Radically Moderate Parenting in a Time of Crisis
Parenting might be second only to politics in the ugliness that can animate very minor disagreements about pretty unimportant things. From car seats to daycare to formula vs. breastmilk, the ways you can screw up your children forever seem endless and the stakes seem astronomically high. Leave your kid in a car while you run into a store for milk and you risk kidnapping (not really) or someone calling the police (much more likely). Turn your carseat front facing and you risk a devastating spinal cord injury. Don't teach your kid to read by age four and she won't get into Stanford. The immediate and long term effects of our decisions seem both very important and very fraught.
As a result, we belong to a generation of parents who experience growing rates of anxiety and overwhelm, spend less time interacting positively with our children, and more time managing our children while enjoying parenting less than previous generations.
The reality is that most of the decisions we freak out about or judge other people for either aren't that important or we simply lack the data to know what the right approach actually is.
Parenting is even more complicated thanks to a global pandemic during which parental stress is reaching a crisis point due to the competing demands of a changed educational landscape, few opportunities for community engagement, and financial, health, and marital stressors. We can't hope to address all these issues in this first post, but we hope to lay out some basic principles and then discuss specifics in later posts.
Some Basic Radically Moderate Parenting Principles
The good news is that our principles of radical moderation apply to parenting just like anything else. And applying these principles to parenting works in two ways. First, these principles moderate how we interact with our children. And second, they moderate how we interact with other parents. It turns out the same rules apply because kid humans are just like adult humans in most important respects. So let's take a look...
The first cluster of principles include humility, complexity, and diversity, and these are all interrelated. Radically moderate parenting first and foremost requires humility, precisely because kids and families are complex and their needs are diverse.
In the most obvious sense, you might think you know what your kid needs now and in this moment, but there's a good chance you're wrong. This doesn't mean you don't know your child, but it does mean that kids, like all people, are extremely complex. Their brains, especially the brains of young children and teens, are literally exploding every few days/weeks/months with new and incredible growth. What worked last week might not work this week and you may have to be shift gears at a moment's notice. What should remain stable is your presence as an emotional anchor, one that prevents them being blown away by the chaos in their brains. That emotional connection itself creates new brain growth and helps build empathy and a whole bunch of other important things. As part of this humility, listen to your kid as much as possible. Often they're telling us what they need, albeit in seeming irrational ways. But the message is there if we listen.
The second reason humility is so important is that it can defang the parental judgment that seems to linger in the air at every playground interaction. Being humble requires that we recognize that we never really know what's going on in other people's lives. A parent freaking out at his or her kid may be under unbelievable stress, be wrestling with grief, going through a divorce, or have a sick partner. A kind word, an offer of assistance to help load the car, even a simple smile and nod rather than a dirty look can help an overwhelmed parent navigate an awful day.
This is particularly true on the internet where we often have no idea who anyone really is. And really, whose business is it when someone flips their kid forward-facing in a car seat? Why do we have any investment in whether a woman breastfeeds her kid or does sleep training? (And yes, these really are things people shame each other for on the internet. If you don't know this, consider yourself lucky). These are not our children, they're not our decisions, and it isn't our life.
This kind of humility isn't mere passive-aggressive neutrality in the vein of "Well, you're free to screw up your kid, so..." Instead, it's a radically moderate recognition that we literally do not know what that family's life is like, what their kids' needs are, what they're struggling with, what resources they have, and how they make it through each day. Radically moderate humility asks us to really engage with other people as autonomous human beings with inner and outer lives we can't fully access. Rather than judging people assuming we know what's going on, we can ask them what they need (if anything) and see if we can help.
So, barring obvious cases of abuse and neglect, not judging other parents for the decisions they make for their children is better for us, for them, and for kids generally. The less parents feel judged for unimportant decisions, the more they can adapt to the real needs of their lives and the more we can work together debunk the really dumb parenting myths that continue to cause strife.
Humility is particularly important in the current pandemic, where data changes daily and where people's decisions are fundamentally context-specific. Parents are making decisions about schooling with a combination of inputs that include their employment situation, the needs of vulnerable relatives, the offerings at local schools, their unique financial situation, and the existing public health data in their local area. More than ever, parenting decisions are idiosyncratic and non-universalizable. One possible silver lining of the current chaos is that, at least in the online parenting groups we frequent, there seems to be a lot more room for individualized decision-making and a lot less judgment than usual (though other anecdotal evidence seems to indicate the reverse).
