Episode 27: Why Your Child’s Resilience Needs Your Parenting Mistakes

[INTRODUCTION]

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 In this podcast, we turn down the volume of oppressive social norms and outdated family patterns so that we can hear our inner voice and raise our children by our own values too.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

Welcome to episode 27 of the Come Back to Care Podcast.

In this episode, you and I are going to explore the love between you and your child through the lenses of child development science and the social justice value of accountability. In particular we’re going to talk about perfectionism because the supremacist culture often confuses us into thinking that perfectionism in parenting is a measure of how much we love our children. We’ll start with a quick political analysis to understand the roots of perfectionism. Next we’ll unpack research studies to see how- in fact- our imperfection, mistakes, and mismatches can strengthen our children’s development…to the point that they’re necessary to nurture children’s resilience. Then, you’ll take a quick tour in my brain when I share one thing I look for when I see parents and children interact with each other in my therapy office. We’ll wrap things up by talking about how to apply the research to your daily parenting and put science and social justice into action. 

I hope that the research studies we’re going to cover in this episode can soften the guilt and shame we often feel when we make mistakes; and at the same time, give us the grace we need to hold ourselves accountable to love our children in developmentally informed ways. 

If that sounds generative to you, let’s get started. True to Come Back to Care style, we’re going big first then going home. Meaning we’re looking at the social, cultural, and political factors first then we bring it all home to see how those factors trickle down into your parenting in your home. 

Alright I’d love to invite you to paint a scene in your mind with me. If you’re driving or doing the dishes, I got you. No need to close your eyes or anything like that. Okay, ready? Please take 5 seconds to picture parents and children who are deeply in love with one another. Quickly paint this picture in your mind. Who are you seeing? What are they doing? There’s of course no right or wrong answer here. The responses I usually get from parents include parents and children happily doing activities together whether they’re reading books, cooking, playing, and everyone’s smiling and laughing…perhaps the living room is clean and organized too. Or, some parents share a more calm and content version like a quiet moment of chest, breast, bottle feeding with the parent and child staring into each other’s eyes. 

These mental scenes can shed light on our cultural expectation when it comes to what love between parents and children “should” in air quotes look like. And too often that love should look like the adults and children are perfectly in-synched or always cued-in, connected, or attuned to one another. A perfect harmony.

When love between parents and children is romanticized into a commercial-perfect picture, hmm we’re going to do what we do best which is decolonize it. Shall we deconstruct this romanticized love and contextualize it?

Patriarchy conditions many of us to believe that martyring equals mothering (gender inclusive). Colonialism glorifies self-sacrifice as parental dedication when, in fact, it’s self-abandonment. And we also have the either-or binary conditioning from white supremacy telling us that we either choose ourselves and be selfish or choose our children at the expense of our own needs, boundaries, and dignity. We can either be perfectly in-synched or we fail as parents. 

The supremacist culture often coopts love and reduces its richness, messiness, and nuance into a sterilized synchrony. This perfect harmony may work well for capitalism where the efficiency and effectiveness of production and extraction are maximized. Perfect harmony doesn’t quite fit when it comes to human relationships, especially parent-child relationships.

In fact, in my clinical work with families and young children, I never look at perfect harmony between parents and children as a sign of wholesome development. 

The one key thing I look for when I do developmental assessment is a rhythm in the parent-child interaction. And the rhythm is a 1-2-3 step: connection-disconnection-reconnection. To use a dance analogy, a connection is where you and your child is attuned to each other. You’re moving together as one unit. And at some point you might step on each other’s toes and stumble. That’s a moment of disconnection. It might feel awkward and sometimes painful but you work together to regain your footing, find your rhythm again, and the dance continues. That’s reconnection.

The way you and your child find your way back to each other after stepping on each other’s toes speaks volumes to the quality of your relationship with your child. When I see you and your child working through the disconnection by trying to find out how the other person is feeling, maybe apologizing for stepping on some toes or forgetting some steps, I see the trust between you and your child that you’ve developed over time. And developed from what? From all the previous disconnections that you’ve had to work through together to reconnect with your child over and over again. Not from being in perfect harmony or being perfectly in-synched all the time. 

If I may, can we nerd out about attachment theories for a second? You might have come across the concept of attachment in pop psychology where attachment styles get divided into four groups: secure, avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized. And in Western psychology, the secure type is the ideal type where you form healthy connections with others while being your own person at the same time. We often misunderstand secure attachment between parents and children as requiring you to join hips with your child and be gentle and loving with them all the time. That same myth of perfect harmony we just talked about. And that’s not it. In the original attachment research by Mary Ainsworth back in the 70’s, what defines a secure attachment is not perfect harmony but rather the reconnection, or the “reunion” as the researchers called it in the study. What took place in the study was the mothers, their 12-to-18-month-old babies, and one adult stranger were playing in a room. Then, the mothers were asked to step outside for a bit and then return. The researchers looked at how these babies behaved when their moms returned. This is the moment of reunion or reconnection. Both the babies who were happy to see their moms and the babies who were upset but able to be soothed were categorized as having secure attachment. To say it another way, secure attachment doesn’t require parents to be perfectly in sync with their children (which is opposite from what white, colonial, capitalist perfectionism would have you believe). Rather, it’s more about how parents and children work through the disconnection to reconnect.   

