The Battle of Peer Dependency: Chapter Five - Part Five

Hello!

I'm writing this while listening to my son describe each of the toy cars he's packing into a new "Thomas the Train" carrying case his Oma gave him. 

He's grown and hit so many developmental milestones in the last year that I often feel like I have a completely different child than I had two years ago. 

Between a year and four years of age, Spawn stopped singing.   Six months ago, he started singing again - and I'm amazed how many songs he learned while listening to songs on the radio in the car and listening to me sing around the house. We were playing on the floor yesterday when he asked me to sing "the song about what a bus does" with him.  I really enjoyed singing "The Wheels on the Bus" with him.

He's really into pretend play now and I find playing with him to be delightful.  Right now, he wants to pretend to be adults doing jobs that he sees around in the world which means he wants to be a mailman or a cashier or a farmer.  He's been "helping" in our garden by planting corn seeds in a bed that we were going to leave fallow as a composting area.    Hearing him exclaim "Mama!  I'm a farmer!" makes me smile every time.

Spawn can walk enough with one handed support that he can make it around our small local grocery store without needing to sit in the cart.   In fact, he also wants to be able to carry the small basket I use while we are there - but Spawn's still a bit short for the baskets at the store as evidenced by the fact that the basket drags on the ground when he tries to carry it.    Instead, I can usually convince him to help me carry it.   He's also very helpful at putting the items in the basket after I take the off the shelf.  

Marina Sears, I hope, enjoyed similar simple pleasure moments with her children when they were young.   Reading her book "The Battle of Peer Dependency" leaves readers with the impression that Mrs. Sears spent every moment of her children's childhood wishing that she had a different group of children who were more docile, more tractable and less independent.   Here's a revealing quote from the fifth chapter:

Sitting in a conference, listening to a workshop on finding individual life callings, I found myself wondering if God might also have a calling or purpose for the family. Different families had crossed our paths over the years that seemed to have a family purpose, but I saw that as a rarity rather than the norm. It seemed, as though my spirit had suddenly been taken aware of the fact that Jeff's death did not take God by surprise. Nor was He baffled by the strong personality traits my children possessed. It seemed as though the spirit of God was urging me to understand that he had put us together as a family, with their individual strengths and weaknesses, spiritual gifts, gender, and birth orders. All these factors together would tend to pull the family apart until I realize that the molding and blending of these traits were what would speak to a lost world. (pg. 74-75)

I was a bit taken aback by Mrs. Sears' surprise and dismay that her children had strong personality traits - and I doubt she viewed those traits positively.  I'm surprised at her surprise because Mrs. Sears clearly has a powerful personality herself!  She's spent the book explaining repeatedly her belief that her family needs to be a shining beacon to the world showing off God's Providence to widows and orphans - and she'll be damned if her kids get in the way of that goal.    

I've spent a few weeks trying to think of any family I knew that had a "family purpose" - and have been completely drawing a blank.   I suspect that's because most families are content enough to do whatever motivates them without needing to trumpet their purpose to everyone they meet.

More broadly, Mrs. Sears isn't picking a family purpose by deciding what makes sense based on her family.  She's using the idea of a family purpose to shame, guilt-trip and force her kids to follow her whims for as long as she can.   Why do I think that?  Well, this next quote is a doozy:

It is sad to discover that many other parents think that the only purpose of parenting is to provide instruction, provision, and protection for their children until they reach 18 years of age. These children are then considered to be on their own. Parents, who go a little bit further and believe the children are a part of the family until marriage, still miss the mark.. (pg. 75)

There is no escape for Mrs. Sears' children.   She is setting up a paradigm where she is to be in charge of their lives forever regardless of age, marital status or presence of children.   

Will that work?  Probably not.  There's yet to be a Christian Patriarchy family who has married adult children who has not lost one or more of those children to increased worldliness.  Not because the kids have become anything like the average secular family, but because the parents have gotten so used to having the personal whims of the parents satisfied at all times that a child's choice of doing something differently is treated like a war crime.  (See the Maxwell response to Jesse living in an apartment and the Duggar response to Jill.)

