If you're a parent, or know a parent, you've probably done some thinking at some point about why and how children turn out the way they do. In this post, I want to explore some facets of "nurture-based-on-nature" in the context of neurodivergent parent(s) living a Benedict-option life.
Why did I choose the term "image"? As we are made in the image of God, so our children are made in our image. That is, to express the thought in this ancient near-Eastern (ANE) symbolism, images are sent to far-off and strategic or special places to represent that which they are the image of.
Facet 1 - Parenting Styles: A Quick Overview
In 20th and 21st century thought, parenting styles can be sorted into 4 major categories. Other styles (e.g., gentle parenting) can often be described as a variation on or combination of two of these four.
Authoritative
A synonym for this style is "firm modeling." These parents love their children and show it through boundaries (some negotiable, some nonnegotiable) and expectations appropriate for the child's developmental level. Routines are set not so much through "laying down the law" but by consistent, intentional modeling.
Permissive
A synonym for this style is "almost anything goes." These parents want to be their children's best friends and show it through very minimal boundaries or consequences, setting expectations lower and maximizing the amount of choice the child has in every domain.
Authoritarian
A synonym for this style is "my house, my rules." These parents want to be the highest authority in the household and show it through inflexible rules and punishment-based consequences. Routines do not allow much, if any, choice from the child.
Neglectful
A synonym for this style is "Maslow's lowest level." These parents (unintentionally) foster early and extreme independence in their children, who fend for themselves to obtain consistency, nurture, and boundaries. Most of the time, the adoption of this style may be temporary and unintentional.
Facet 2 - Neurodiversity/Neurodivergence: A 10,000-Foot View
Mental health and illness occur on a spectrum. In no particular order, I'll briefly describe some big categories of mental disorders--currently, many with mental disorders are also described as neurodiverse or neurodivergent, to denote deviation from "normal" or neurotypical. Often, such disorders occur in various combinations.
Anxiety Disorders
These disorders result in exaggerated anxiety or panic responses to specific situations or to nothing (or everything) in particular. Often, anxiety can also be a symptom of other disorders. Taken together, anxiety and mood disorders constitute the majority of mental health disorders in adults and youth (about 20% of the adult population in the US).
Mood Disorders
These disorders include depression-spectrum and bipolar-spectrum. Depressive disorders, like anxiety disorders, include a range of response severity to a range of situations or to life in general. Bipolar disorders include depressive episodes but also, usually, manic or hypomanic episodes, where the person isn't anxious but rather high in energy with unrealistically high estimates of their own abilities.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
These disorders involve obsessions (abnormal thoughts) and compulsions (abnormal behaviors) that are typically quite specific. Examples include hoarding and pulling out one's hair (trichotillomania). Features of OCD spectrum can occur as symptoms of other conditions.
Neurodevelopmental Disorders
These disorders often have significant symptom overlap and begin in early childhood. Roles and responsibilities are affected to varying degrees; in my experience, many general physicians are unfamiliar with best management of these disorders that respects symptoms of executive function (e.g., remembering appointments, problem-solving). Examples include AD(H)D, autism spectrum disorder, social communication disorder, and specific learning disorder.
Personality Disorders
These disorders are somewhat culturally defined alterations to one's personality aspects, and causes significant distress and life disruption for that reason. While individually relatively rare, the disorders (e.g., narcissistic, paranoid, or borderline) are severely impactful to the person and people with whom they interact. It has been said that borderline personality disorder is the most difficult mental disorder to live with, because everything is interpreted as a crisis due to feelings of loss and abandonment.
Facet 3 - Conflicts and Values
Mixing two sets of values into a marriage is an inevitable part of the relationship. When values or their expression are in disagreement, or practical things like stress and fatigue pile up, conflicts can and will result. Again, in this section I can't do justice to anything more than a mile-high overview, but hopefully the subsections will stir your train of thought for when I connect them all in the example of my family afterward.
Causes of Parental Conflict
Pretty much anything can precipitate a simmering conflict or outright fight. Features of fighting can include distancing oneself, one-way or two-way silent treatment, negative words, raised voices, or more. Relationship researcher John Gottman summarizes the verbal and behavioral cues that are associated with fights or conflict as the Four Horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Together or separately, these predict the death of an interpersonal relationship.
Conflict Management Styles
How can conflicts be managed? According to this Harvard Law School source, the model I learned about as a child is named the Thomas-Kilman Conflict Mode Instrument. Here are the major ways in which people can approach a conflict, with typical results:
- Compete: view the conflict as a win-lose with no room for compromise. Results include short-term resolution but long-term festering of the conflict, along with degradation of the core values held by either or both parties.
- Avoid: view the conflict as to be fled at all costs. Results include a perpetuation and worsening of the conflict because root causes and symptoms are never addressed.
- Accommodate: view the conflict as the-other-wins and yield constantly. Results include unilateral resolution but contralateral festering of the conflict because the accommodator always yields.
- Compromise: view the conflict as yield-yield and meet in the middle. Results include mutually unsatisfactory solutions because neither party is truly happy with the result.
- Collaborate: view the conflict as win-win and examine root causes behind the symptoms. Often, collaborators realize that conflicting parties agree on more than what they disagree on.
Values and Worldview
Moral values--what it means to be a good person--have been variously named and defined since at least the time of Plato and Aristotle. Here's a philosophical source and a more popular-level source. From a scholarly standpoint, morality is looked at descriptively or prescriptively (normatively), but these two are not mutually exclusive. How a group or society is "supposed to" behave is expressed as a set of moral values. Thus, a critical part of morality is the relational or interpersonal aspect--we don't function as individual, completely isolated beings. We depend on others, and others depend on us.
Moral principles individually can also be viewed as absolute (any situation) or relative (some situations). Which values or propositions fall into which category is debated to varying degrees depending on the worldviews of the debaters. In the centuries after Aristotle's work on moral principles and virtues, more emphasis has been placed on the relative aspects of morality, but principles still hold. Examples include "speak truthfully," "respect others' property," and ***
You might have heard of the term "moral compass." This concept is a great bridge between moral values and worldview. As a compass guides the individual, so the internalized moral compass guides the individual's thoughts, words, and actions. Neither sort of compass forces the person into a particular action, but the strength of a present compass is a powerful influence on how the person acts and how (un)comfortable (s)he is with it.
Putting it All Together: Imprinting in Our Household
Here are the sources for this section on emotion coaching, a not-say-no family and toddler, and the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory (MBTI).
We are definitely still in the semi-new parenting stage, which means that while our predominant parenting style is authoritative, with fatigue either one of us can lapse into another style moment by moment. I was raised with my parents combining to create a somewhat authoritative style, while Husband nurtures this style in reaction to various influences growing up.
There is an added wrinkle of neurodiversity in our dynamic, which influences the main reasons and (low) frequency with which we fight. Typically, fights are due to unilateral misunderstanding or simultaneous rough days as far as emotional regulation goes. However, our worldviews our similar enough that we do not fight about other things.
I think the most valuable psychotherapeutic resource we have used in parenting is emotion coaching--which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows that we like Gottman's other work on relationships prior to reading his book on coaching children's emotions. Based on this, we have both gravitated toward saying "yes" to or otherwise positively redirecting Child, to the point where "no" was not heard from Child to this day.
Finally, while we hope the values we have individually (corporate, intellectual-respecting faith; conservative moderation in all things; quiet life) will be imprinted on Child(ren), we know that this is no always the case. Therefore, we pray, work, and provide access and opportunity for each Child to explore why those values matter.
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