I had no idea what I was in for when I became a parent.
My husband and I had talked about kids, I had always been around kids. I knew about how to change a diaper and that they cried and pooped and, like, the basics.
But the actual nitty-gritty of effectively parenting a human to adulthood was a mystery to me.
When my first child came along, the early months of parenting passed in a blur but were not without incident. Mercifully we were spared major illnesses but as many new parents can attest, there’s always something.
In our case, our child was born with a tongue tie that we were assured could be corrected during an in-office procedure but the doctor’s attempt to correct it led to horrific hemorrhaging and escalated into requiring a full-on surgical procedure in the hospital when she was three days old.
My parenting has evolved from survival mode
Moving on from that experience and through those early days, the shocking amounts of poop, endless laundry, going back to work following maternity leave, finding daycare, and then toilet training, I admit that it didn’t cross my mind what kind of parent I wanted to be.
We were surviving and between worrying about milestones, normal childhood illnesses, constant playtime, and another pregnancy that was, let’s say a pleasant surprise, we were barely keeping up so I didn’t even think of how I should parent. I just was parenting.
But then, one day like any other my daughter did something – I don’t even remember what, she probably reached for something I had repeatedly told her not to touch and I went with my instinct and popped her hand.
I am sure I had tapped her hand before, but this time, at the age of 2 she had stopped what she was doing, stared up at me, and rather than crying just from pain or shock, she seemed to cry a slow, sad cry. This was something I had never seen her do before. It was like I had broken her heart.
It was then I realized that although I didn’t know much about my parenting style, I didn’t have it in me to see that look again. I don’t think I ever hit her again.
It was that moment that began my long and twisted journey toward what some folks call “conscious parenting”.
I had never known another way to effectively parent
When I say it was instinctual for me to hit my daughter’s hand, I should probably say instead that it was all I knew. For as long as I can remember, I had watched my parents and every other adult caregiver around me slap and hit kids to correct their behaviour.
What experts now call “traditional” or “authoritarian” parenting style surrounded me. More times than I can count I was told not to cry before I was given “something to cry about”, or threatened that my parent would “lash my backside” should I lie, misbehave or act, well, like a child.
And yeah, I’ll admit it – wrongly or rightly – well into my adulthood when I saw other people’s kids misbehave in the store, I’d often shake my head and think something along the lines of “that kid needs a good spanking”.
Spanking was pretty much the only parenting tool in my toolkit I hadn’t questioned.
I was not alone in my reliance on spanking
And I am not alone.
During a recent grocery store run, I rounded a corner headed for syrup when I saw a child about 5 or 6 years old, standing by a grocery cart when his mother, who likely thought she was alone in the aisle, grabbed his upper arm, violently yanked him around so his butt was close to her.
As she shook the young boy, she proceeded to rain down multiple blows to his lower back and butt all while timing each blow to punctuate words as she scream-growled that she had told him “Not! To! Touch!”.
As her hair fell out of its ponytail, and her face contorted with rage, from my shocked vantage point, she looked disheveled and out of control wailing on this little human who sadly seemed unmoved by the whole experience.
Not to be Ms. Judgeypants, I don’t know what pushed that lady to that point – but it was not a good look.
I was shaken to see such an outburst of violence in public.
I had thought physical punishment was something the older generation embraced – but as my grocery shop encounter proved (this woman was no older than her early thirties), using hands to punish kids isn’t specific to a parent’s generation or culture.
Surprisingly, despite decades of research into the harm caused by spanking, studies show that Millennials resort to physical punishment as much as their parents did.
Popular culture myth portrays the Black culture as embracing spanking. Yet, the Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health (CJCMH) study found that while a significant number of parents report that they still spank, hit, or slap their kids they found no differences in the frequency with which white and Black mothers reported spanking their children.
It seems we’ve entered a new era with parents proudly posting videos of their disturbing use of physical punishment to manage everything from bad attitudes to vanity. With less of our lives being “private”, news feeds tell us that even high-profile parents such as former athletes allegedly resort to physical force to combat their child’s “disrespect”.
And the comments on my feeds certainly don’t universally condemn this either.
Some folks express dismay over these stories, but there are just as comments cheering on the parent’s actions and asking, “what else can parents do?”.
I used to ask that same question.
I did not feel equipped to parent differently
When I took stock of the kind of parent I wanted to be I had to learn other choices but admittedly I felt poorly equipped to do things differently.
First and foremost, I had no idea what to do other than punish my kids when they did something wrong.
If they touched something they weren’t supposed to after I had asked them multiple times not to touch it – the most reasonable reaction for me was to slap their hand to deter them from doing it again. I mean it seemed to have worked in the short term.
While now the concepts are talked about more openly, I had never heard of or considered “conscious” or “gentle parenting”.
