Episode 16: What Children Can Teach Us About Change & Liberation Through Emergent Strategy

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] NV: Sawadee ka, and welcome to the Come Back to Care podcast. I am your host, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, a decolonized and licensed clinical psychotherapist, somatics and social justice practitioner, and founder of Come Back to Care. Adopt connector, norm agitator and lover of liberation. 

If you're on a journey to transform your daily parenting into a social justice practice that nurtures your child's development and promotes intergenerational family healing, I am so glad that you're here. On this podcast, we explore how social justice, child development science, parenting, and family systems intersect with one another. If you've been looking for ways to align your parenting with a social justice values, you're in the right place. Together, we find our way back to our true home. We come back home to our body and the goodness within. We come back to our lineage and come back to care together. So come curious, and come as you are. Let's move at the speed of care, and let's do this.

[EPISODE]

Welcome to episode 16 of the Come Back to Care Podcast.

In this episode, both you and I are going to explore child development together through the lens of Emergent Strategy, a framework for understanding change. I have stories of babies, toddlers, and their families I’ve served to share with you. Together we’ll connect the dots between these children’s development and the ways they embody some elements of Emergent Strategy like nonlinearity, iteration, decentralization of power, and interdependence. My hope is that you can take a moment from your never-ending to-do list, from running around caring for the whole family, and from having to have all the answers aka being a parent to delight in the rich, beautiful, and nuanced complexity that your child is already embodying. 

Because capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy often reduce all of the constant change in our children’s development into behavior checklists and developmental milestones. Our children’s whole humanity is so much more than that. 

Because when there’re no structural support for parents like universal childcare, paid parental leave, and accessible and respectful prenatal and postpartum care, raising a child often looks like doing what you need to do to get through dinner and bath time. 

Many parents, like yourself, have been coerced by capitalism to contort your body to do, do, do, and go, go, go to survive systemic and intergenerational oppression. And you’ve been conditioned to dissociate from your humanity in order to perform the “good parent” script for white supremacy, colonialism and patriarchy.

So I hope that these stories you’re about to hear invite you to pause, slow down, and delight in your tiny human. Together we’ll let these small joys sustain our resistance and advocacy.

After these stories, we’ll explore ways to re-imagine parenting to be something richer than surviving capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. We’ll explore what parenting can look like when we re-parent our inner children and honor our ancestors while raising our child with liberation in mind.   

If that sounds generative to you, let’s start with what Emergent Strategy is.    

What is ES?

The Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute defines Emergent Strategy as quote “a humble philosophy, a way to acknowledge the real power of change, and be in the right relationship to it. Its intent is to deepen relationships, build trust, and political alignment. Emergent strategy practices strengthen imagination and the capacity to think beyond the limitations of socialization – beyond competition, beyond binaries, and beyond linear, short-term outcomes.” End quote.

On a personal level, Emergent strategy gives me a framework to delight in disruptions, disintegrations, and disorganizations. Living and breathing in between the gender binary, I love seeing the possibilities in uncertainty. I get to hold the discomfort within that uncertainty with soft curiosity. In this space, I get to be a dot connector, norm agitator, and lover of liberation and see that there are other ways of living and loving besides the business as usual of contorting, conforming, and performing for white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy. Emergent Strategy helps me be in the right relationship to change and also in the right relationship to who I’m becoming. 

Working with children and families for a decade-ish now, what gets me out of bed every morning is witnessing and honoring small joys and unfolding changes in babies’ and toddlers’ development and, at the same time, holding space for their parents and caregivers to delight in their children too. I get to be with the tiniest humans (from newborns to preschoolers) who teach me the biggest lessons on how to love and how to live. And Emergent Strategy really helps me intersect my clinical practice with social justice practice.  

Considerations:

One more thing before we dive into the stories. As I’m inviting you to delight in these stories and your child, guilt may bubble up because you accidentally lost your cool with your child last night or you slipped and sounded like your mom (again). Or you might feel “Oh, I’m not delighting in my child enough.” Please know that you’re not alone at all. 

Whenever that guilt shows up, I hope that it serves as a reminder of how much you love your child and how you always want to give them the best childhood. I hope together we can hold both joy and that guilt side and side. And may that guilt be the fuel we need for compassion and accountability instead of letting that guilt turn into shame and keeping you stuck in a shame spiral. We got this. 

And as you’re listening along, I hope you’ll get curious about your own life experiences with children and catch any examples of the elements we’re discussing. 

Let’s begin with the first element: nonlinearity.

