I love this, marta, so glad you pointed me to it from our discussion. I don't think the word crucifixion is overly dramatic, as you worried it was after you posted. After all, 'Jesus' was pointing to the 'good thief' on his right and the 'bad thief' to his left. Even to the end, with two people being tortured to death on either side, that wasn't enough to forgive both of them. No, he forgave the Romans who'd done this to them, but made sure to condemn the guy on his left. HE deserved what he got and should burn in hell besides, but not Jesus.
Personally, I wouldn't conflate good/bad with right/wrong. Right and wrong are about behaviors and ideas. It IS wrong when the 2 yr old bites someone, and should have useful consequences (Alice Waters bit a kid back, and that was when she realized she shouldn't work in childcare and became a culinary icon instead.) But the 2 yr old isn't bad, which would be about its character.
You make such an excellent point about the crux-i-fiction position being completely vulnerable. That never occurred to me but it makes so much sense! Judging others leaves us wide open to attack, most of all from our inner voice.
I'll add my thoughts preemptively on punishment. First take away their ability to do more harm. It's not so much a punishment but a consequence. In fact, it would be a mercy. No one should have that kind of power. Once you do that, you may find that the need or desire to punish goes away. At least that's my prediction. If you give another entity the power to judge and punish, you may end up creating another monster.
Such a fantastic comment, Tereza. I appreciate your thinking so much! I want to love everything you've said here.
Pointing out about Jesus pointing to the GOOD/BAD on either side of him! I've never thought of that. Or CRUX-I-FICTION. Holy cow! What word play! I have to let that marinate a bit.
I like your distinction between right/wrong as being related to actions, good/bad being related to character.
I have to think more about a 2 year old biting. Is the biting Wrong? I'm thinking they need something, most likely they need help from the adults in some way. Certainly it has effects - biting hurts other people! It's not ok to hurt other people, but the adults are responsible to keep everyone safe and to meet needs. And definitely there should be consequences, but I love the Hand in Hand Parenting view of meeting those acting out behaviors with love and setting loving boundaries. That biting is covering up some feelings of some kind, and if the kid can release the stuck feelings, they won't have the instinct to bite anymore. I have this vision of Patty Wipfler in some of her videos talking about coming in towards the biter or hitter and wrapping them up in a blanket and saying, "uh-oh, someone needs some kisses, I need to wrap you up like a burrito to keep you safe!" I tried this lots and lots with my son, who had a lot of aggression for several years. It didn't solve our problems, but at least it was loving and connecting and not shaming in my boundary setting. And he loved being wrapped up like a burrito - I think it helped his nervous system.
I love your preemptive thinking about punishment - seems like some parallels with the 2 year old and anyone of any age who hurts someone. Hurting others stems from some unattended need, and boundaries are the first step.
I will admit here that I lost my best friend over biting and aggression issues--not hers but her son's, who was the same age my middle daughter. Every time he acted out, all the attention turned to him--not necessarily positive but with nothing happening. She would leave with him sometimes, which was pretty much what he wanted. One time I placed him on time out, which was fine with him until I took away the Barbie car. She decided I was abusing him. Things fell apart between us. And I take no joy in having been proven right, with later wilderness camps that she had him kidnapped into, etc.
So I don't know that I agree that hurting others stems from unattended needs. In my experience, it's a form of power to hurt someone and be 'rewarded' with being the center of attention. She felt that her son had 'inherited' traits from his dad, who she wasn't with. I felt that all kids would do the same, if nothing happened that they didn't want. In a way, I believed in her son more than she did. It was just behavior, imo, not character.
But this is all based on one scenario, and that's not your son. Parenting is so hard, and we're all running our own experiments. It sounds like what you're doing is working for him, and that's all that matters.
Thanks for sharing, Tereza. Sounds like a painful time, to have that rending between you and your best friend. Gosh, parenting just brings up EVERYTHING, doesn’t it? And it’s all really tender, in my view, because it touches on parts of us that haven’t been healed from our childhoods. So that amps everything up even more.
Thanks for the kind words about how I’m helping my son. It is what matters, and it also matters how we help anyone who is hurting other people. My angle of curiosity lies with the deeper wounds that go to childhood, ancestry, and past lives. I think you go to addressing systems, I go to addressing the energy/emotional layer. Probably both are needed! Go us, for bringing a diversity of ways to address these problems!
Thank you for YOUR kind answer, marta. I worried all night (subliminally) that I was repeating my mistakes of telling other parents how to parent, without realizing what a tender place I was poking. What I learned from that experience and others, I'm embarrassed to say, is that mothers in particular have such deep seated guilt and fear that they're just not good parents and their kids will turn out terrible as a result.
