really want, and talk through the consequences of decisions. A child who enjoys their music lessons but doesn’t want to practice needs to be brought to a point of choice and to understand different perspectives. The financial perspective, the teacher’s perspective. If you are trying to give a young child a musical interest, perhaps the power struggle will shift if they have more choice over the instrument they learn.
When we are constantly checking and chasing our teens about their homework, it skews not only our relationship with them, it impacts on their relationship with their work. Sometimes, letting them choose to be last minute or late with tasks and have some hard conversations and consequences with their teachers in class can change the dynamic.
Sometimes we need to let them forget their kit, or their homework and face the consequences rather than, for instance interrupting out plans to scan it and send it in for them, or drop their equipment off at school. An old friend of mine, a headteacher, used to have a sign on the door to the reception area. It read ‘Parents, if you are dropping off your son’s music instrument, sports kit or homework, please stop and turn back.’
Letting our kids face the consequences can let them learn. WE sometimes need to step back for them to step up. And of course, if they miss a music lesson, the natural consequence for forgetting and ignoring reminders would be for them to pay you back.
We learn to be responsible for our actions by being responsible and being held responsible.
Coaching them through the disappointment and the emotional aspects of being found wanting and encouraging them to envision a better path forward can be far more helpful in developing their self-drive. Our kids don’t have to be great at everything. But they do need help understanding, accepting and playing to their strengths and weaknesses. Stepping back in order for them to step up and step forward in their lives is crucial for them to discover their own self-motivation.
Reflect…
- How could you reduce power struggles by giving your child or teen more choice and autonomy?
- Where might you be stepping in too far when you could step back and ‘let them’ step up…
- When do you tend to save your child or teen from responsibility by fixing things for them?
- How can you scaffold them stepping in to being more responsible…eg targets on protocols for being accountable for whereabouts and curfew times…
- Who cares more about their academics? About the quality of work in subjects they are less inclined to? How can you frame a conversation that sets out their choices – and making it as informed a choice as possible. Eg a Year 10 student who can’t see the point of one of the subjects, what grade do they need to get in order to not have future choices constrained…Instead of helicoptering their homework and becoming their personal tutor, how can you engage them in how to be strategic in their approach so that they play to their strengths and minimise the impact of their problems…Making their choice one that is INFORMED gives them choice and agency rather than you corralling and pushing them.
Read more about autonomy-based parenting:
Of course stepping back from our true imperatives, our key values – would not be a good thing. But how many of our imperatives are false ones…or ones that a tactical retreat would enable us to make better progress one step at a time? This requires understanding and observation of our triggers – we can’t change what we can’t see. That’s what traps us in whackamole conflict.
It takes self-regulation skills, working with our nervous system to access more of our strategic, grounded self in order to do autonomy and accountability well in the home – where we are safe and where we all tend to be more messy than when we are on show out at work or school.
Learning how to work with your parenting ‘whooosh’ can be so helpful – how to step back from lobbing a corrective grenade and then having to deal with the fallout from that. And being able to teach and learn requires a calmer, more open system…So create some space, choose your battles more wisely…clear the path to parent more purposely and peacefully…
Get in touch if you’re interested in some coaching or training on this…Sometimes talking with a non-judgmental outsider who has the perspective and experience of working with many young people and their families can be a real help.
contact@emmagleadhill.com