Child development & Emergent Strategy: 

Nonlinearity

Back in 2018, I remember reading this line from adrienne maree brown in Emergent Strategy while eating dim sum at my favorite spot in Chicago’s China Town. Quote “Transformation doesn’t happen in a linear way. It happens in cycles, convergences, and explosions.” End quote. I remember sitting and thinking “YESSSSS” and then hearing a toddler three tables away explode in a complete meltdown. All I could think of was “cycles, convergences, and explosions…case in point.” That moment made me fall in love with Emergent Strategy. 

A child’s development is emergence embodied. Different developmental skills unfold at their own pace. Each one is a convergence of biology, relationship, culture, politics, intergenerational trauma and resilience. T. Berry Brazelton, a developmental pediatrician, taught me that right before a young child is about to reach another developmental milestone, they go through a period of disorganization where feeding and sleeping go sideways. In development, there’s a cycle where you gain a new skill and then you plateau for a while because you need time to hone this new skill and integrate this new skill with the rest of the skills you already have in your development toolkit. For example, when a baby realizes they can transfer whatever they’re holding to their other hand, you might have noticed that they spend quite some time practicing and practicing on anything they can get their little hands on: blocks, rattles, food, you name it. So mealtimes might not be as smooth now because the baby wants to practice this brand new motor skill instead of eating their meal. The cycle of gain, plateau, disorganization, and gain may look like a jagged line with peaks and valleys. 

That makes me think of my 2-year-old tiny teacher, Jaylin. Jaylin was ready to get moving after she got her leg braces to support her mobility. Jaylin had places to be. During the day she practiced moving around with her braces. But her practice session didn’t end there. She practiced this new skill in her crib at night in her sleep too and for two weeks she woke herself up along with the entire house - kicking around the crib, trying to pull herself up on the crib…the full workout. Sleep clearly became disorganized for a while. Then, the cycle continued and Jaylin got a good handle of her mobility and she hit that plateau stage.

Emergent Strategy highlights how child development is beautifully nonlinear. But white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism reduce this complex and nuanced process into convenient checklists of behaviors children need to gain and achieve. The white capitalist reductionistic thinking flattens the “cycles, convergences, and explosions” into a straight line of ableist linear progression. When children don’t progress, progress progress, improve, improve, and improve their skills, they get pathologized and diagnosed and their parents get shamed into buying self-help programs to figure this out alone.

In a similar way, capitalism wants every group or organization or movement to keep improving its efficiency and effectiveness. And to develop along the flat line of linear progression to keep the profits coming or to keep the grant funders happy. It deems conflict unproductive and unprofitable rather than something generative or even essential for innovation and equity. 

Yet, nonlinear cycles are all around me. 

For newborns to take in milk whether from breasts, chests, or bottles, they have to synchronize sucking, swallowing, and breathing. And the cycle of suck-swallow-breath synchrony continues. 

Or when toddlers play, many of them have a cycle of venturing out boldly to play by themselves and then coming back in to check on their caregivers and reconnect with the adults to recharge. It’s a cycle of exploration and connection. Going out and coming back in to reconnect and recharge. 

Besides in and out, another shape of this cycle is up and down. Another tiny teacher of mine, Dash, was almost 2 years old when we met. Dash was a hard-core fan of music and he also loved his daily routines. One day Dash, his dad, and I met at the Chicago Public Library for his favorite music class. There were lots of kids there running around that circle time area. It was loud, chaotic, and a lot for him and for me too. Dash’s body tensed up but he dashed his way to pick up the drum from the music teacher anyway. His dad was very, very proud. Towards the end of the music class, Dash was feeling very excited and overwhelmed at the same time. He began flapping his hands. This two-year-old knew how alert his little body was from the activation in his nervous system. He also knew how to bring that activation down so that he didn’t have to send his nervous system into the fight-flight-freeze-melt down response, so that he could stay present with us. Unapologetic, he knew that flapping his hands repetitively felt good in his body. The predictability of the rhythm felt so secure and soothing in an environment that was so unpredictable and overwhelming. Dash honored what his body was telling him and he showed me another shape of the cycle which was up and down. 

As I was watching him, my hands remembered another up and down cycle and a similar repetitive motion that once felt so good in my body. Dash reminded me of when I sat with my grandmother and we threaded flowers on a string to make a flower garland for our ancestral altar. Or when we would make dumplings together. We had our rhythm and cycle: scoop the filling, fill the dumpling wrapper, tap water on its edge, fold it, squeeze it, set it on the tray, rinse and repeat. 

