Ep 37: Where do I start “meeting my child where they’re at”?
[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 In this podcast, we turn down the volume of oppressive social norms and outdated family patterns so that we can hear our inner voice and raise our children by our own values too.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 37 of the Come Back to Care Podcast.
The foundation of your child’s development is meeting them where they’re at so they feel seen, heard, and loved. It also offers you an opportunity to practice the social justice concept of power-with instead of power-over in your home. Sounds simple enough. But putting it into action when we didn’t feel seen or heard as a child and when we’re swimming in White, colonial, capitalist patriarchy as an adult? That can be a little tricky. So, I’d love to continue our conversation about power-with from the previous episode and get even more specific about the art and science of meeting your child where they’re at.
In this episode, you and I are going to explore two needs that children across cultures and abilities need from their caregivers to thrive. Then, you’ll unpack three things- action, awareness, and agility- that you can play with to meet those needs in your child...most of the time. Together, we’ll find ways to put 60 years of attachment research into action, so that you’re ready when systemic oppression leaves you too tired and inner child wounds leave you too triggered to show up fully for your child. If that sounds generative to you, let’s get started.
Our children need many things to survive and thrive: food, shelter, and care on the physical side…plus…love, attention, and validation on the emotional side. When we meet the right needs at the right time…most of the time, our children learn that “Hmm, I’m worthy of love and I matter. So I have what I need to learn, explore, grow, and make mistakes.” And you and I know this! I remember when I first transitioned socially around high school, my dad re-introduced me to his friends who had known me since I was a little boy. My dad said proudly to his friends “This is my daughter.” His friends were so confused but my dad kept smiling. I still remember that sense of being seen and heard by my dad in that moment. And from that day onward, no transphobic comments can keep me from living my life and being fabulous because I know my family sees me. The power of being seen shows up in all kinds of environments. You might be in a meeting and you know your colleagues got your back. Then, you might feel more confident taking risk and disrupting the team meeting after someone said something that’s not aligned with the team’s values for equity. Being seen is incredibly powerful.
To say it in attachment research language, Dan Siegel and Tiny Payne Bryson wrote in the Power of Showing Up quote “when children are offered a secure attachment with their primary caregiver, these predictable and therefore reliable experiences reduce their levels of stress and allow them to develop confidence and ultimately self-reliance.” End quote. This idea came from the work of scientists at the University of Minnesota back in 1975. They followed 267 pairs of first-time mothers and their babies for 30 years. The lead researcher, Alan Sroufe, concluded at the end of this 30-year study that the relationship between children and their mothers in the study is quote “clearly related to the growth of self-reliance, the capacity for emotional regulation, and the emergence and course of social competence, among other things.” End quote.
Attachment research, like any other research topics, has its own EuroAmerican biases and limitations. Nevertheless, the science of attachment is pretty solid and we can use parts of it to help us group our children’s needs into two concrete categories. So that when you’re exhausted from white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy or overwhelmed by conflicting parenting advice on the Internet, you can come back to these two foundational needs and meet your child where they’re at… most of the time.
According to the consensus within attachment research, the two categories of emotional needs underneath children’s behaviors are a) the need for connection and b) the need for exploration.
When your child wants to spend time with you or they make a bid for connection, your presence with them, your power-with with your child fills their emotional cup. This care, connection, and comfort are meeting their need for connection by saying to your child “I get you.”
After the emotional cup is full, your child feels so secure in your love for them that they’re ready to launch into the environment. They’re confident to explore, learn, take risks, make mistakes, or even push your parenting buttons because they know you have their back and their best interest at heart. Your curiosity and encouragement are meeting your child’s need for exploration by saying to them “I got you.”
Let’s talk about some examples. Your preschooler is negotiating for another book, after another book during bedtime. What might be the need underneath this behavior? Connection? Or, exploration? Your hunch might be telling you that your preschooler might not want to go to sleep because they’re a little nervous about the new semester starting in a few weeks. So you’re guessing that these stalling tactics and negotiations might be your child’s way of expressing their need for connection. Instead of saying things like “you need to go to bed now or we won’t go to the park tomorrow,” you might meet this need for connection by giving your child reassurance “I know our summer schedule is about to change. I feel nervous about these changes too sometimes. You know one thing that will stay the same is our breakfast time. We’ll still eat together before I drop you off at school. I love you and we’re all done with books tonight. I can’t wait to enjoy breakfast with you in the morning.” In this example, you’re meeting your child’s emotional need for connection underneath their behavior by communicating “I get you.”