Is it Biblical?  Nope.  While there is definitely support for Hebrew men acting in concert with their paternal family line in the Old Testament, we have relatively little support for the idea that there was one paterfamilias who was making decisions for the entire family line.  On the other hand, the Bible is filled to the brim with people acting outside of the rules of patriarchy.   Men stole the birthrights of their older brothers.  Women disobeyed their husbands and fathers.  Mary appeared to conceive Jesus out of wedlock.  Jesus and his disciples were all pretty much behaving outside of family lines while various concerned and exasperated family members tried to stop them.  

If you remember nothing else, remember that Mrs. Sears would have stopped the Apostles from following Jesus.  That's the kind of great advice you're getting from this author.

The Battle of Peer Dependency: Chapter 5 - Part Four

 Hello on a hot, dry day in Michigan!

I've been a bit spoiled the last few years because we've been getting decent rain amounts during the growing season.   This year feels different, though, because our grass is already going dormant in patches three weeks earlier than usual..   I've started carrying water out the six fruit trees and four fruiting shrubs we have; I haven't done that since the year I planted the trees when Spawn was a baby.  

Spawn's old enough that he finds all of this fascinating - but not quite coordinated enough to be much help yet.   Instead, he will take some toys and play in a spot where he can watch me until I'm done.   I appreciate that - and he's old enough that when I say something like "Please move your trucks so I can walk down the steps" he knows which toys to move.   He's getting more and more mobile every day.  Spawn can walk several city blocks with one handed support so we've been going to more and more places together.  (The fact that the number of COVID cases locally has dropped to less than 10 per 100,000 helps as well.) 

After four years of being nervous about the cows on our property, he's decided they are the best toy he has.   Every day, he collects a handful of cars and we walk out to show the cars to the "mama cows" and the "baby cows".    The cows seem duly impressed and some of the older ones have started to moo in response to Spawn asking them questions.   Today he collected pieces of corn and wheat to put into the bed of his toy pickup truck so he could pretend he was driving a feed truck.  

We are slowly making our way through Marina Sears' parenting book "The Battle of Peer Dependency".  I've been a parent for a relatively short time - but nearly every advancement Spawn makes drives home how very little I like any of the ideas that Mrs. Sears shares.   The fifth chapter is about how parents and children should form a tight-knit, indivisible group that fulfills the emotional and social needs of the family.   Honestly, her ideal family sounds claustrophobic as hell.   In this post, we'll look at an example that Mrs. Sears shares that manages to both undermine her theory while being used as a guilt-trip towards her older sons: 

An older brother or sister who invites a younger sibling to go with him or her on an outing and stays involved with them as the activity progresses will assure the younger sibling of the older sibling's love. This became real to our family at the camp in Michigan. Ben, the son of the camp pastor had just turned 16. This meant that he had recently acquired his driver's license, something that every young man anticipates. The day before camp started been lost his driving privileges. This saddened him, but he kept on and fulfilled his duties at the camp very well. At the close of camp, my youngest son Jeff, was approaching the bus which would take him home. He was nine at the time and as we reached the bus, Jeff noticed Ben was walking towards us. What Jeff didn't know was that parked across from the bus was Ben's family vehicle. He had just been given back his driving privileges, and was eagerly approaching his vehicle for the drive home.

Jeff yelled out to Ben, " Hey Ben, are you going to ride in the bus?"

Ben then said the most amazing thing. "Jeff, do you want me to ride in the bus?"

"Sure,"  Jeff said. 

So Ben, smiling, put his keys in his pocket and got onto the bus with Jeff. (pg. 73)

This story to me is fairly average and rather sweet.   There have been plenty of times where I was a kid who appreciated spending time with a teenager from another family - and plenty of times where I was the teenager.   Like the idealized youth minister from the previous post, the main benefit of having a relationship with a person from a different family is that both parties are enjoying the relationship without the normal stresses that occur in family life.   

The weird bit is that this entire anecdote points out all the flaws in Mrs. Sears theory that nuclear families should be self-contained.   

