The Morality Trap
Most of the parents who call me for coaching support are Daily Groove subscribers who are already on board with the partnership values and practices I advocate. But sometimes I hear from parents who have never questioned the conventional values and controlling parenting modeled in their families of origin.
After speaking with such parents for a few minutes, I sometimes encourage them to work with a different type of parenting coach. I’ve learned that if they’re focused only on changing their children’s behavior, they won’t be willing to do the deep inner work on themselves that’s necessary to create and sustain a culture of partnership in their homes.
I recently got a call from a mother who lives in America but was born and raised in another country where children are expected to obey parents without question. Her teenage daughter was born and raised in America, and she (the mother) was seeking relief from anxiety about various behaviors of her daughter.
She told me about her cultural and religious background, and I explained that my approach might seem incompatible with her traditional values. But she remained interested, so I advised her to read some online articles and two books that would prime her for working with me — Unconditional Parenting, by Alfie Kohn, and Brainstorm, by Daniel Siegel — and then call me back if she resonated with the ideas in those books and still wanted my support.
The next day, she sent me an email saying she had started taking in the new ideas and was feeling inspired and hopeful, but she was still getting upset about her daughter not doing simple things she was told to do, like brushing her teeth. I replied with the following...
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It is clear to me from yesterday’s conversation that you love your daughter with all your heart, and that is the most important thing in the end. But I believe your anxieties will continue to plague you unless you begin to question some of the basic values that underlie them.
Frankly, I don’t feel comfortable telling anyone that their values are a problem, because I believe everyone has the right to choose and honor their own values. However, holding on to any value or belief has consequences. Strongly held values can add richness and meaning to life, but may also be disempowering at times.
If you examine the conflicts in your own social circles, you’ll see that many if not most of them involve moral judgments. Regardless of whether they’re based on secular, religious, political, or other cultural values, when you judge people or deem their behavior immoral, you lose much of the love, connection, and power that you could be experiencing in those relationships.
The moment you judge someone, it’s like you rubber-stamped the word “WRONG” in huge letters across their face, and you can’t see the human being behind the stamp. If you want to connect deeply with your daughter and see her for WHO SHE IS, not for her behavior, then you must find a way release any sense of wrongness (judgments) you hold about her or her behavior. That might require you to rethink certain cultural or religious beliefs that you’ve held all your life. This doesn’t necessarily mean rejecting your traditional beliefs, but you must at least evolve them.
The two books I have recommended can help you evolve your beliefs about teenagers and parent-child relationships. Another book I think could help you release judgments is called Loving What Is, by Byron Katie.
Here’s an example of an evolving belief. Let’s say you believe that “children should brush their teeth.” That sounds reasonable, but the word “should” implies a moral judgment: brushing teeth is right, and not brushing teeth is wrong. If you hold that belief, in that form, when your daughter doesn’t brush her teeth, you will perceive her as “wrong,” and that wrongness will become the justification to apply some sort of force to put her on the right path. Such force could range from mild nagging to harsh punishments, but either way it will put you at odds with her. Instead of working with her, in partnership, you will get caught up in a power struggle against each other.
To avoid that struggle, you’d have to release the judgment (drop the “should” from your belief about brushing teeth) and evolve the belief in such a way that it inspires you to act more like a partner to your daughter. Precisely how to evolve the belief is another conversation, but the end result might be something like this:
“I believe that my tooth brushing habits will improve my dental health throughout my lifetime, and I feel good when I imagine having healthy teeth in my old age. I believe my daughter can, like me, have a lifetime of excellent dental health, and I want her to enjoy the same good feelings about her future health that I feel about mine. I believe people are more likely to develop healthy habits when they’re inspired rather than coerced, so I will avoid any forms of influence that involve fear, shame, or bribery, and I will only talk about tooth brushing when I feel open-hearted and connected to my good feelings about dental hygiene. I trust that she will eventually feel inspired to follow my example — especially since I will not be engaging in the kind of control tactics that people naturally dislike and resist.”
As you can see, it’s not really a single belief, but more of a belief structure. The foundation of that structure is what I call “The PATH Way,” which is the basis of the PATH Parenting article I previously shared with you.
Notice also that I have described a process of change that you are 100% empowered to enact, because you are free to change your own thoughts, words, and actions at will. You don’t need your daughter’s cooperation to begin building the foundation of a better relationship. The more your own life operates at a higher level of love and creativity, the more she will naturally want to
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