In adult relationships, the same idea applies. This is like when you hear your friend telling you that they and their partner never ever, ever, ever argue, in the back of your mind you might be doubting the strength of their relationship a bit. Because you know if they have fought and argued, they have had to work through those disconnections to reconnect. And that work right there deepens their partnership. Clinically speaking the work of disconnection and reconnection is called mismatch and repair. According to Drs. John and Julie Gottman, leading psychologists and researchers who have studied over 3,000 couples since the 1980s, what makes relationship stronger is the couples’ ability to process hurtful events that happened (aka disconnection) and repair the relationship (aka reconnection).  

Let’s circle back to your relationship with your child. I know you already understand that perfectionism and parenting don’t really go hand in hand. If you’re about to tell me, “Nat, I get it,” I know you do. Yes! And…get this! Embracing imperfection is a great start. Thank you for breaking out of that perfect-or-fail either-or binary. Now that we’ve embraced imperfection, let’s talk about something even more important: reconnection.  When your child is stressed, they tend to use self-soothing behaviors that they’ve practiced with you in those moments of reconnection in the past. So, you need disconnections for reconnections to happen. I’ll say it differently. You need to make mistakes for repair to happen. In that repair, your child learns how to cope with life. 

In a famous study back in 1986 called a still-face experiment, the researchers, Tronick and Gianino, video taped mothers and babies interacting with each other. Then, they analyzed the footages frame by frame and found two things that…on the one hand might seem obvious to parents like you and on the other hand, might come in very handy when you’re overwhelmed with guilt from societal pressure. The first finding is those mothers and babies were only in-synched 30% of the time. That means 70% of the time they were out of sync, mismatched, missing some steps, and stepping on each other’s toes in this dance of a relationship. So, if you’re awake at 1:36 in the morning and questioning if you’re cut out to be a parent or wondering if you’ve ruined your child’s development forever because you lost your cool that afternoon, I invite you to widen your focus so you can see both your inevitable mismatches and your brag-worthy parenting moments. If you at least got it right 30 % today and you reconnected after those disconnections, that’s a good-enough day, right?

The second finding is that reconnection is a two-person dance. When the researchers asked the mothers to turn off their engagement with the babies (no facial expressions, no communications, hence the name still-face experiment), they saw in the video footage that these babies weren’t just passive victims of the mismatch. Instead, these babies as young as six months old pulled out all the tricks in their bags to soothe themselves and try to get their moms’ attention. They vocalized and pointed at their mothers to reconnect. They played with other objects to occupy themselves. They sucked on their fists to self-soothe. They also shifted their attention to focus on something else altogether. And how did these babies know how to do these things at 6 months? As Tronick and another pediatrician Gold wrote in their 2020 book The Power of Discord quote “these infants  used the strategies they had learned through the mismatch-repair process in play to signal their mothers… They were able to draw on their countless moment-to-moment interactions to cope with the stress of caregivers’ unfamiliar behavior.” End quote.

It's almost like these babies trust themselves and their mothers. This trust was based on their previous disconnections that got reconnected. If these babies could talk, they might say something like “ok, I got this. Mom and I practiced this before. I can get her attention. I can point to her, hand her my toy, or cry and she’ll be back.”

Okay, let me pause here for a second. That was a research-heavy way to say disconnecting from your child is inevitable, normal, and necessary for your child’s development and your own parental development. Because when you disconnect from your child and work through the messiness of it to reconnect, you build your confidence as a parent through trial and error. Even if that confidence lasts for a day or until your baby’s teething or your preschooler came back from school with a mysterious rash and the sleep strategy that worked yesterday goes out the window.  

Still with me? Another thing I want to share is that the first time I learned about the 30%, the inner Asian auntie inside of me was screaming. 30% isn’t even grade C-, it’s F minus, minus. I remember that day exactly. It was 2014 and Ed Tronick was lecturing for my infant mental health training. I wanted to ask him about this 30% so badly but my introverted self was too shy. So, if you too are wondering, 30 percent? That’s it? I got you covered. 