And I imagine that you know these cycles too when you go from “Wow I’m really an amazing parent. I nailed that question my kid asked me about trans people.” To “Oh no did I ruin my kid forever?” Does that resonate with you? Yet capitalism conditions us to believe that our confidence and effectiveness in raising a child should keep progressing in a linear way…up, up, and up as we keep buying more parenting books and downloading more child development apps. 

Or you might cycle between one moment when you love being a parent and love your child only to question your life choices in the next moment when your child is hard to like. Most parents feel both love and rage towards their children at different times; clinically speaking it’s called ambivalence. You’re not alone in feeling this human emotion. Yet capitalism and patriarchy again flatten this cycle into a flat line and condition us to feel like we always have to love our children unconditionally, be grateful, and always put our children first.

I feel humbled each time I notice nonlinearity in my tiny teachers. They always remind me that there are many paths to change. There are many possibilities and I don’t always have to pick the most convenient option to perform for the oppressors. 

Iteration        

Second component: iteration.

adrienne maree brown wrote in Emergent Strategy “If we release the framework of failure, we can realize that we are in iterative cycles, and we can keep asking ourselves- how do I learn from this?”

When I think of my tiny teachers, they never shy away from repetition and iterations. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve sung We Don’t Talk About Bruno this year, or Baby Shark Doo Doo, or Let it Go from Frozen, remember that? 

One tiny teacher who taught me about iteration is named Marisol.

Marisol just learned how to pull her toddler self up to standing. She was eager to squat down, pull herself back up, and squat back down. Her low muscle tone did not present as a challenge at all. Her premature birth did not keep Marisol from squatting down from the coffee table to the floor to get her favorite toy giraffe and putting it on the table for her mom. Then, her mom clapped with joy. Then, Marisol whacked her giraffe back on the floor and smiled. She and her mom looked at each other and harmonized “Uh oh.” Marisol squatted down to get her giraffe and this attuned interaction continued. 

Marisol’s new motor skills got refined with each iteration. What’s more important was the drive behind each repetition. Marisol was driven by her curiosity and her sheer joy of doing something simply to be really good at it. She was also driven by her connection with her mother. When they clapped together, they delighted in each other and that was so satisfying and developmentally critical. To be seen, heard, and to know that she mattered to someone she trusted…that alone was priceless. When iteration is driven by curiosity and connection its texture and flavor is so different from when repetition is coerced for the sake of productivity and efficiency. 

When I think of Marisol, I often think of the ways she shows up so fully without self-doubt or shame or fear of failure to stop her. 

As parents, don’t you already embody this sense of experimentation and iteration through your daily trail and error? I wonder what parenting would be like when you iterate and experiment with grace, leaving lots of room for curiosity to see what will emerge. I wonder what parenting would be like when you make mistakes and you go “uh oh” like Marisol and iterate again without immediately weaponizing shame towards yourself for not being perfect. 

Decentralization of power

The third component: decentralization of power.

When power is decentralized, it’s shared. We bring all aspects of who we are to the table and work together towards a shared vision. Decentralized power is quite different from the traditional hierarchy of power where people at the top hoard all the power by dominating everyone below them. That hierarchy narrows our vision of what freedom is. It beats us into believing that the only way to get free is to keep exploiting others – that we have to get to the top because otherwise you’ll lose your spot on that preschool waitlist, or that job promotion or that bank loan. Because power is scarce, and acquiring power is a zero-sum game where for you to have more someone else needs to have less. 

When I step away from that power hierarchy, I think of the lesson on decentralization of power that a duo of 5-year-old tiny teachers taught me. Kimmy and Destiny are preschool friends. One afternoon they sat right next to each other building their own block towers. No words were exchanged between the two. Kimmy’s being Kimmy and Destiny’s being Destiny, each living their best lives with their wooden blocks…but together. Until 2 minutes later when Destiny “accidentally” grabbed Kimmy’s block and they entered a preschoolers’ screaming match. You know how it goes. 

Screaming aside, what Kimmy and Destiny were doing was parallel play where they were playing alongside each other but not with each other. They showed me what it looked like for them to be their best selves without dominating each other. They both take up space while sharing space. They both glow without dimming each other’s shine. As they were building their block towers, power was shared and decentralized. 

And I know this sense of shared power deep in my belly. Because I remember feeling full from sharing meals with my trans sex worker chosen family back in Thailand. Even though we were in a capitalist/street economy, we hustled together, took care of one another’s safety, and made sure we all had something to eat at the end of the night. We shared our power, just like we shared our meals.

