Hidden Assumptions

The genesis of the transformation in my thinking about parenting came from a concrete realization that what I was doing was not working. I had caught glimpses of this for years but these glimpses were not sufficient to bring about any kind of lasting change; I had to have both a big enough crisis to push me out of my authoritarian model and at least some confidence that a different model existed, i.e. a push and a pull. Without these two forces I doubt that I would have seriously reconsidered my paradigm.

Once I became open to an alternative, as yet unformed, I found it useful to go back and look at what sort of thinking was underlying my authoritarian parenting. I adopted a backwards-forward analysis, that is, I had to start with poor results to look backward to see what's not working. Then I decided to go back to find the hidden assumptions that, when pushed forward, yielded my results. I was surprised at how ungenerous my assumptions were.

The first thing that became apparent is that I thought the worst of my children. They needed an authoritarian model because otherwise they would make terrible, selfish decisions. Certainly, I needed it be an authoritarian to keep peace in the household, but it was also for their own good. I suspect, though I can't know for sure, that this is part of the power corruption. I suspect this because I don't generally hold such a cynical view of other people. I'm not in the everyone-for-himself camp of society, that we each act only for our own selves. My experience has been that people are generally good and are happy to cooperate, even when it doesn't serve their immediate self interest. Whether this is the actual state of the world is irrelevant in this context. What's noteworthy is the discrepancy between my view of the world and my view of my children, which is why I hypothesize that its origin lies in the power dynamic I'd created at home. I had power over my children; I wanted to keep it and enlarge it; I constructed a picture of them that justified the structure and demanded I exercise my authority. 

I also noticed that I didn't think my kids would change without my exerting control over their decisions. Left to their own devices, they would never figure out how much better things could be--for everyone. I had to show them, over and over, each time exerting myself more. For example, my son is an avid reader, but he likes to read the same books over and over. I was determined to expand his world because I didn't want him to grow up only reading YA literature. Now, this is of course insane. Why shouldn't he discover other things on his own? Why would I think that his tastes today will be his tastes in 10 years? Why wouldn't he get ideas from his friends? What am I so worried about? I had no evidence or experience to base this assumption on. 

I do like to think in terms of metaphors, to use allegories and analogies to organize my thoughts, but that utterly failed here. I have gardened for years and know the natural state of a garden is a meadow, i.e. weeds and grasses are heartier than tomatoes and cucumbers. Without my constant intervention and vigilance, the garden would never yield vegetables. It would revert to its natural wild state. I had a similar idea about my kids, but what it my kids' natural states were not wild and selfish? What if they weren't gardens at all? Then my model of parent as gardener--admittedly an overly generous interpretation of myself as a parent--is not just inaccurate, but possibly even harmful and counterproductive. But if they're not gardens, what are they?


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