One fun part of parenting has been watching my son's personality unfold. Spawn often reminds me of myself or my husband - but he has quirks and qualities that are all his own.
We each have very different sleeping preferences.
My husband likes sleeping under fleece blankets and can be wrapped up from head to toe comfortably. I, on the other hand, much prefer cotton sheets and quilts because I get too hot and sweaty under polyester. We have had separate bedding since before our marriage so that we can both sleep. Oh, and I don't like having my head or feet covered in bed - but I need something over my torso to stay asleep.
Spawn doesn't sleep under any kind of covering. Ever since he was a snippet of a baby, he'd tolerate us swaddling him (or tucking him into bed under a sheet and blanket as he got older) as one of those crazy things that adults do - but within five minutes of us leaving him alone - he'd have removed all of the swaddle or blankets and falls fast asleep on an empty mattress. In cold weather, I often sneak in when I go to bed and tuck him in again. He sleep-wiggles his way back out again within 5 minutes.
Sleep preferences are fairly minor in the grand scheme of life - but parenting is about raising the child you have rather than forcing the kid to become the child that lives in your imagination.
Actually, if you are in CP/QF land, parenting is about molding your kid into the image you wanted - nevermind if that's the shape that God wants them to be. Take this next quote from Marina Sears' "The Battle of Peer Dependency" in Chapter 3:
The order of negative events due to peer dependency is abnormal from a Christian (or secular) perspective. The normal order of concerns would be that a child would 1) emulate minor negative behaviors of a peer followed by 2) questioning moral values that protect against major negative choices which leads to 3) drifting from the morals instilled by parents and finally leading to 4) the kid doing something sinful, dangerous or destructive.
In other words, minor bad choices --> loss of moral compass --> severe negative behaviors. Yes, the family will get worried or angry with their wayward child - but the turmoil within the family is a side-effect of a more pernicious negative spiral.
By comparison, Sears' event line is 1) kid is a visible embarrassment because they look worldly and use slang, 2) completely loses moral compass which leads to 3) inconvenience to parents since the kid has independent opinions.
This whole peer-dependent spiral might be concerning if combined with drug use, alcohol use or precocious sexual activity - but wearing a faddish outfit, getting a dated hair cut and using ever-changing slang is a transient, non-fatal part of being a teenager. I have plenty of pictures of my mom wearing bell-bottoms with a beehive hairdo in the 1970's. We have an infamous picture of my dad and mom taking a photo when my twin came home from the hospital. Mom looks great - and Dad's got shoulder length hair combined with a full-chest length beard while wearing a flannel shirt whose designer thought it was brilliant to sew the pockets in bias cut so the chest pockets have plaid that looks like X's across his chest. That was 1982. I have plenty of pictures of me wearing plaid flannel shirts with pleated khakis and sandals in the late 1990's. I have the wrong hair type to wear a Aniston-style haircut - but I would have if I could pull it off! I admit that I reply to "Hey, Mel?" with "Yo?" and occasionally reply "Cool beans" in spite of my best efforts.
In spite of these massive transgressions of my teenage years - cue eye roll - I've turned out fine and my parents are proud of me.
I've always wondered how well CP/QF childraising works since every book includes multiple warnings that letting kids be around peers the same age will lead inexorably to disaster:
Yes, raise your children by CP/QF standards and you get hothouse flowers that die within seconds of exposure to the real world! Whoo-hoo! Those kids are totally up for changing US culture! These are our future leaders!
Honestly, I'm far more worried about this kid who justifies his own choices by pointing at someone else and saying "He's doing something worse than I am!". That's not morality; that's a lame-ass attempt at distraction. At least the kid who is doing drugs or telling off-colored jokes (oh, the horrors!) is making an active life choice. The CP/QF kid is simply mimicks the actions of people around him while figuring out a way to avoid the consequences of his actions by throwing the other person under the bus.
I do have a practical question about the concept of spiritual growth according to this quote. Peer dependency is theologically dangerous because the peer-dependent teen (or adult) can never grow beyond the level of their peer. Logically, this means maximum morality and spiritually has a hard upper bound that can't be higher than the spiritual advisor of a person. (That is a novel view unsupported in wider Christian teaching.) Since Marina Sears' book is all about keeping children dependent on parents forever, this means that children are always morally and spiritually inferior to their parents - which is a bit frightening when discussing fully grown adults. More problematically, this means that all of humanity is on a irreversible downward slide since no one will ever rise above their parents.
