It’s time to stop kidding ourselves. Our species is not going to survive if we don’t make HUGE changes to the ways we do almost everything we do.
We need to do all we can to fight catastrophic climate change, systemic racial oppression, creeping nationalistic fascism and suicidal global capitalism. And no matter what we do, the next generation is going to need to be more flexible, more compassionate and more wise than ours.
As parents, we need to learn how to be trustworthy leaders helping our kids grow into adults with compassion for others and the courage and agency to change the world in ways we can’t even imagine.
We’ve been programed to think our job as parents is to make our children behave and get with the program. But the program is killing us. And our children know it. So we have to change the way we’re raising them. We have to abandon the goal of obedience and allow their critical thinking, creativity, empathy and agency to develop fully. And we have to be open to the idea that sometimes they may be wiser than we are.
But how? Where do we start?
The sciences of psychology, anthropology, neurobiology and child development have a lot to offer to parents, but the information they bring has to get through culturally transmitted myths about child development and human nature, as well as the patriarchal, white supremacist, consumerist and hierarchical programming we have absorbed from the culture around us. I offer parenting support that values needs and feelings, caring and emotional health, and the bedrock of healthy child development, the relationships between children and parents.