Our second example is a 10-year-old child who accidentally picked up a curse work from a Youtube video and now he’s saying this word all the time and teaching his summer camp friends all about this word. What a nightmare…I know. If this is you, please know that 4 different families shared a version of this story with me this summer alone. And they were all mortified, swearing with me that they never say these words at home. You’re not alone in this. And we can do something about it. What might be the need underneath this behavior? Connection? Or, exploration? And if this is you and you’re at your wit’s end, the beauty of this framework is you can start anywhere. Perhaps, you wonder if it’s the need for exploration because it’s bound to pique the curiosity of a 10-year-old to see how one tiny word can elicit such big reactions from grown-ups around them. To meet this need for exploration, you might run an experiment and say “I know you picked up a new word that gets everyone to react big time. Do you know what this word means? Someone used to say this word to me and it really hurt my feelings. In our home, we really value being kind and not hurting others. I need us to come up with a plan to choose a different word.” By doing this we replace the control and compliance of “do what I said” or “stop saying that” with cooperation like we discussed in the previous episode. And through this cooperation, you continue to explore other words your child can use and meet their need for exploration. And because parenting rarely goes smoothly the first try, you might notice that “hmm maybe it’s not exploration, maybe my child is actually trying to express himself so using this swear word is his attempt to bid for connection.” In that case, you might pivot and meet his need for connection by saying “how about you say I feel mad or sad instead of saying that hurtful word? That way I know how to be there for you. Let’s try this for one week.” In this example, you were meeting your child’s need for exploration by communicating “I got you. You want to explore? I got you…I take charge without punishing you and I offer a boundary where we don’t use this word to hurt others.” Then, you realized that the need for exploration wasn’t it. So, you pivoted to meeting his need for connection by offering cooperation to explore other words to use instead. You pivoted from “I got you” to “I get you. I get that you want to express your feelings and I’m here to figure it out with you.”
Before we explore the question of where to start meeting your child where they’re at let’s take a moment to reflect on one moment when your child’s behavior might have been pushing your parenting buttons. And if guilt or regret is bubbling up, I invite you to check in with it, if you’d like. Perhaps reflect “is this guilt or regret moving me closer to being the parent I know I can be? Or is it keeping me stuck in shame and therefore stuck in the loops of what ifs in the past?” Take your time. I got you. We got this. Ummmm. It’s such a human thing, isn’t it… for guilt to pop up when we learn something new about parenting?
Alright, in that scenario when your child’s behavior was pushing your parenting buttons, could the unmet needs underneath the behaviors be the need for connection or the need for exploration? How could you have met your child where they were at differently? Thank you for taking a moment to reflect with me.
Now that we’ve identified 2 categories of our children’s needs based on attachment research, let’s explore how to meet those needs. And there are three things I’d love to share with you: action, awareness, and agility.
First action! There are two categories of needs so there are two ways to meet those needs. When your child needs to be independent, explore, learn, and make mistakes, you can support them by being curious about what they’re interested in and by providing encouragement when they’re fumbling and figuring it out. Your curiosity and encouragement are essentially communicating “I got you.” Or, “I got you so spread your wings and explore. When you go too far, I’ll step in, take charge, and set boundaries to keep you safe.”
When your child needs their emotional cup filled, you can support them by providing care, connection, closeness, and comfort…communicating “I get you.” “I get where you’re coming from and why you might be feeling this way. I’m here so you don’t have to figure it out alone.”
When you’re at a loss about what to do parenting-wise, your inner knowing can guide your next steps when you reflect “is my child needing me to show up with ‘I get you’ or ‘I got you’ right now?” Because when you meet their need for connection with “I get you” and their need for exploration with “I got you” most of the time, your child will cultivate their inner knowing and move through the world with “I got this.” “I got this because I’m anchored in my dignity and I know I’m worthy of love.” When you show up for your child, they’ll learn to show up for themselves and for others in their communities down the line.
