Ep 79: Power Struggles? Fight For What’s Right, Not Who’s Right

Families love asking me about how to manage their children’s behaviors from being shy to being overly active; from being aggressive to being defiant. No matter what the behavior is, the heart of the question is often “how do I get my child to obey and just do what I tell them to do when I want them to do it?” I absolutely hear you. And my go-to response for the past almost 20 years in the field is “it depends.” Because it does depend on your culture, your child’s development, your mood that day (are you hangry?), your child’s nervous system and yours, what’s on the news that day … You get the idea. But just because there are 500 possible scenarios, we don’t necessarily need 500 different strategies. Instead, I’d love for this episode to be the foundation you can use to pick the right strategies you’ve already researched and stashed in your bag. In this episode, you and I are going to understand power struggle as a tension between what we want our kids to know to survive and what they need to thrive. Then, we’ll explore a question from the Social Justice Parenting Playbook you can use when you feel a power struggle starting. This question is there to help you decide your next parenting steps. We’ll revisit concepts like adult supremacy and reciprocity in child development science too.

This episode is inspired by the Come Back to Care newsletter subscribers who joined our live monthly community workshop on Zoom. You know who you are and I’m grateful for your wisdom that inspires this episode. If you’d like to be a part of this live workshop too, it’s pay from your heart and you can head over to https://www.comebacktocare.com/workshops and sign up to be notified.

Alright, 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 In this podcast, we turn down the volume of oppressive social norms and outdated family patterns so that we can hear our inner voice and raise our children by our own values too.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]

Defining Power Struggles in the Context of Power Dynamics

Power struggles are moments when you go head-to-head with your child instead of heart-to-heart. You want your child to brush their teeth. They want to keep stacking blocks. You say “now.” Your child says “no.” You count down “3, 2, 1.” Your child acts like that countdown was a suggestion. All in all, you exercise power. So does your tiny change agent!

And if we peel back a layer to see what’s underneath this behavioral gridlock, you might discover the parenting dilemma that we talked about in the previous episode, Ep 78: Why Rest (When the World’s On Fire) Feels Restless. To refresh your recall, raising our children under white, colonial, capitalist, patriarchy often puts these two things at odds with each other: a) what you need your child to know to survive and b) what your child needs developmentally to thrive. Understanding this tension is the foundation for us to show up as the caregivers we know we can be when the world’s on fire. And in this case of a power struggle, this tension shows up as a push and pull between respect and reciprocity. You demand respect from your child whether that respect is for your authority, for social etiquette, for other people’s comfort and so on. At the same time, your child wants reciprocity with you where you meet them where they’re at and share power with them. Children need this reciprocal relationship with the grownups they trust to learn, explore, play, connect, and develop aka to thrive.

If an image helps you digest this idea, please imagine two overlapping circles. The left circle is what you need your child to know to survive and it says “respect.” The right circle is what your child needs developmentally to thrive and it says “reciprocity.” And the overlapping area in the middle says white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy because that is where your child needs to be to survive and thrive under white, colonial, capitalist, patriarchy.

Now I’d love to explore the left circle first and have a real talk about respect with you. Then, we’ll move to the right circle and unpack reciprocity and ways to practice it with older and younger children.

Respect

Alright, respect. Allow me to start with its survival function. In a system where people with power often punish people with less power, it’s important for our children to be safe by knowing how and when to show respect to people with power. That’s one way our children can be survival smart. And you know by now that survival smart is only one side of the coin. For our children to grow up and be change agents, they need survival smart and liberation smart like we discussed in Ep 73: Preparing Our Kids to Meet this Moment. For our children to be liberation smart, they need to trust the power within themselves so that they can share power and build power with their coalitions and chosen families. I’m saying that to say when you need to teach your child respect, know that there’s a place for it aka being survival smart.

The function of respect aside, as a culture, we- the grownups- tend to automatically demand that children respect us. It’s like they owe us respect and they should drop everything they’re paying attention to and pay attention to what we tell them to do instead. This business-as-usual that has us expect respect from children as a default has a name: it’s called adult supremacy. For a deeper dive, Ep 61: Unlearn Adult Supremacy & Power-With with Your Child is there for you. But the essence I want to bring this episode is that adult supremacy makes many of us feel justified when we police, punish, and surveil our children to get the respect they ought to show us. Here’s one common way this policing goes. When we expect respect from children at all costs, any behavior that breaks this rule becomes a disrespect. A disrespectful behavior that needs to be corrected by the grownup. We show them who’s the boss around here. It sounds quite similar to how those in power react to civil disobedience by deploying policing to quote unquote restore order. They use policing, surveillance, and prison to retaliate (oops pardon me to restore order) and show poor, working class, queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, Mixed-Race, people of color, and immigrants who’s the boss around here. Yikes on bikes.

If you’re feeling a little shame bubble up right now, I got you. I used to be the Queen of power-over. Before I became a politicized therapist, I was a preschool special education teacher in Thailand where teachers are put on a pedestal at the top of the power hierarchy. I was too good at getting my students to obey and I thought of obedience as THEE pre-requisite to learning. So, when I moved to Chicago in 2011 and started working in a preschool special education classroom, my tiny change agent and friend, Jude, served me the humble pie I needed to unlearn power-over. I remember one circle time. I was reading Elephant and Piggie by Mo  Willems to the group. Jude decided to get up and ran away from circle time to the door. My first reaction was “how dare you disrespect the sanctity of circle time and disrespect me as your teacher.” And mind you, Jude had auditory sensitivity and he knew exactly what his body needed. His sensory systems had enough of me and he was just leaving to protect his peace. So, I put the book down, ran after Jude, chased him around the room, he was crying, I was crying. It was not my finest moment. If you could see me now, my shoulders are up to my ears and I still feel so much guilt and regret until today. I was centering Jude’s respect for me and, in exchange, de-centering his body’s needs to learn and be regulated and be present. I could have joined him and provided noise-cancelling headphones. But oh no I was policing him and coercing him to conform with and obey the rules of circle time.