Another study from 2008 that used a still-face paradigm shows a footage of one mom and her 2-year-old daughter. They were perfectly attuned to each other. But as soon as the mother was asked to disengage and have that still face, the toddler fell apart and couldn’t even be soothed. Tronick and Gold wrote in the Power of Discord quote “a lack of experience with mismatch and repair has left the toddler unable to manage the brief loss of her mother. It’s as if we are watching the toddler’s emerging sense of herself in the world dissolve in the temporary absence of her caregiver.” End quote.

This example shows that not only does striving for perfection in parenting add even more stress to your mental load, it also robs your child of a rich opportunity to problem solve and practice navigating stress with you. 

Working through the messiness of disconnection to reconnect strengthens your child’s development too. In fact, it promotes three developmental skills in your child: sense of self, agency, and regulation.

Let’s start with sense of self. Tronick and Gold put it so well (though I’ll change the pronouns a bit to be more gender inclusive). They wrote quote “If a parent fails to meet their baby’s needs, not always getting what their baby is communicating but taking the time to figure things out, the parent paves the way for the child to adapt to the uncertainty inherent in all social interactions. The baby thus develops an emerging sense of self.” End quote. Young babies often perceive their parents and themselves as one unit. And by working through the inevitable frustrations of disconnections, babies begin to see themselves as separate from their parents. They begin to develop boundaries that say this is me and that is you. And if you’re working on setting boundaries as an adult like me, boundary setting starts here in infancy. 

The second developmental skill babies learn from reconnection after a disconnection is a sense of agency. Babies learn to trust themselves and their ability to impact their environment. It’s a sense of “I can do something to create change.” It’s certainly something we all need in order to work through any struggles and uncertainty in life. Because the opposite of agency is a sense of defeat. In studies where parents and babies go through regular disconnections together but there aren’t a lot of reconnections…when there’s mismatch but no repair…babies begin to give up on the relationship. They turn inward to self-soothe or turn to an object for comfort instead of trying to get their parents’ attention. 

The final developmental skill is self-regulation. Say down the line, your child is in their classroom and facing something stressful. Self-regulation helps them soothe their nervous system to stay present enough to navigate that stress. That self-regulation comes from your child working through the day-to-day disconnections with you. Lynne Murray, a professor of Developmental Psychology wrote in her book the Psychology of Babies quote “the way parent-child conflicts are habitually resolved is an important predictor of children’s future ability to self-regulate.” End quote.   

[MIDROLL]

I’m so grateful that you’re here, hanging out with me and exploring social justice parenting and inner child re-parenting every other week. If you’re also someone who enjoys reading newsletters, I write one for you every Sunday morning. Please consider signing up for the newsletter if you’d like to receive compassionate, reflective, and actionable information on decolonized parenting and inner child re-parenting. Just visit comebacktocare.com/newsletter and I’ll see you in your inbox. Again, it’s comebacktocare.com/newsletter. Alright back to the episode. 

[END MIDROLL]

To recap, connection, disconnection, and reconnection is the rhythm of raising a child. It’s a nonlinear cycle like most things in nature instead of a linear progression like perfectionism. I truly hope that by embracing this rhythm, you can turn down the volume of the white colonial capitalist patriarchy that’s coercing you to be perfect. Because working through disconnection to reconnect with your child builds their development, specifically their sense of self, agency, and regulation. 

If you’re curious about what children can teach us about the Emergent Strategy concept of nonlinearity, I go into more details in EP 16: What Children Can Teach Us About Change & Liberation Through Emergent Strategy.

All the links to the resources and references mentioned in this episode along with the transcript are neatly organized for you at comebacktocare.com/podcast and you’ll find this episode show notes when you scroll down to episode 27. It’s comebacktocare.com/podcast.

Rhythms of Parenting

Now shall we put all of that child development science into practice? Let’s explore 2 types of rhythms in parenting. First, the rhythm of disconnection and reconnection. Second, the rhythm of engagement and disengagement. 

Alright the rhythm of disconnection and reconnection looks like working through the discomfort of making mistakes and losing your cool so that you’re anchored in your regulation. Then, you reconnect with your child and repair that mismatch. Instead of getting down on yourself with shame and guilt, you use reconnection as an opportunity to practice holding yourself accountable. 

While you get an opportunity to flex your social justice muscle of accountability, your child learns from your modeling that mistakes are normal and people can reconnect after a mistake to deepen the relationship. 

The second rhythm is engagement and disengagement. And it looks like being present with your child. As a culture, we adopt the idea that if we love someone the best present we can give them is our presence and our attention. In movies, we see partners tell each other: “I’m going to stick with you, be by your side, and be there for you through thick and thin.” In our society more means better. So if you love someone, give them more engagement, right?  

I know you know where I’m going with this. This idea of capitalistic growth doesn’t apply to relationships. And you know this best. If you force yourself to be present and engage with your child through thick and thin, you can’t be there for anyone (yourself included) when you’re stretched too thin. 

