by The Parenting Centre | Sep 5, 2024 | General
Most people who know me and my practice (or have read my book: The Human Spectrum) are aware of my belief that diagnoses are destructive, both to individuals and to our society. Sometimes clients are very adamant that they want a diagnosis, which probably reflects why it’s a systemic problem. I express my concern that diagnoses move our focus away from the individual, just like any stereotype, and point to my Kierkegaard quote hanging on my office wall: “When you label me, you negate me”.
I’ve had people respond to this by saying they want a diagnosis to learn more about themselves. This leads to a super interesting philosophical discussion.
I would suggest that we cannot learn more about one thing by enlarging it into a bigger category. We CAN get some general information, but the enquiry takes us away from the individual thing/person.
Consider coming across a tree in the forest that we have never seen before. We would look at all the features of this tree to try to understand it. But what if we Googled “trees”? We would learn a bunch of information about the category that may or may not apply to this specific tree. And if this tree was the only one of its type, we might miss its idiosyncrasies because they weren’t delineated in the broader category.
We are each the only one of our “type”, by virtue of being human.
This often comes up with culture. If I know I am seeing someone who is from Sudan, I can spend hours researching Sudanese culture. It will give me LOTS of information, but I will have ZERO idea if it applies to this individual until I meet and get to know them. And if I go into that meeting with pre-conceptions because of the category, I am doing a disservice to the individual. I am stereotyping them. I am negating them.
We are all magnificent in our individual differences and the only way to know/understand ourselves and each other is to learn and celebrate those individual differences that make us who we are.
by The Parenting Centre | Sep 5, 2024 | General
This month’s reflection is a poem that has always had a special meaning to me.
The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbor to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man’s bedevilment and God’s?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
by The Parenting Centre | Sep 5, 2024 | General
There are SO many things that we are taught to say, do and believe, that we never question.
Often as parents we find ourselves repeating things that were said to us by our parents (and others). We repeat axioms that “everyone believes” and the people around us nod their heads.
It’s empowering, exciting, and somewhat disorienting, to realize how many of these social constructs are not necessarily true.
Most parents will tell their children that it is a good thing to always try hard. Often, they will say they don’t need their child to get straight A’s, but that “all that matters is that you try your best”. Why do we believe this to be true? Why is it “better” to try hard than to not try?
Of course, we are more likely to succeed at something if we try hard, but that’s about adaptation (what works for a particular situation) rather than “good” or “bad”. We could suggest to our children that trying hard is more likely to lead to a desired outcome (like training to win a race) but it could be the same as we might tell them if they want to walk from Maleny to Toowoomba they need to head south.
Maybe it’s neither “good” nor “bad”. Maybe the person who tries hard is no more valuable than the person who doesn’t try at all.
We’re all just humans doing our best to survive and have happy days, and this could be one less measure of arbitrary judgment we could remove to help us (and to teach our children) to embrace each other regardless of our individual differences/ethos.
by The Parenting Centre | Sep 5, 2024 | General
A central principle of my perspective is that power imbalances screw up human relationships. It is much more difficult to be authentic, and to be emotionally intimate, with someone who has power over us. Most people agree this is true for couples, but it is more confronting to realize this is true in parenting as well.
When I work with young people, I often encourage parents to use a collaborative approach in problem solving. So instead of deciding what WE (the powerful) will allow, we give up that power and talk to our children as human beings. It’s often really effective, because we love them and they love us and everyone has a vested interest in reaching a happy solution.
Having said that, it can be incredibly difficult for us to give up power and live in authenticity and love with our children.
I was recently working with a teenager who was having significant conflict with her mother. The mother decided they were going to see a more traditional provider who would work on the young person’s “problems” so that things would function better in the family. It occurred to me that adults can do this with young people because of the power differential – two humans are having conflict and the more powerful one can attribute it to the less powerful one’s “problems”. Young people can’t send their parents to a mainstream psychologist who will identify the parents’ “problems” as the issue, but parents can do this with young people. And young people typically cannot afford to see a therapist of their choice without the support of their parent(s).
Of course, this dynamic exists at school, where adaptive problems between teachers and students are automatically blamed on the students.
There are many complex reasons why our society produces tens of millions of depressed, anxious, insecure and unhappy adults, but surely the powerlessness we feel as young people contributes.
by The Parenting Centre | Sep 5, 2024 | General
Working with so many teenagers, I am constantly struck by their intelligence and maturity. The sophisticated discussions about society and relationships blow me away. For years I said to myself that I was SO much less intelligent and mature when I was a teenager. Sometimes now I wonder if I am still less intelligent and mature than many of the young people I work with!
I think most people would agree that young people today are very different than they were 10 years ago, much less 20 years, or 40 years ago. In that context it is absolutely shocking that our school system has not changed in recognition of this huge shift.
As adults we are often shocked that primary school children who are 11 or 12 are into vaping, drugs, sexualized behaviours, etc. Maybe what we should be shocked about is that they are still in primary school. Our world is so different, and our school system is unchanged.
Aside from us being shocked when 11 year olds act like 16 year olds did a generation ago, it becomes incredibly ludicrous when we look at high school. I talk with young people all the time who are more sophisticated and “grown up” in their thinking than many adults, and then they go to school and are interacted with like they are little children.
I worked with a young man around 17 years of age who was physically bigger than me, and was making a small fortune doing online investing. Then he’d go to school and have to ask to go to the toilet, or be chastised for “back chatting”.
Perhaps we need to acknowledge that 11-12 year olds are teenagers and that 16-17 year olds are functionally adults. It’s at least worth beginning a discussion of shortening the number of years that children are in school, so that even in a traditional model 11-12 year olds would be in high school and 16 year olds would have completed school and be ready to assume the adult roles they are VERY capable of assuming.
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