Ep 77: Practicing “May Day” as a Family in Everyday Parenting
What if this May Day we go beyond talking to our children about it and actually practice its essence- which is collective power- with them in everyday parenting? In this episode, you and I will explore three ways we can share power with our children to prepare them for the future without policing, prison, and punishment, all while promoting their development at the same time. You’ll also hear an excerpt from Raising Change Agents too. And a little housekeeping, you might hear thumping, screaming, howling, and wailing throughout the episode, please don’t be alarmed. Everyone is okay. It’s my two-year-old neighbor upstairs taking up space aka avoiding their afternoon naps. If that sounds generative to you, let’s get started.
[OPENING]
Sawadee ka, and welcome to the Come Back to Care podcast. A place where we’re re-imagining parenting to be deeply decolonized and intentionally intergenerational. If you’ve been looking for ways to practice social justice in your daily parenting and nurture your child’s development while re-parenting your inner child, I’m so glad you’re here. I am your host, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, a decolonized and licensed clinical psychotherapist, somatic abolitionist, and founder of Come Back to Care. A dot connector, norm agitator and lover of liberation. In this podcast, we turn down the volume of oppressive social norms and outdated family patterns so that we can hear our inner voice and raise our children by our own values too. We come back home to our body and the goodness within. We come back to our lineages and communities. And we come back to care… together. So come curious and come as you are.
[EPISODE]
May Day in a nutshell
May Day or International Workers’ Day is a powerful example of how people can come together, share power, and leverage this collective power to advocate for justice. It’s also an example of how entrenched power reacts to this kind of advocacy: historically, when the working class organizes and mobilizes together, this collective power is snuffed out by the powers that be -- using policing, punishment, and surveillance.
Whether you attended a May Day strike this year or not, this episode- just like every episode- is about how we bring liberation home. And one way to do that is to share power with our children – so that when they go out into the world they know what it feels like to share power with their chosen families and they are ready to organizer for collective action. So let’s explore three actions we can play with to share power with our children. These power-with parenting patterns are collaborate, participate, and scaffold.
Bringing May Day home: From Talking About It to Practicing It
Before I read an excerpt from Raising Change Agents about what collaborate, participate, and scaffold look like in parenting, I must reiterate that when your worries about your child’s future hijack your parenting intention to be liberatory, you might be stuck parenting in protection mode ALL the time – stuck protecting your child from all the -isms and antis. This protection might look like controlling your child into obedience, pushing them to perform their race, class, gender, or other social identities, or shaping them to be perfect. Your attempt to protect your child is valid but it’s unintentionally repeating the patterns of power-over policing. That’s my way of saying that none of us rolls out of bed wanting to power-over and police our children. But when we’re not centered, we protect our children from the world by policing them and powering-over them. Our responsibility here is to prepare them for the world by equipping them with both survival smart and liberation smart skills like we talked about in Ep 73: Preparing Our Kids to Meet this Moment.
The Social Justice Parenting Playbook framework in Raising Change Agents invites you to re-center and remember that you don’t have to police your child to protect them from police brutality.
You can still teach your child how to survive the Hunger Games of Capitalism, but do so in a way that’s not “do what I say NOW.”
In The Social Justice Parenting Playbook framework, you have three liberatory, power-with alternatives to power-over policing. They are collaborate, participate, and scaffold.
I humbly invite you to play with these three actions to make May Day’s collective power a practice that you and your family engage in during bath times, mealtimes, the morning rush, screen time, and throughout the day.
And if you’d like, please notice which of these three comes naturally for you already and which ones you’d like to intentionally practice this week.
Here’s an excerpt from Chapter Six: Writing Your Social Justice Parenting Playbook…
Collaborate
Imagine your child far in the future as a young adult. They call you when things get rough (they don’t just text). They have you saved as their “favorite” contact number. Because they know that no matter how rough things get, you’ll work through these sticky situations together. They know you’ll honor their voices and ideas. They know you’ll hear them out. They know you’ll be able to hold space for any intensity the situation brings without blowing up or falling apart. They know because you both have been “collaborating” on all kinds of decisions since they were little. . .most of the time. They feel so seen by you that they know how to “see” someone who looks, sounds, and moves differently from them with their heart. You have stood with them through so many “collaborations” that they know deep in their bones how to stand with minoritized folks in solidarity (not saviorism). It all starts with you right here, right now when you set your adult agenda aside for a second and hold space for your child’s agency to unfold. Practicing the power-with strategy of collaboration is all about working with your child to make decisions and plans together.
Participate
Now imagine your child growing up to be kind but without becoming someone’s doormat. They have a compassionate heart and firm boundaries. Instead of giving in to peer pressure and becoming a people pleaser, they check in with what feels right in their body. They unapologetically hold their boundaries, interrupt the group by saying: “Hey, something feels a little off. Can we pause, slow down, and check in to make sure this decision feels right to everyone?” Listening to the body, using discomfort as a cue, and interrupting the status quo all begin right here, right now. It starts with how you invite your child to “participate” in decision-making and problem-solving, most of the time. Your child knows they’re worthy and welcomed because they are consistently heard when they voice their ideas and disagreements. Your child knows that being real (and staying true to their values) is more important than being liked (and people pleasing). Your child trusts themselves enough to know when to step up and step back when they have the bandwidth. When their bandwidth runs low, they can confidently say: “Hey, I want to help because you’re important to me. But I’m at capacity right now. Can you circle back to me in two weeks? I want to support you and be present when I do.” All thanks to all the times you have invited them to “participate” at the table, to listen to their gut, and to speak truth to power.
Imagine your child growing up to be someone who makes mistakes, owns their oops, and practices accountability instead of shaming themselves or cancelling others for making mistakes. It starts right here, right now when you are both a safe space and a brave space for your child. That is, a safe space for your child to fall apart and ask for connection when they need to. At the same time, you’re a brave space or a strong launching pad for them to experiment, make mistakes, try things out, and innovate. You are a scaffold that holds space for your child’s messy experiments on becoming their own independent self and asking for connection.
The space you hold for your child to try things out and the space you hold to lovingly catch them when they fall apart teaches them how to hold space for others and their complex nuances. The grace you offer your child shows them how to offer grace to others and their human imperfections. The scaffold you’ve built isn’t just for your child’s thriving development, but is also a scaffold your child uses to co-create a liberatory future with their chosen families.
The chapter goes into specific strategies you can try and the book has examples of seven families putting these concepts into actions.
[CLOSING]
My dear co-conspirator, being the caregiver you know you can be is never about a grand gesture that you do and check off the to-do list. There are no developmental milestones to reach. Rather, being the caregiver you know you can be is shaped by hundreds of small choices in everyday parenting. The choice to align with your values even when you’re exhausted. The choice to be intentional with your child even though it’s going to make mealtimes 30 minutes longer. The choice to stay intentional in what you model your child over the convenience of “just do as I say.” These countless choices you make- most of the time- are the invisible labor no one claps for. But you and I know that rehearsing this liberatory future with our children is how we move towards our north star of liberation together. Raising change agents is not easy. But it’s manageable when we practice social justice parenting one decision at a time, one choice to power-with with our children at a time. And when we slip back to power-over, we eat that humble pie and try again. With every cell in my body, thank you for raising our future generations to be change agents. Thank you for raising hell together.
Raising Change Agents: Practicing Social Justice in Everyday Parenting is available now everywhere you buy books. If finance is tight, this podcast is a free resource for you to DIY your social justice parenting practice. Please choose your own adventure. I cannot thank you enough for being here and being you.
As always, in solidarity and sass. Until next time, please take care.