In movement spaces, we move towards the shared vision together. When we share that power with one another, no one is disposable. When we make decisions together and account for every voice despite the necessary discomfort, we don’t need a hierarchy. Like Kimmy and Destiny, we, too, can take up space while sharing space, and do it without dimming one another’s shine. When conflicts happen, we hold space for what needs to unfold without blowing our pain through one another. We hold the heat, the charge, and the urgency to fix because sometimes relationships are more valuable than concrete outcomes and objectives the funders ask of us. 

For parents, you decentralize your power and share it with your child when you set aside your to-do list, sit down next to your child, and connect with them with a simple “what’s going on? What do you want to play together after lunch?” Or when you meet your child exactly where they’re at when you set aside the usual “just do what I said” and connect with them “you seem so sad. I’d be sad too if I had to cut my playtime short. But dinner’s about to be ready. Let’s go set up the table together.”

Interdependence

Our fourth and last element of Emergent Strategy: Interdependence. 

“Interdependence is mutual dependence between things” wrote adrienne maree brown in Emergent Strategy. It means my survival and wellbeing is connected to yours, to my spirits and ancestors, to all beings, and to the land. It means that when we all have what we need and share the excess, we flourish together. It means that I got you and you got me because we both matter to each other. 

I can’t think of a better example of interdependence than the relationship between a parent and a child. Both need each other to thrive. 

Caleb was 2 and a half when I saw him and his mother, Imani, for Caleb’s passionate bursts of tantrums and meltdowns. He found his voice. He was coming to his own personhood, declaring his independence from the top of his lungs. And oh he had incredible lung capacity.   

What’s beautiful about toddler tantrums is the push and pull between becoming their own person and getting freaked out about losing the connection they have with their caregivers. So on one hand our toddler is confidently saying “I’ve been a baby for so long. Now I want to be my own person. I can do anything myself. Me Mine. My turn. Let me help.” On the other hand, they’re not sure if you’ll still love them and be there for them if they break off and become their own person.

With this push-pull dilemma in mind, Imani knew that each meltdown is Caleb’s way of asking her to help him navigate his intense feelings without getting lost in them. He was also asking for reassurance if she would still love him and see him as a person even when he’s not at his best emotionally. 

It’s clear from our grown-up perspective that children need our help. The interdependence piece lies in how Caleb’s meltdowns offered a rich invitation for Imani to re-parent her inner child, to break her intergenerational family cycle of emotional neglect, and to heal this old wound.

Young Imani learned quickly that to keep herself out of trouble and keep her parents happy, she had to be quiet. She had to rely on herself and never ask for help. Feelings were to be stuffed down and snuffed out, never to be expressed. Young Imani trained herself to disconnect from her body and from her feelings to survive. Overtime, this disconnection becomes a habit. “Oh that’s just how I always am.”

Imani’s healing journey involved reclaiming her feelings and her bodily connections and remembering that the full spectrum of who she was (not just the smart, nice, helpful, polite one) mattered.

When Caleb exploded in tears, screams, and balls of raw feelings (aka a toddler’s version of radical honesty), a small part in Imani or her inner child wanted to teach Caleb the same training she went through: Feelings were to be stuffed down and snuffed out, never to be expressed.

But Imani wanted to break this intergenerational family cycle and be very intentional about how Caleb learned to feel his feelings and express them. For Caleb, each meltdown meant getting helped from his mom in navigating intense feelings while knowing that he was loved. For Imani, each meltdown meant healing her inner child who never get to express her feelings. Both Caleb and Imani were interdependent on each other as they learn to take up space and embody their full humanity. 

Remembering Caleb and Imani makes me realize that when I love all of the children I get to work with, I come to love the inner child parts of me too. These tiny teachers reflect parts of me that I couldn’t love, that I have shamed away to blend in and belong. Loving them allows me to learn how to love myself…all of myself. The children and families I serve don’t just depend on me for services but I mutually, interdependently, depend on them to get to know my inner children and love all parts of me. 

I wonder which of these elements: nonlinearity, iteration, decentralization of power, and interdependence most resonate with you and your child. 

I hope you feel a bit more recharged after these stories like I do. If so, let’s re-imagine parenting to be decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational together. 

Re-imagining parenting together

How about a question to ground our re-imagination?

How can we mirror the richness and nuance that these tiny teachers embody as we intentionally adapt the ways we raise our children to include their complexity?

Especially when capitalism coerces us to conform to the American dreams of existing solely to trade labor for money so we can get to the top and be free at last. 