So although I was talking about system changes, as you say, what mothers were hearing is 'My kids are better than yours is because I'm a better mom.' If I ever was that deluded, reality caught up with me when each daughter broke my heart, kept me up nights, and drove me crazy at different times.
So go us! None of my three made me any better prepared to figure out the other two--a constant dance between systems, energy, emotions. And they all seems to have survived intact!
Hearing you Tereza, and feeling your big heart! Did you worry that your kids would turn out terribly and it would be your fault? I worry about that, but more i think I overcorrect for my parents mistakes. They didn’t listen to my sensitive nature, and instead teased me about it. So emotions are my love, my hot buttons and my focus in so many areas of my life.
I loved your comment because it crystalized this knowing that we all bring valuable gifts in figuring out new ways of parenting - structural and systemic ways, emotional ways, and probably lots of other ways too.
That's interesting on overcorrecting for our own parents. My family is German, so emotions didn't exist, and I have tried to correct for that with my daughters. But my parents were also deeply Catholic, not in hypocritical ways but humble and obedient. Thinking for yourself terrified them. So it's not hard to figure out how this apple rolled as far from the tree as possible ;-)
I recently told my oldest that I thought I should use the sage my middle gave me for my birthday for a ritual to dispel my self-myth that I was a negligent mother. I've been having dreams about babies that I forget about or inadvertently kill. I think this is related to the oldest planning to start a family. I have a short story about being a 'serial abandoner' called Where We Fail, and I think I should post it. So maybe, rather than being afraid they'd turn out terribly (always a worry and just barely having crossed that finishing line, maybe), I worried that they'd turn out at all. Or whether I just wasn't a 'natural mom' something I never thought I'd be at all, and it was going to result in something fatal or worse (and we all know death's not the worst) happening to my kids and it would all be my fault.
"Don’t we all need help and grace?" Yes, yes we do. Thank you for giving voice and shape to this. How and when did we become the "black"/"white", good/evil, true/false, smart/idiot?? Where is the nuance, the timbre, the individual fluctuation, and how do we get it back? People like you, writing like yours give me hope that not all is lost, and that we can still recapture the multifaceted, infinite beauty and potential of what makes us human.
I love this, marta, so glad you pointed me to it from our discussion. I don't think the word crucifixion is overly dramatic, as you worried it was after you posted. After all, 'Jesus' was pointing to the 'good thief' on his right and the 'bad thief' to his left. Even to the end, with two people being tortured to death on either side, that wasn't enough to forgive both of them. No, he forgave the Romans who'd done this to them, but made sure to condemn the guy on his left. HE deserved what he got and should burn in hell besides, but not Jesus.
Personally, I wouldn't conflate good/bad with right/wrong. Right and wrong are about behaviors and ideas. It IS wrong when the 2 yr old bites someone, and should have useful consequences (Alice Waters bit a kid back, and that was when she realized she shouldn't work in childcare and became a culinary icon instead.) But the 2 yr old isn't bad, which would be about its character.
You make such an excellent point about the crux-i-fiction position being completely vulnerable. That never occurred to me but it makes so much sense! Judging others leaves us wide open to attack, most of all from our inner voice.
I'll add my thoughts preemptively on punishment. First take away their ability to do more harm. It's not so much a punishment but a consequence. In fact, it would be a mercy. No one should have that kind of power. Once you do that, you may find that the need or desire to punish goes away. At least that's my prediction. If you give another entity the power to judge and punish, you may end up creating another monster.
Such a fantastic comment, Tereza. I appreciate your thinking so much! I want to love everything you've said here.
Pointing out about Jesus pointing to the GOOD/BAD on either side of him! I've never thought of that. Or CRUX-I-FICTION. Holy cow! What word play! I have to let that marinate a bit.
I like your distinction between right/wrong as being related to actions, good/bad being related to character.
I have to think more about a 2 year old biting. Is the biting Wrong? I'm thinking they need something, most likely they need help from the adults in some way. Certainly it has effects - biting hurts other people! It's not ok to hurt other people, but the adults are responsible to keep everyone safe and to meet needs. And definitely there should be consequences, but I love the Hand in Hand Parenting view of meeting those acting out behaviors with love and setting loving boundaries. That biting is covering up some feelings of some kind, and if the kid can release the stuck feelings, they won't have the instinct to bite anymore. I have this vision of Patty Wipfler in some of her videos talking about coming in towards the biter or hitter and wrapping them up in a blanket and saying, "uh-oh, someone needs some kisses, I need to wrap you up like a burrito to keep you safe!" I tried this lots and lots with my son, who had a lot of aggression for several years. It didn't solve our problems, but at least it was loving and connecting and not shaming in my boundary setting. And he loved being wrapped up like a burrito - I think it helped his nervous system.