If you believe the purpose of parenting is to keep yourself on a pedestal while keeping your children in a lesser place, follow Marina Sears' advice. If not, discard it happily. I know I will.
Interesting also that they seem to assume that children can only make decisions and do things based on either peer influence or parental influence--there's no room allowed for the kid to have an independent thought and say for themselves, "you know, I think I don't agree with mom and dad on this moral value." Do they think no teen ever has an original thought or decides anything on their own? Or is it, as you said at the end, that it's all about keeping children dependent and inferior?
ReplyDeleteEverything I've read from CP/QF folks leads me to believe that dependence is the goal of the entire system. Women are dependent on men; children are dependent on parents. And as the wars between Jim Bob Duggar and Derick Dillard show - there's a lot of stress on trying to keep younger men dependent on older men...but that fails pretty often.
DeleteI think the dependence level of very young babies is part of the appeal of huge families. Before 4-6 months of age, babies are completely dependent on adult caregivers to the point of not recognizing that they (the baby) is a separate individual from their primary caregiver. I don't think it's a fluke that the Duggars and other families assign "buddies" once the baby is around 6 months - handing the kid off to an older sibling lessens the pain of seeing the baby differentiate.
I think that most secular/mainstream parents would see a behavior like, say underage drinking, as reason for concern, but not as THE thing that defines who their child is. Ms. Sears, on the other hand, seems to see any deviation from her own wishes, no matter how benign or trivial, as a complete identity shift in the child. She defines her children by how well they adapt to her wishes, and if they stray from doing so, it's like the whole child is ruined!
ReplyDeleteThat level of entitlement is frankly amazing. Believing that your whole family has been thrown into chaos and turmoil because your child dared to get a haircut that wasn't on your list of approved options seems almost pathological. I can't tell if it's because she genuinely believes that she is the ultimate guide for all of life and practice or simply because she believes that her children owe her permanent, unquestioning loyalty, irregardless of their own possible preferences. Neither explanation is flattering.
The point where a negative behavior is defining an entire person is long after the point where professional help is needed for sure! There's a huge difference between a 17 year old drinking a beer at a party and getting a ride home from someone who is sober and a 17 year old who is binge drinking regularly to the point of blacking out. One is reasonably age appropriate and not concerning alone while the other is scary.
DeleteYour statement about entitlement brings up a point I hadn't thought about. How much of the chaos and turmoil in the Sears family is because the mom's restrictions are bat-shit crazy compared to an average family? My parents had no problem with me participating in afterschool activities and hanging out with friends as long as I kept up with school. There's a whole thing in a later chapter about how two of her older sons went to play volleyball with friends, their much younger brother felt left out, and that's a reason to prohibit playing volleyball with friends ever again. Like...that's nuts. My parents would have been like "have a good time! Jr, I know you are sad - but you get to play with Squirt2 and TinyTike without your older sibs!"
My two-cents is a pathological need for control based around her untreated anxiety. If everyone stays on the course that Sears wants, nothing bad will happen.
I've commented here before on how these posts describe my mother almost in exact detail. In reference to Lion and Hedgehog's comments, I think it's a combination of a few things:
ReplyDelete1) In these circles, no one decides anything on their own, because our "own" decisions are suspect. Every time I had a thought that disagreed with my mother, one of the first responses was "where did you here that?" or "who told you that?" Independent thought is actively discouraged because it's "outside the will of God" (as if God didn't make us thinking beings!).
2) While they would never admit that keeping their children dependent is a goal, it is certainly a side effect. Some of these mothers desperately want to feel needed in some way. For my mother, that takes the form of telling me that I (at 32) was not allowed to provide any information (about anything) to my brother (23) without it going through her first. If he had questions, I was to send him to her, or I was "interfering with her parenting." (Yes, that's a direct quote)
3) The day my mother knew I was attending a church that uses the ESV rather than the KJV, I was immediately accosted with "how could you do that?" "That isn't what I taught you!" and "Here's all the information (that she taught me) ALL OVER AGAIN because surely if you just have this same set of information, you'll see it the same way." It's exhausting to try to keep up with every detail of what she wants. I don't anymore.