When your child is learning and exploring and you meet them with “I got you” by providing curiosity like “Oh, what are you cooking? A gummy bear soup? It smells so good. You put so much love into it. Can I taste it?” Your child experiences what it feels like in their body when someone cares enough about them to be curious about their interest and delight in them. Then, they can use this “I got you” wisdom from you to be curious about someone who moves with a wheelchair, has different skin color, or speaks with a different accent. Teaching your child to show up for others and hold space for others in anti-racist, anti-oppressive ways begins with you showing up for them with “I get you” and “I got you” …most of the time.
That’s our action plan. We use attachment science to group our children’s emotional needs into two categories: connection and exploration. We then meet those needs with either “I get you” or “I got you.” Science makes it sound so easy to do, doesn’t it? But both you and I know that putting this science into practice is more nuanced than that, especially when surviving white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy leaves you too burned out to show up for your child fully. That’s why we can’t just talk about action and call it a day. We need to talk about awareness and agility too.
Awareness in our Come Back to Care style refers to being aware of the two barriers that get in between you and the parent you know you can be. These two barriers are systemic oppression and inner child wounds.
To show up for someone you love and be present with them, we ourselves need to first feel safe enough, and recharged enough to care and to be curious about them. But when our food, housing, and healthcare can disappear if we stop working for our employers and when we have to navigate the violent impact of white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy, many of us are operating in our survival mode. In this survival mode of fight-flight-freeze-people please, we might only have enough energy to fix, manage, teach, and correct to get to the next item on the to-do list. And we know that it’s not the same as showing up for our children emotionally, let alone meeting them where they’re at. I hope that by naming the water we’re swimming in, you can fiercely clap back at your inner critics who are saying “you’re never going to be a good parent.” You might say to your inner critics, “You know what?” And I just sounded exactly like my grandmother there. “You know what? I don’t have the bandwidth to show up doesn’t mean I can’t. I’m capable. I just don’t have the capacity because of capitalism. And I’m holding myself accountable by picking one routine to meet my child where they’re at. And today? That’s during our car ride home from daycare. I’ll bring snacks for us to eat in the car and play We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”
How’s that landing for you? What would be that one routine for you to show up with “I get you” or “I got you” for your child today?
In addition to unlearning oppressive conditionings from white, colonial, capitalist patriarchy from your daily parenting, awareness also means knowing which inner child wounds are getting in the way of you meeting your child where they’re at. You’re very likely to have already noticed the difference in your comfort level between when your child is coming in for connection and going out to explore the environment. Some of us feel pretty balanced and okay meeting both needs. Many of us feel more at ease with one over the other. For example, when your child needs your attention and connection, asking you for a hug, asking you to play with them, you know cognitively that they’re doing what children do. They play. Yet, your body cringes and you can feel yourself disappearing or being consumed by everyone needing everything from you all the time. So, when your child wants connection, it feels so overwhelming that you end up reflexively handing your child an iPad or a book or a toy for them to occupy themselves. Or, when your parental leave is up and you’re returning to work, a part of you might feel excited to have real adult interactions but there’s a lingering fear and worry in the background that you can’t explain. These fears and worries make going back to work feel like you’re abandoning your baby.
Your discomfort around your child’s specific needs is an opportunity to get curious about the unhealed inner child wounds from your childhood underneath that discomfort.
To understand how your upbringing from the past might be shaping your parenting in the present, here’s a snippet from Episode 26: Answering Your Questions About Decolonized Parenting & Inner Child Re-Parenting.
Inner child wounds come from what you had to do to be the child your parents wanted you to be. As a child, you unconsciously adapted how you behaved to fit in with your family rules, to blend in and belong. You unconsciously adapted your behaviors to meet your parents’ expectations, to make sure you got their approval, acceptance, and availability so you were taken care of…
When you contort yourself to conform to your parents’ expectations, you end up leaving the parts of yourself that aren’t accepted in the family behind to avoid experiencing rejection, humiliation, criticism, and abandonment…you abandon those parts of yourself to survive. Contorting your body over and over again to survive by meeting external expectations leaves a wound…
And here’s why healing our inner child wounds is important: unhealed inner child wounds often become barriers that make it harder for you to meet your child where they’re at. It’s really hard to meet your child’s emotional needs when your own inner child’s emotional needs weren’t met. It’s like you don’t get what you didn’t get…
In parenting, we tend to unconsciously validate, appreciate, and approve of our children’s behaviors when those behaviors closely match those we had to adapt to. For example, if you had to be quiet and invisible as a child to stay physically safe and emotionally seen, you might tend to praise your child when they play quietly and independently. You might also unconsciously discourage them from “being too much” when they’re playful, assertive, or curious.