I love your preemptive thinking about punishment - seems like some parallels with the 2 year old and anyone of any age who hurts someone. Hurting others stems from some unattended need, and boundaries are the first step.
I will admit here that I lost my best friend over biting and aggression issues--not hers but her son's, who was the same age my middle daughter. Every time he acted out, all the attention turned to him--not necessarily positive but with nothing happening. She would leave with him sometimes, which was pretty much what he wanted. One time I placed him on time out, which was fine with him until I took away the Barbie car. She decided I was abusing him. Things fell apart between us. And I take no joy in having been proven right, with later wilderness camps that she had him kidnapped into, etc.
So I don't know that I agree that hurting others stems from unattended needs. In my experience, it's a form of power to hurt someone and be 'rewarded' with being the center of attention. She felt that her son had 'inherited' traits from his dad, who she wasn't with. I felt that all kids would do the same, if nothing happened that they didn't want. In a way, I believed in her son more than she did. It was just behavior, imo, not character.
But this is all based on one scenario, and that's not your son. Parenting is so hard, and we're all running our own experiments. It sounds like what you're doing is working for him, and that's all that matters.
Thanks for sharing, Tereza. Sounds like a painful time, to have that rending between you and your best friend. Gosh, parenting just brings up EVERYTHING, doesn’t it? And it’s all really tender, in my view, because it touches on parts of us that haven’t been healed from our childhoods. So that amps everything up even more.
Thanks for the kind words about how I’m helping my son. It is what matters, and it also matters how we help anyone who is hurting other people. My angle of curiosity lies with the deeper wounds that go to childhood, ancestry, and past lives. I think you go to addressing systems, I go to addressing the energy/emotional layer. Probably both are needed! Go us, for bringing a diversity of ways to address these problems!
Thank you for YOUR kind answer, marta. I worried all night (subliminally) that I was repeating my mistakes of telling other parents how to parent, without realizing what a tender place I was poking. What I learned from that experience and others, I'm embarrassed to say, is that mothers in particular have such deep seated guilt and fear that they're just not good parents and their kids will turn out terrible as a result.
So although I was talking about system changes, as you say, what mothers were hearing is 'My kids are better than yours is because I'm a better mom.' If I ever was that deluded, reality caught up with me when each daughter broke my heart, kept me up nights, and drove me crazy at different times.
So go us! None of my three made me any better prepared to figure out the other two--a constant dance between systems, energy, emotions. And they all seems to have survived intact!
Also, your daughters sound truly amazing, and I love when you share parenting stories. Well done and onward!!!
Hearing you Tereza, and feeling your big heart! Did you worry that your kids would turn out terribly and it would be your fault? I worry about that, but more i think I overcorrect for my parents mistakes. They didn’t listen to my sensitive nature, and instead teased me about it. So emotions are my love, my hot buttons and my focus in so many areas of my life.
I loved your comment because it crystalized this knowing that we all bring valuable gifts in figuring out new ways of parenting - structural and systemic ways, emotional ways, and probably lots of other ways too.
That's interesting on overcorrecting for our own parents. My family is German, so emotions didn't exist, and I have tried to correct for that with my daughters. But my parents were also deeply Catholic, not in hypocritical ways but humble and obedient. Thinking for yourself terrified them. So it's not hard to figure out how this apple rolled as far from the tree as possible ;-)
I recently told my oldest that I thought I should use the sage my middle gave me for my birthday for a ritual to dispel my self-myth that I was a negligent mother. I've been having dreams about babies that I forget about or inadvertently kill. I think this is related to the oldest planning to start a family. I have a short story about being a 'serial abandoner' called Where We Fail, and I think I should post it. So maybe, rather than being afraid they'd turn out terribly (always a worry and just barely having crossed that finishing line, maybe), I worried that they'd turn out at all. Or whether I just wasn't a 'natural mom' something I never thought I'd be at all, and it was going to result in something fatal or worse (and we all know death's not the worst) happening to my kids and it would all be my fault.
"Don’t we all need help and grace?" Yes, yes we do. Thank you for giving voice and shape to this. How and when did we become the "black"/"white", good/evil, true/false, smart/idiot?? Where is the nuance, the timbre, the individual fluctuation, and how do we get it back? People like you, writing like yours give me hope that not all is lost, and that we can still recapture the multifaceted, infinite beauty and potential of what makes us human.