The second set of radically moderate parenting principles are harder in a pandemic, but still apply. Radical Moderates believe strongly in the importance of communities for healthy human flourishing, but this is obviously a sticking point right now. Until we can have more community (and we'll post more about this later, but we'll wait until it's not rubbing salt in the wound of isolated parents everywhere), we'll have to satisfy ourselves with civility and respect for the individual. Now, more than ever, be civil when it comes to parenting decisions you didn't have to make. There's even more now for parents to feel guilty about: excessive screen time! Zoom fatigue! Masks or no masks on playgrounds! Sniffling kids who probably have allergies but could have Covid! Navigating this new parenting world will require even more kindness than usual, and where kindness fails, basic civility can be a decent stand-in.
And while we can't easily build community the old fashioned way in a global pandemic, we're not helpless. It's worth repeating: Humility does not require lack of engagement. You know how to overcome your lack of knowledge and our lack of community? Ask people what they need! It's that simple. Overwhelmed dad freaking out at his toddler on a playground? Ask if he needs help! Stressed mom sniping at her kid in the grocery store? Ask if she needs help! See a neighbor struggling to get three young kids out the door? Ask if she needs help! Ask if you can drop off a casserole or a bag of apples or a vase of flowers from your garden. Ask if you can offer a Zoom tutoring session or an outdoor coaching session. Parents are incredibly isolated right now and that isolation breeds a lot of stress, overwhelm and -- counterintuitively -- judgment. Asking people what they need counters our lack of knowledge, builds community, reduces stress, and defangs judgment. Wins all around!
Radically Moderate Parenting and Tradeoffs
Finally, and maybe most important, is the radically moderate reality of tradeoffs. While there's so much more to say about the tradeoffs involved in parenting that we'll make that another post, the reality is that the biggest tradeoff our anxious culture of overparenting creates is the loss of the joy of parenting. Having children is hard, but it should also be fun! These tiny humans are cute and funny and have fantastic ideas. Listening to them mangle the language, watching them try new things and fail, and feeling them climb in for a cuddle at the end of a long day are what make the work worthwhile and are some of the most profound joys we have. Being overwhelmed with worries about things we can't actually control (the election! a pandemic! virtual learning!) robs us of that joy. Worries about an unknown future that we can't control prevents us from being in the moment with these little people as they are right now. And right now is the most important moment. So don't trade right now for the unknown future. Don't trade fun for anxious overplanning. Try to be here with your kids as they are right now, because you know they'll be different in some big or small way tomorrow. This is harder than ever now that parents are fractured between a multitude of different duties (and we are still working on it, every day), but even spending five minutes before school smelling your kid's hair while you read them a quick story can help set both of you up for a fantastic day.
So go. Right now. Smell your kid. Give him a hug. Sing her a song. Do something in this moment that crowds out the unknown future with a beautiful right now. And if right now seems unbearably hard, give yourself a break, put on a TV show for the kids, and regroup. The kids will be ok. (More on this later.)
So here's the TL;DR version of our starting points for Radically Moderate Parenting:
Be humble and respect diversity. Not just about your kid, but about other parents. What works for one unique and individual kid or family may not work for others.
Be open to being wrong. Doubling down when we feel challenged is a classic defense mechanism, but it can prevent us from adapting when what we're doing isn't working. It's bad in debates and it's bad in parenting.
Be kind, both to your kid and to other parents. Parenting and being a kid are both hard enough without piling on.
Ask what people need. Maybe you can help; maybe you can't. But asking is the first step to finding out who the other person really is.
Smell your kid! Don't take this too literally, because sometimes our kids Do. Not. Smell. Good. But smelling your kid is a shorthand for trying to be present in small way each day. It doesn't take reading Shakespeare with them or teaching them chess (though if you love those things go for it!). But remembering to smell your kid's head helps us remember that this time is short, these little people are incredible, and that this season -- as painful and challenging and scream-y as it is -- will be over soon. It's also a quick way to physically connect with these squirmy monsters before they run away to destroy something you really like. Try it!
What about you? What kinds of radically moderate parenting are you doing right now? Are you seeing more humility and appreciation of complexity? Are there principles or habits you find helpful in reducing parenting anxiety and being more available to your kids right now? Share in the comments! We'd love to hear from you.