This process is unconscious and done out of love. I repeat it’s unconscious and done out of love. You love your child and, of course, you want them to adopt the same survival strategies you adapted. This is one reason why an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
What’s not transformed gets transmitted. The unhealed wounds and their survival adaptations get passed down across generations.
Still with me? Our past is so sticky. And the good news is that you can do something about it. Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson wrote quote “History is NOT destiny. By making sense of your own story, you can be the kind of parent you want to be- regardless of how you were parented.” End quote.
Giving yourself what you didn’t get or re-parenting your inner child is a lifelong work. I’m doing it daily right there with you too. In this episode, I’d love to share one practice with you that you can play with to strengthen your skills to meet the need for connection and the need for exploration in both your child and inner child. When you experience discomfort, dysregulation, or disorganization in a relationship with your adult friends or partners, I invite you to explicitly name whether you need connection or exploration and share that with your partners. Here are two examples of what that may look like and you can decide if you’d like to give it a go or not.
The first example is when you expressed your need for connection as a child and you were met with criticism, humiliation, or rejection. To protect yourself from this emotional pain, you had to push your need for connection down and over-learn how to be independent. It was safer that way. By over-learning being on your own, you had to under-learn asking for help or connection even though you wanted it. Fast forward to the present moment, you might become used to or even enjoy doing things by yourself and wanting a lot of alone time to recharge. With this awareness, you might communicate with your co-parents or partners that “hey, because of my upbringing, I learned that being alone is safer than bidding for connection. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to spend time with you. What would help me is you give me 15 minutes to wrap up what I’m doing then I can connect with you and be present.” In this example, you’re communicating with your partner how they can show up for you so you can soften the need for independence or exploration that you had to over-learn. This way you’re getting reps in on how to ask for connection which was something you had to under-learn to protect yourself from emotional pain.
If this example resonates with you, particularly if you feel triggered when your child is asking you for connection, comfort, and closeness, you already know how painful it is. And to rub salt on this wound, patriarchy defines a good parent as someone who’s always warm, smiling, cuddly, and loving and perhaps in a tidy living room. To be with you in this pain and make unsubscribing from this patriarchal idea a little bit more easeful, I have some research for you. Dr. Karen Lyons-Ruth, a professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues wrote in 1999 that children’s need for connection can be very triggering and send parents straight into survival mode, making them hypervigilant and self-protective. And in this survival mode, these parents are reactive and revert back to what’s called negative parenting practices like being hostile towards their children or numbing out. In 2018, a group of researchers from the University of Michigan confirmed this finding when they found that a mother’s early life stress led to less sensitive parenting and quote “more defensive behaviors and harsh parenting” end quote. Your inner child wounds make it really hard to provide care, comfort, and closeness to meet your child’s need for connection when you’re triggered.
So while you’re actively healing this inner child wound, who else in your ecosystem of support could meet your child’s need for connection? Who can act as a buffer while you’re unlearning individualism and relearning ways to regulate your triggers and offer care, closeness, and comfort to your child? In social justice organizing, this interdependence is our lifeline for survival and liberation. In attachment research, this interdependence is called social buffering and we have about 25 years of data showing quote “social buffering, that is, positive, supportive relationships, are key to breaking the cycle of the transmission of adversity from parent to child.” End quote.
All the links to these research studies and related podcast episodes are in the episode show notes for you at comebacktocare.com/podcast.
Another example is whenever you feel anxious about whether your partners are going to be emotionally available to you or not. Deep inside you might be freaking out wondering whether your partner is leaving or staying. So, you might try to gain a sense of control to feel secure by complaining to your partners or critiquing them. Underneath the complaint or critique is your attempt to have your emotional cup filled or your need for connection met. With this awareness, you might share with your partner that “hey because of my upbringing, I didn’t get to learn how to ask for attention and connection. I realized that when I complain to you or criticize you, what I’m really trying to say is ‘Can you pay attention to me? I want some connection.’ So, how can I better ask for connection with you next time in ways that you feel good about it too?”