The second problem with wanting to do things differently was not exactly having an example to follow from within my own circle. I had no idea not spanking would be some kind of ‘generational curse breaking’ whole thing.
It’s not an easy journey for someone hoping to abandon a parenting style that runs generations deep.
Many voices in my village firmly believe physical punishment is the only way to discipline kids. Plus, because they think it’s most important for kids to comply and be obedient – they discourage children who ask questions, express their needs or have opinions.
I had no idea not spanking would be some kind of ‘generational curse breaking’ whole thing.
So imagine what it looked like when my 5-year-old daughter was given a plate of potato salad she hadn’t asked for and didn’t like and she told the “old school” adult in the room “No thank you” she didn’t like “that” and would prefer rice and peas?
This kind of “talking back” from a child (a.k.a. ‘expressing a preference’) at best prompted teeth-kissing glares and at worst irksome advice on the necessity of smacks, beatings, or otherwise. The “I told you so” looks and “she needs a lick in her backside” comments came fast and furious when I had toddlers.
And my third problem with trying to learn a new way was the unspoken belief — ok, well, actually it’s often spoken, loudly – that a “gentle”, or conscious parenting approach (though I never called it that) – was not for us. The idea that Black people didn’t raise our kids like that.
Is gentle, conscious parenting for Black families?
With all of this sounding like a lot – it makes science, research, and our gut feeling about the kind of parent we want to be, seem like useful starting points but some of us will need more guidance if we hope to make a significant and lasting change to our parenting style.
While getting past hitting came naturally to me, the work that would help me to truly become a different kind of parent was harder, deeper work.
It meant looking at what I expected from my kids, understanding more about what was developmentally and age-appropriate behaviour and making sure that my reactions were based on what my kids were doing and not my having a triggered, or emotional overreaction to say, a screaming whining toddler fit.
Thankfully resources exist for those looking to do things differently.
Parenting Decolonized is an online community and parenting coach that offers community, research, and support for Black parents who need new and different tools to better understand, embrace and – decolonize their parenting.
The group’s founder, Yolanda Williams, focuses on more than simply “not spanking”.
Firm in her belief that conscious parenting is very much for Black families, Yolanda is a parent on a mission. She teaches about the importance of connection, consequence versus punishment and raising empowered.
Central to her approach is helping parents heal themselves, understand their parenting beliefs, and learn new ways to connect with their kids.
Parenting Decolonized offers folks who are committed to conscious parenting well-researched resources, inspiring podcasts, one-to-one parenting coaching, and a safer online village of like-minded folks to help answer questions and bolster your journey.
Some days, I need time in their Facebook community just to recenter myself.
If a book is more your speed, another strong voice in the conversation about effective parenting strategies is Dr. Shefali Tsabary, whose book The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children, discusses better alternatives to spanking and the underlying issues parents have to work through if they want to understand and change their parenting approach.
Spanking isn’t a foregone conclusion
For some folks even if we no longer feel physical punishment fits our parenting mindset it can be hard to make a change to something that we have witnessed and taken for granted for generations.
For me, I spent a lot of time recognizing the things that triggered me to feel like it was ok or necessary to hit.
I tell you, understanding that kids aren’t crying “for no reason” took me some time.
Not getting set off by what seemed like hours of high-pitched screeching and being driven to snap “stop whining” meant I had to put mommy in time out – and not the other way around.
Trying to essentially ignore (ok, maybe rise above?) pre-teen attitude and respond like a calm rational adult is a daily, exhausting practice and sometimes I totally fail.
I have come a long way in understanding what is normal behaviour, and overcoming my instinct to punish and choose to redirect, but more importantly I’ve come further understanding why I reacted to behaviour in a certain way.
That said, I cannot lie – my instinct to raise my voice after asking something 3 or 4 times? Let’s just say, I am still a work in progress.
Changing generational parenting habits can feel overwhelming, especially when we don’t know where to begin, but conscious parenting is definitely for us.
However, like everything in life, support is key – as are tempered expectations. “Gentle” parenting is a lot of things – but it is not a magic cure that will make your kids not bite other kids at daycare, have tantrums, or give a hella hormonally-driven attitude.
Being a gentle parent will also not mean that you wake up tomorrow with an endless reserve of patience that is never tested. Unless you are superhuman, consciously parenting does not mean you will never lose your temper or have yelling matches with your child who has pushed every last one of your triggers.
That said, if like me, you realize that you want to make a change to your parenting style, and are curious about another way, there are tools and resources in place that can help. I add this lesson of being able to chose and change how you parent to the long list of things I wish I knew about raising Black children before I started this journey.
Gentle parenting is just another set of tools in our parenting toolkit. When combined with a willingness to do our own healing work we can use these tools to understand what gentle parenting is and is not, more effectively raise Black children and build connections that heal generational wounds. Comment if you have done some generational-curse breaking parenting and could use some support.