First, Mrs. Sears is the person who brought her four children to a camp situation in the first place.  I'm assuming she was working as a lecturer or something like that - but that doesn't change the fact that she's profiting from other families choosing to interact with other families.   Even worse under her theory is the fact that she is the instigator of bringing her family to the camp in the first place! That's the wages of sin!

Second, her family seems to be fairly integrated into the camp structure.  Mrs. Sears knows a whole lot of background information about Ben and his driving practices.    Either she was talking with other adults about raising their kids and succumbing to peer dependency herself or one of her older sons picked up that information from Ben himself and they were being peer dependent.   Really, even knowing Ben's name is dangerous; an ideal family wouldn't need to know Ben, right?

Third, we have no information on what her other three kids are doing during this time.  Maybe Chris, David and Camille are all deep into peer dependency - or maybe they are each hanging out with other multi-age groups.    Maybe they are asleep on the bus.   Maybe Chris is hanging out with Ben's younger brother who has taken a shine to him.    

Last unrelated point: Mrs. Sears is comparing apples to oranges again.  Earlier, she was disturbed when Chris and David as pre-teens wouldn't bring their five-year old brother to a volleyball game for preteens.  I still think the boys made the right decision; a five year old isn't going to do well at a junior high volleyball pickup game.   Meanwhile, Ben's a shining example of sacrifice for riding the bus instead of driving his car - but in this case - Ben is delaying a solitary pursuit for an hour or two instead of dragging a kid to an age-inappropriate activity.   This is a rare situation where I am very confident on this point because Ben and I were both teenage drivers in Michigan around 1994.   At 16 with his first temporary license, Ben wouldn't have been able to drive with any minors in the car with him.  (This was a statute to limit teenagers from driving with other teenagers.)  Ben's choice was certainly sweet - but Jeff wasn't asking him to tag along to a high school pick-up basketball game, either.

I stared at him in astonishment and with a broken heart. I was amazed that young man would be so sensitive and understanding with a nine-year-old boy. I was amazed to see that he understood the need of Jeff's heart. What Jeff was truly asking Ben was if he wanted to ride with him. The sensitivity and picking up the need of Jeff's heart was incredible. The sadness came as I wondered if Jeff's own brothers and sister would be so kind. Did they understand the needs of each other, and did they even care?  Were their own brothers and sister important to them, and did they desire to be with them, regardless of the activity, circumstances, or what age group was there? 

I realized in that instance what a tragic mistake I've been making. I had actually trained and encouraged my children to prefer people outside of our family to be their best friends. My heart was broken as I thought about the state of my family, and what I was going to do.  (pg, 74)

Mrs. Sears' plaintive wails about how she's lead her family into peer dependency AGAIN has gotten old.   We've had it happen when she joined a home-schooling church when Jeff was 2 or 3 followed by the volleyball game when he was five and now she's screwed up again by the time he was 9.    That's not a ringing endorsement of the ability of any family to live this lifestyle.

Mrs. Sears often brings up transient, mild distress on Jeff's part - or equally transient and mild pleasure - as a rationale for keeping her family on a tight leash.   I don't think that's because she's particularly in-tune with Jeff's feelings or that she favors him.   No,  Jeff is the youngest and most dependent especially compared to Chris and David who are 7 and 5 years older than Jeff.   Being extremely solicitous of Jeff's feelings covers slightly Mrs. Sears' long-term plan of keeping her children dependent on her for as long as humanly possible.

Why do I think this?  Well, in her hand-wringing story, she's equally critical of the ability of her two older sons and her one daughter to be perfectly in tune with Jeff's needs.   Since Chris is around 16 and David roughly 14,  I can see how she could make the argument that the two boys should be more able to suss out what Jeff wants and needs even if I find the argument faulty.   Her daughter Camille, though, is one to two years older than Jeff so she's 10 or 11 when Jeff is 9.   Why is she being held liable by her mom?   Shouldn't Jeff be more in-tune to Camille's wants and desires?  Jeff will be the leader of his own family after all.    

Mrs. Sears may seem more invested in Jeff's needs - but she is using Jeff's needs to camouflage her desire to keep her family isolated and dependent.