What I’m trying to say is expecting yourself to be 100% engaged and present with your child 100% of the time is another way to contort your body to conform to the oppressors’ standard of perfectionism and growth. Plus, it doesn’t even make sense developmentally. Take young babies as our wise teachers. Perhaps you remember when your child was a baby, you would sing songs to them for a while. Your baby loved it because they would coo back, they’d lock eyes with you, they would smile. It’s precious. Then suddenly, they turn their cute little head to the side. If they could talk, they would say something like “that was so much fun but that was all my young nervous system could take. So I’m going to turn to the side to disengage with you and take a break.” Clinically speaking, when babies turn their heads to the side, we call this behavior gaze aversion. 

Gaze aversion is an example of our rhythm of engagement and disengagement. When your baby disengages from you, it’s not about them not loving you. It’s simply a part of the rhythm. Just like when your child is telling you a 30-minute story about their best friends’ pet hamster, in the beginning you’re present and engaged…then your attention drifts away and you disengage. When you daydream or get in the zone, that falls along the continuum of dissociation or disengagement too. Dr. Janina Fisher, a clinical psychologist and a trauma expert, destigmatizes dissociation by saying that it’s an ability that comes online during high-demand situation so you can act quickly without getting distracted by feelings. It’s something very common for first responders or medical professionals. And dare I say parents.  

This rhythm of engagement and disengagement also applies when it’s harder to be present with your child. For example, during meltdowns.

Have you ever been in a situation like this one? You tell yourself “Today’s the day I’m gonna be really intentional in my parenting and be really present with my child. I’ll hold space for them and be with them through their meltdowns.” Then, it’s 4:46 pm and your child’s already missed two naps. The day’s already been rough but you stay the course. You’ve been calm and present when you hold your child’s hands through their meltdown. You’re naming their feelings…But! Phew! It’s been 20 minutes and the crying either gets louder or you’re losing your patience. You’re feeling irritation rising in the background too. In this moment you’re wondering “why can’t I help my child? why can’t I be strong enough to keep it together for them? I love them so much. Am I a terrible parent?”

How does that resonate with you? That cycle of perfect love and perfect engagement that leads to a sense of not good enough which then leads to guilt and shame?

What if in that example, you relieve yourself from the pressure of grinning it and bearing it so you can push your irritation down and force yourself to stay engaged with your child. This way you can apply the rhythm of engagement and disengagement. 

I wonder how it would be if when you start to notice your irritation rising, you intentionally disengage for a second to catch your breath or feel your body, or do what you need to re-center yourself for three breaths. Then, you re-engage your child. If it applies, maybe you narrate that to your child…something like “I’m here for you. And I’m feeling my body tensing up. I’m going to rock my body side to side and do three full breaths. Would you like to do that together?” When you’re intentional about disengaging from your child to put your oxygen mask on first, you’re modeling to your child that you honor your body and boundaries too and big feelings can be navigated. You’re modeling that problem solving and emotional literacy. And once your cup is a little fuller, you can engage your child and be present again in solidarity and not as a savior or a martyr.

What’s equally important is that you’re communicating trust to your child. It’s trust in their ability to try out regulation skills that they’ve been practicing with you to soothe themself while you’re disengaging to put your oxygen mask on for three breaths. 

I hope that by embodying the rhythm of engagement and disengagement, you can bid societal shame farewell when you intentionally disengage to put your oxygen mask on first. It’s another opportunity for you to practice being your own ally so you can meet your child in solidarity. As for your child, working through this disconnection with you is an opportunity for them to safely practice self-regulation skills and grow resilience. 

Tronick and Gold wrote quote “resilience builds as you realize you have the ability to navigate the mismatches. It’s a muscle that grows from the repair of mismatch starting with your earliest relationships and continuing throughout your life.” End quote.

In closing, I’ve had the honor of working alongside parents for over a decade and I get to witness how much you love your child. And what breaks my heart the most is when you love your child in the ways white colonial capitalist patriarchy tell you to love which is by being a perfectionist and a martyr at the cost of abandoning yourself. 

In this episode, you and I decolonized that romanticized version of love together. So you can love yourself, your child, and your inner child simultaneously. 

We also looked at love through the lens of child development science and we saw that your child’s resilience sprouts from the fertile ground of all those imperfections, disconnections, mismatches when you tend to this soil with accountability and reconnection.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist teacher and activist, wrote in his beautiful book How to Love quote: “To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love… Often, when we say, “I love you” we focus mostly on the idea of the “I” who is doing the loving and less on the quality of the love that’s being offered.” End quote  

I’m deeply grateful for you and your time unlearning that romanticized and oppressive way to love and relearning a more liberatory and developmentally informed way to love.

Every link to the references and resources mentioned here and the transcript is organized for you and your curious heart at comebacktocare.com/podcast. 

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