I hope you notice that healing inner child wounds- which are wounds that happened in a relationship between you and those who raised you- has to take place in a relationship with someone you trust. Buying self-help books to do self-improvement on your couch isn’t quite cutting it. Dan and Tina again wrote quote “even if you didn’t receive secure attachment from your parents, you can still offer it to your own children. Secure attachment can be learned and earned… You can earn security by learning how to be in secure relationships.” End quote.
To say it differently, we can’t change our past…what we did or didn’t get from those who raised us. But we don’t have to get stuck in our past survival. Those you trust in your ecosystem of support can help you experience what it feels like to be seen and heard and heal these wounds. So that you don’t have to unintentionally ask your child to heal your wounds.
If you’re a social justice curious parent who wants to get unstuck from family cycles and heal your inner child wounds underneath your parenting triggers, I’d love to invite you to work with me and make sense of your upbringing and stop passing down these intergenerational family cycles to your child. In the 7-week online social justice parenting and inner child re-parenting cohort called the In-Out-N-Through® Program, you’ll play with different body-based tools so you can work with your triggers in the moment to pause, and pick a new parenting strategy that’s actually aligned with your values. You’ll understand your parenting triggers and have body-based ways to work with them too. I know that doing this healing work and weaving social justice action into your daily parenting can seem like a lot. I’ll walk you and a small cohort of liberation-minded families through a specific framework of self-reflection, journaling, and body-based practices to shift from triggered, tired, and stuck to being the parent you know you can be…most of the time…of course. By working together live for 7 weeks, you put your awareness into action while cultivating connections with your new accountability buddies. Our Fall cohort runs from September 6th to October 18th and the registration is open now. To join a community of decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational families please visit comebacktocare.com/learn for more information and registration. It's comebacktocare.com/learn.
Alright, so far we’ve explored two categories of our children’s needs and the action plan to meet them where they’re at. Then, we discussed how systemic oppression and our inner child wounds can get in the way of us showing up fully to meet our children where they’re at. Action and awareness…check! Now let’s talk about our final element: agility.
If you’ve listened to this podcast, you’ve heard me sprinkle the phrase “… most of the time” lots of times. Because you don’t need to get all of this stuff right 100% of the time. In fact, you’re doing great if you can meet your child where they’re at 30% of the time. The context and the science behind this 30% are all in Episode 27: Why Your Child’s Resilience Needs Your Parenting Mistakes. Please refer to this episode if you’re curious about it. But the application of this 30% that I want to focus on with you right now is a) we can’t meet our children’s needs where they’re at all the time. Let’s aim for 30%. Or aim for one routine in the day that you can be extra intentional about offering your child “I get you” or “I got you.” And B) the rest of the time (which is 70% of the time) you’ll miss your mark, or you won’t be able to figure out if your child is needing connection or exploration or you’ll simply be occupied and have no bandwidth left to show up for them emotionally. This 70% is for you to hold yourself in grace and compassion. So that you’re not bogged down by shame and you have the bandwidth you need to be accountable and try to meet your child where they’re at next time. The agility is in your rhythm- disconnection and reconnection.
What’s so important about this agility to reconnect with your child after you couldn’t meet their needs aka disconnected with them is a) your child feels seen and loved. Your reconnection is communicating to your child that they’re important enough for you try again. And b) your child learns directly from your modeling how to ditch perfectionism and work through the discomfort of making mistakes.
In closing, meeting your child where they’re at begins with meeting your inner child where they were at. It’s possible to get unstuck from your survival strategies you had to over-learn when you were little. Bell hooks wrote quote “true resistance begins with people confronting pain…and wanting to do something to change it.” End quote.
At the end of the day, re-parenting your inner child is an act of radical self-love. You love all parts of you, including those parts that you had to shame away and hide to blend in and belong. When the fragments of you become whole again, you do the healing work your ancestors couldn’t and model this radical self-love to your child. It’s possible to be the parent you know you can be.
This lifelong healing is a tender practice and I hope you confront your pain slowly and with someone you trust. The 7-week social justice parenting and inner child re-parenting cohort is here for you as an extra support… if you’d like to do this transformative healing work with me and a small cohort of liberation-minded families. You’ll find all the details at comebacktocare.com/learn.
Every link to the research studies, books, and extra resources mentioned in this episode along with the transcript is in the episode show notes for you at comebacktocare.com/podcast.
In solidarity and sass, until next time. Please take care.