4) It's interesting that haircuts are mentioned. My youngest sister (21) got her hair cut short without consulting my mom first, and she griped about it endlessly (still brings it up on occasion). She forced me to cut my hair short and layer it when I was a teen, and was offended when I didn't like it. If I wear my hair straight, she complains about how I'm "hiding my natural waves" that "she wanted so badly"; if I wear it curly, I'm showing off. It's a mentality that says her preferences are the right ones, and while she'll "allow" us to disobey them, we're "stupid" or "silly" or "uninformed" to do so.
5) The unquestioning loyalty part is born out of insecurity, I think. My mom constantly talks about how much she sacrificed to homeschool us and raise us (especially since I'm not hers biologically); if we disagree with something she did/does or says, we're automatically ungrateful for all her effort. She sees us as her clones as validation of all her effort.
Sorry, that was kind of long rambling about my own experiences in this type of household. Even though I've been away from home for years, it's nice to see that the doubts I have about walking away from her dictates are unfounded.
Your mother sounds exhausting. Like...I feel tired just reading about interacting with her.
Delete1) That reminded me of a group of CP/QF mommy bloggers who were answering the question of how to respond to an older child who says something like "Babies are a lot of work!" The overarching theme was that some outsider - which was loosely defined as any one who hadn't had a billion babies - must have told the kid that babies were a lot of work and THAT's why the kid made that statement.
That struck me as weirdly convoluted because an older kid in a large family can figure out that babies are a shit-ton of work by observation alone. That's like noticing that winters are cold or water is wet; it doesn't take strong deductive powers or an initiation into a gnostic society. I, the oldest of a small family, thought babies were easy, giggling balls of happiness because I didn't see them very often and assumed they were like my dolls......
2) If your 32 year old can undo the parenting of your 23 year old, you didn't parent right the first time through.
3)It's more about control than information. I give people lots of information at the paint desk - but if you want to buy matte paint for a poorly ventilated heavily used bathroom - I will still sell you that paint because I don't have a right to control your purchases.
4)Haircuts do seem to trigger something in certain parents! I know of a mom who kept saying that her adult daughter's cute pixie cut "didn't look like her daughter". It was a weird passive aggressive form of disapproval. The mom stopped when I replied every time I heard it with "Look, if you don't like her hair cut, just say you don't like it." That got her a bit flustered. (Not that I recommend that as a go to for your mom; it's easier when you are a bystander than the person who is being insulted...)
5) I think that's a common danger for homeschool moms. I was a teacher - and I had students who failed or failed to live up to their potential or whatever - but since I had a few hundred students, I had plenty of kids who did fine or well or great or amazing. There was, therefore, nearly no pressure on any one kid to show what a great teacher I was because I had so many students to show as examples. But most homeschooling moms have fewer students in their entire career than I had in my first hour class my first year teaching! With all that effort being expended on few kids, the homeschooling parents should have all their kids turn out great!
Except...that's not how it works. Most students will be average. That's just how people are. That's not a bad thing, either. Some will be above average and some will be below average....but most are average. Homeschooling parents are also sold a load of crap that traditional schooling is based on crushing the dreams of students and turning them into cogs in the communist-industrial-military-unquestioning-peons-complex. No, traditional schooling is based on finding a reasonably effective method to pass on information. We clump by age because age is a decent predictor of certain cognitive skills. We clump by subject because it's easier to find specialists in one area than people who multidisciplinary. And we clump in ratios of 1:3 in early childhood expanding to 1:30 in high school because different ages are capable of different levels of independent work. By clumping sensibly, one person can teach a group of students of similar skills in a subject more effectively than that same person could teach widely differing ages and subjects...but homeschooling moms aren't told that. Instead, they are throwing themselves into a crazy amount of work in hopes of recreating the wheel.
Sorry about my long rambling :-)...but I've been thinking about that one a lot - and I'm glad you've walked away from your mom's choices.