Especially when colonialism co-opts our nervous system and coerces us to dissociate from the land, our ancestors, and our kin.

Especially when child development’s milestones and Instagram’s parenting hacks are so limiting and ableist. 

adrienne maree brown wrote “We are realizing that we must become the systems we need- no government, political party, or corporation is going to care for us, so we have to remember how to care for each other.” (p.113)

While we’re advocating for policies to change, we can always start practicing liberation in our home and in the ways we raise our tiny humans. We can always start small and start in the next breath when our capacity allows. Systemic oppression seeps into our parenting and our nervous system, so we need to unhook, upend, and unlearn this internalized oppression starting in our bodies and in our homes. 

This is where decolonized parenting comes it. Decolonized parenting is a process of discernment. You discern WHEN you’re raising your child by your values and WHEN you’re not. You know when you’re in the driver’s seat. You also know when capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy put you in the passenger’s seat. 

Charles was a wonderful father I worked with in our six-week In-Out-N-Through cohort. He told me that he had these rigid rules in his head that his two toddlers needed to follow. These rules sounded like “I must…” For example, “I must get them to clean up the toys.” “I must have a strict schedule for them to follow.” Charles and I peeled back the layers when we wondered together how he learned these rules. Charles said that he grew up in a strict household. That made a lot of sense. We peeled back another layer and Charles could see that because he was a man, he believed that he needed his children to respect him. So we named that it was a script written by patriarchy.  Charles also said that because he was Black, having that sense of control over his toddlers was in a way ensuring that they were obedient and that would keep them away from dangers like police brutality. So we named that it was another script by white supremacy and colonialism. We de-tangled the knots of patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonialism when I asked Charles, “Without these scripts written by oppressors, how do you want to show up as Charles?” He shared with me that he wanted his toddlers to know that he got them. He and his amazing wife told me that one time his eldest child got frustrated. Charles had to be intentional about setting that rigid “I must” and that habit of control aside. Then he said to his daughter “You know if that happened to me, I’d be frustrated just like you.”

What Charles and I did was essentially asking: “who’s raising my child? My values? Or capitalism’s?” “White supremacy’s?”

This question brings about discernment, slows you down, and helps you recognize that whatever you need to do to contort, conform, and perform for the oppressors, you do it to survive, pay bills, and put food on the table. In slowing down, you have a moment to be still enough to perhaps hear the wisdom from your ancestors that they’re so generously giving. You might even remember that surviving systemic and intergenerational oppression isn’t all of who you are. You know you’re not failing as a parent. You’re in a system that fails you.

This discernment can guide us to intentionally adapt our parenting practices to align with our values. Like Charles did when he caught the habitual “I must” creeping up on him and he intentionally set that aside and chose to connect with his daughter instead. So that our chance of unknowingly reenacting power-over, domination, control, and coercion with our children in our home is a bit smaller. 

So, knowing who’s raising your child is one side of the coin. On the other side is doing. That means aligning your daily parenting with your social justice values. 

For example, when your child’s having a meltdown, you can help your child navigate those intense feelings in the spirit of power-with instead of power-over. You might have a strong impulse to immediately teach your child manners by saying something like “We don’t bite our friends. Go say sorry now.” That doesn’t feel like meeting your child where they’re at through power-with. It feels more like power-over. So power-with is connecting emotion to emotion with your child first. Like Charles did when he said “Wow I’d be frustrated too.” Then, when your child seems a bit more like themselves, then you teach, set limits, and give consequences. 

I discussed ways for you to practice power-with, solidarity, and accountability through your daily parenting while promoting your child’s development in episode 4. And in episode 14, I’ll go into more details on ways to start healing your inner child wounds and practicing decolonized parenting. It’s like a starter kit. I’ll leave the links in the show notes for you if you’re curious about these topics. 

If you enjoyed this episode, you might love the Allied Media Conference. It’s a national biennial event that quote “explores emerging futures at the intersection of media, art, technology, and visionary organizing… celebrates the liberatory media of our communities, centering Black, Indigenous, Disabled, Queer, Trans, Undocumented, and People of Color communities.” End quote. I had the honor of sharing this topic with an amazing group of parents and organizers at the Conference back on July 1st. There’re so many thought provoking, heart warming, and soul soothing sessions there too. 

Thank you for delighting in small joys in our children and for being small together in this episode. May the smalls energize us to do this big thing called collective liberation. 

As always, in solidarity and sass. Until next time, please take care.