Okay, a breath for myself to turn that regret into accountability. Phew. Is this example landing with you too? Icky feelings aside, the facts remain: if you and I are really good at power over, the potential is there for us to also be really good at power-with. Right?

Another way policing shows up is when it’s dressed up as protection. I’ll share what this protection often looks like in immigrant, disabled, and gender expansive families. In immigrant families, many of us might control and coerce children to assimilate to the dominant culture instead of supporting them to be their authentic selves and rooting in their home cultures, food, and languages. We might only speak English to them at home so they can assimilate quicker which we now know can be a real loss of cultural pride. In disabled families, many of us might control and coerce our children to mask their behaviors so they would fit in and blend in. We might discourage them from rocking their bodies or using headphones in public or other behaviors that might compromise their ability to make friends. And we know that those behaviors are exactly what their bodies and sensory systems need to feel safe enough to learn, explore, and connect. Lastly, in gender expansive families, many of us might control and coerce how our children walk, talk, dress, take up space, or shrink to fit with the male or female gender binary. And you know that narrow gender binary is not my ministry at all.

I wonder how these default demand for children to respect us just because we’re grownups resonate with you. When you’re not centered, is adult supremacy shaping your parenting decisions? Or is it more so the need to protect your child from white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy that makes you want to force your child to respect what you ask them to do? Or both?

In a society that too often has adults dictating things TO children, doing things WITH them is an act of resistance. And that’s where reciprocity comes in.

Reciprocity

Reciprocity simply means when your child communicates with you- whether using their communication tablet, vocalization, gesture, sign language, words, or an eye roll- you reciprocate. You respond with attention and intention, most of the time. You notice your 14-year-old being unusually quiet during dinner and you reciprocate or respond with curiosity “Looks like something’s on your mind. I’m here if you want me to listen.” Then, you wait for them to respond to you. Or you notice your four-month-old being captivated by the ceiling fan. So you reciprocate or respond with “that’s our fan. Isn’t that cool?” Then, you wait to see how your baby might respond. They might utter a sound in excitement. So, you match that energy with “I know, that’s right!”

This kind of timely, intentional back and forth interaction is a big deal in the field of child development. It’s because this simple interaction between you and your child that’s just-right and just-in-time strengthens your child’s brain circuits according to Harvard University. In addition to brain development, language development gets a boost too. When you name what your child is doing, feeling, or paying attention to, they can make that language connection. Another area that gets a boost is social-emotional development. When you consistently and imperfectly meet your child where they’re at and share power with them, your child learns in the deepest level that “oh, my feelings and my experiences matter. I matter.” Your child learns to trust themself. When that happens, children quote “start life with a big advantage: they already know that when nothing makes sense in the world, when pain, fear, and sadness seem to come out of nowhere, there’s someone who thinks they’re worth being with- no matter what” end quote according to Hoffman, Cooper, Powell, & Benton.

I must emphasize that many caregivers, like you, already meet their children where they’re at in their own unique ways when you feel centered-enough and safe-enough. And surviving under white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy might have you unintentionally prioritize teaching your child respect to survive when you know deep in your bones that they need reciprocity to thrive.

So how do we make sure our children know how to survive under fascism and know how to thrive with their community too…especially in power struggles?

Choosing to practice liberation one decision at a time

The invitation in this episode is this: in a power struggle, fight for what’s right, not who’s right.

I’m advocating for what’s right to be us, grownups, a) doing things with our children instead of dictating things to them (bye adult supremacy) and b) practicing reciprocity with our children to promote their development.

We put this invitation into practice when the threat of white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy is so real by choosing to practice liberation one decision at a time.

By that I invite you to ask yourself in the moment, “what do I want my child to know right now: how to be survival smart or how to be liberation smart?”

Maybe you, your in-laws, and your child are at the park. Your child’s not ready to take turns on the swing just yet. And you’re already feeling everyone’s gaze on your back. The pressure to push your child to be quote unquote respectful of the playground politics by sharing the swing right away is rising quickly. Instead of reacting and saying to your child “oh the slide looks so fun, let’s go there,” you might pause and ask “what do I want my child to know right now: how to be survival smart or how to be liberation smart?” Instead of demanding respect as a default, you might decide “you know what, I don’t need to react and revert to people please right now. I want my child to know how to be liberation smart by making decisions based on what they feel in their body, not on other people’s urgency or expectation.” To teach this liberation smart skill, you ask your child “We can move on to the monkey bar when you have plenty of fun with the swing. How about two more swings and let’s check in?” Then, you take it from there. As you walk to the money bar together, you might say to child, “that’s really amazing that we share with our friends when we’ve had enough. Now everyone has a turn.”

In Raising Change Agents, we call this strategy of power-with “participate.” In chapter 6, you’ll have three options to power-with with your child as alternatives to the usual “do what I tell you to do now and respect me without a doubt.”

How’s the example cooking for you? It could very well be that in this same scenario on a different week, you might choose teaching your child how to be survival smart instead. For whatever reason- that’s not the point- the point is for you to choose what to teach and then how to teach it in a power-with style.

You make the decision that’s right for you, your child, and your situation based on what you want your child to know: survival or liberation smart. Then, do so via power-with instead of power-over.

[CLOSING]

Power struggles don’t mean that you’re doing parenting wrong. They are an invitation for you to abolish the power-over policing in your head and in your home. They are an invitation for you to shift to power-with with your child. And you don’t have to do this alone.

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In solidarity and sass. Until next time, please take care.