An education on skills and feelings
We are born with all the feelings, and none of the skills. The feelings have never been the problem. The lack of skills is the problem.
Parenting can be lonely. At times it feels like I’m the only one attempting this - going through the motions of each seemingly never-ending phase, from breastfeeding to fighting sleep to potty training. On top of that, the people around me don’t really understand (at best) or actively try to discredit and go against my methods (at worst). I started this blog / newsletter with the hope of helping other new parents feel a little less alone, trying to share methods and ways of operating that resonate with me.
A while ago, I met up with some friends I haven’t seen in a while and we chatted about the new realities in our lives. We have known each other for more than ten years and everyone’s lives were completely different back then as students - of course. Had our lives worked out the way we imagined they would? I don’t think so. I know mine didn’t, and from the things we discussed and pondered together, it’s probably safe to assume theirs didn’t as well.
I spoke about a metaphor I’d been holding in my mind for a while now – how we are all in different seasons of life and finding acceptance in that. I think back to the newborn days, how intense and isolating they were. How “unproductive” I would have appeared in a capitalist’s eyes (how ridiculous that I was still thinking in terms of productivity in the business sense). How it felt like everyone else was getting ahead with their lives while I “just sat at home”. And yet, how critically important those days were for bonding and caring for a new human. Forget good jobs or prestige when they become adults - a newborn literally could not survive without someone else. It was like you were moving through the world for two - feeding two, moving around for two, keeping warm for two.
As we move along in our thirties, the divide between the seasons in life among the friends we know grow - some of us have kids, some are on sabbaticals, some just left long term relationships, some are getting married. It’s just not the same and you can’t look around and attempt to gauge your progress the way you vaguely could when everyone was back in school.
Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of Dr. Becky from Good Inside. Isn’t it strange that parenting is arguably the most important job in the world yet we are thrown into it with barely any education. Imagine going in for a surgery and the surgeon says he’s watched a few TikTok videos and read a few Instagram posts plus maybe a news article or two; it’ll be fine, he says. You’ll be out of there even before your broken legs heal. Yet, here we are with parenting.
One of the interviews I found particularly enlightening was this one with Simon Sinek. They likened parenting to being in a leadership position - you are there to guide with a gentle yet firm hand. Which I found was a nice way to see it, especially compared to all the authoritative parenting we witness and so many of us have personally been through.
Take this excerpt from the video:
At Good Inside, this approach we have to leadership and to parenting really comes from two first principles. Number one, kids are born good inside. I really believe there’s not a baby who’s born saying, ‘Oh, I’m going to wake up my parents tonight. I’m going to f them over; like I hate my parents’. No, they’re born good inside. And the other inconvenient truth is that they’re born with all the feelings and none of the skills.
And to me that visual gap explains basically 100% of children’s bad behaviour if you think about it from that perspective of your own kid or any kid who acts out. Oh my goodness, they’re born with all the feelings I have, with all the intensity, and they’re born with no skills to manage those feelings. And at any point in life, feelings without skills manifest as bad behaviour. The reason people yell at a waiter or yell at a partner is because they’re angry, they’re disappointed (high feelings) and they don’t have the skills to regulate (low skills).
And for generations, what we did with that gap is we sent kids away. Almost like the feelings were the problem. The feelings have never been the problem. The lack of skills is the problem. It’s nobody’s fault that kids don’t have skills. It’s not the parents’ fault, it’s not the kids’ fault, it’s just true. That’s how they come. So why don’t we teach them the skills. Because without skills, you can’t bring down the feelings. You can’t get rid of the feelings, but if you level up the skills, that changes behaviour today and puts kids with the ultimate privilege in adulthood which is having skills to manage the entire range of feelings you will always feel for the rest of your life.
You’re not just teaching people how to parent, you’re teaching people how to be people.
It made so much sense. I immediately agreed with all of it but the tricky part comes to implementing them. You see, I was never really taught those skills and don’t think I had it modelled to me. So it doesn’t come naturally.
One (of many) things I didn’t realise about parenting is that it gets overstimulating a lot, especially if you’re the primary caregiver. Constantly being touched and having to put up with loud noises is part and parcel and it overwhelms me from time-to-time. I have to very intentionally remind myself to pause, breathe, and be kind. On bad days, it’s “easier” to yell. Which brings us to the next point I took away from the video –
“Parents say this to me all the time too: I don’t have time to learn these things. I say, look, I have no idea about your schedule and your time and I’m not going to lecture you about how you spend the time on the things you value. But here’s what I know: we either spend time preparing or reacting, and if we’re used to spending time reacting we don’t quantify it as time because it’s just our default. And all I know from parents is it actually takes a ton of time, to yell at your kid, to watch something go wrong all the time, and it takes a lot of time to fall asleep at night. You’re just used to it so you don’t mentally account for it.
Anything that’s new feels uncomfortable and we always misinterpret discomfort as a sign of something wrong, when it’s a sign of something new.”
– Dr. Becky Kennedy
It’s new, but at least now I’m aware. And can work on it, both for myself and my child.
There’s a lot of online discourse over the whole “gentle parenting” phrase, most of it seemingly stemming from a lack of understanding of what it actually is. Gentle parenting is not permissive parenting. It’s not letting a child do things that may be harmful to themselves or others in fear of being “harsh”; it’s not raising an entitled person. I think it might be more accurate to call it “respectful parenting”? Of seeing a child as their own individual, as an actual person.
Because it appears that so many people parent from a mostly egotistical point-of-view; where it’s the fear of being seen as a terrible parent that drives the actions and not so much what is most beneficial for the child. Most of the time it’s not even natural in that phase of child development.
The parent who chides their child for “misbehaving” in a restaurant after having been there for more than an hour (children physically cannot sit still for long periods of time); the stress-laden shushes when a tiny baby starts to cry in public (totally normal, crying being the only way a baby can communicate, but of course we have been conditioned to be quiet and put together in front of other people).
In that sense, punishment is the easiest because it’s the fastest method that yields compliance. It also doesn’t help when members of the public are judgemental and maybe hostile towards families with children out and about.
All of this, I say not out of judgement of other parents, but from listening to my peers and even reading accounts from the older generation. So many of us are way too familiar with authoritative methods that it takes a lot more than a mindset shift to try and parent with more compassion. So much of it is programmed into our bodies that it takes just a split second to react in those old ways. It takes effort to absorb new knowledge and remember new methodologies, a lot of resolve, and pausing before reacting. And it takes trying again when you slip up. It’s not easy because you are literally trying to reprogram generational cycles that you hold, perhaps unwittingly, in your bones.
For me, it’s worth trying. I know I will make mistakes, and even that doesn’t make me any less harsh on myself when it happens. I try to look in the (metaphorical) mirror a lot and constantly reevaluate where I’m at and what I’m doing. I’m aware that things may change twenty, forty years down the line and we’ll have new research then, but honestly, I don’t think you can ever go wrong being kind and respectful to other people, especially when they’re your child.
“When you become a parent…everything unhealed about your childhood just gets triggered over and over with your children. And we have this choice: I can either allow that generational kind of wound or trauma, whatever you want to call it, to then just be passed on generation-to-generation or I can use this opportunity not only to give something different to my kids but actually to heal myself and be the sturdiest, most confident version of me.”
– Dr. Becky Kennedy
If you read till the end, thank you. I’m glad people like you who try to make the world a little better exist <3