Courageous Parenting: stepping away from the comparison wars

A couple of days ago, I reviewed Brené Brown’s book Daring Greatly. It was an engaging and deeply challenging read, and I was so impacted that I decided to devote a couple more posts to discussing the contents.

Brown spends an entire chapter addressing Wholehearted parenting and has many wise and challenging things to say about our culture of comparison. This is one of those chapters where I just want to quote everything because all I’ll end up doing is paraphrase what she said and make a bad job of it. I managed to get it down to this one powerful message, that we can’t expect to teach our children how to become healthy adults if we can’t model it ourselves. No pressure or anything but she is so right of course.

 

“Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting. In terms of teaching our children to dare greatly in the ‘never enough’ culture, the question isn’t so much ‘are you parenting the right way?’ as it is ‘Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be? In other words, if we want our children to love and accept who they are, our job is to love and accept who we are. We can’t use fear, shame, blame, and judgment in our own lives if we want to raise courageous children. Compassion and connection – the very things that give purpose and meaning to our lives – can only be learned if they are experienced. And our families are our first opportunities to experience these things.”

 

I don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the world, but here in the UK, competitive parenting often feels like a real battle and it has a hideous name, the ‘mummy wars’. And it is SO easy to fall prey to that way of thinking, to toe that black and white line of ‘my way is the best way’ and everybody else’s different parenting choice borders on child abuse. Yes, it can go that far language-wise in some corners of the internet. Breastfeeding vs formula feeding, attachment parenting vs controlled crying, dummies, how many crisps, is he walking yet, which pre-school, is their lunchbox healthy enough, are they getting enough sun, the list goes on. And on. We compare, we worry, we agonize over every little choice and hope our little precious babies will turn out ok despite the fact that we haven’t got a clue what we’re doing. It’s EXHAUSTING.

I hear that whilst we can’t help but observe other parents do their thing, this way of comparing and judging others is not quite as relentless in some other places as it is in the UK. Why this should be I have absolutely no idea but whatever the reason it’s not that British parents care more about their offspring than anywhere else in the world. The reality, of course, is that we all parent differently and there are (mostly) no rights nor wrongs, if this wonderful forum thread about parental practices from around the world is anything to go by (although, no car seats? I did judge a little. So what, sue me).

Being human and all, whilst I feel I know myself better and this has led to being far less concerned about other people’s opinions than I was in my early twenties, there are nonetheless times when I have to fight against making comparisons. We all have our insecurities and there are a few areas where I feel unsure or ‘less than’; from time to time, I will read something or see someone who seems to have it more together, or whose child appears to do better, and I will doubt myself. I can’t help it, and there’s not much that can be done about the actual experience of these emotions. I do however have a choice in how I respond within and without myself. Should I express those feelings or not, should I share my opinion, should I lean into the discomfort and question my motives; in all cases my response should be led by compassion rather than judgment, and it goes both ways. I should be compassionate and not judgmental towards myself and towards the object of my discomfort too.

This is just one of the many things I have taken out of Brown’s chapter on parenting. For more, do check out her book.

 

Advertisement

Daring Greatly – A book review

I can’t remember exactly how I decided to add Daring Greatly to my birthday books’ wish list. I first came across it when it was recommended on one of the blogs I follow. It sounded interesting but I wasn’t as excited about it as I was about reading Quiet or Bread & Wine. Maybe because it sounded a bit heavy; after all it is about the concept of vulnerability and was written by a ‘shame researcher’. A what researcher? There is such a thing? How very un-sexy and utterly depressing. But it was a bestseller and everyone was raving about it so I was intrigued.

Anyway, my birthday happened and there is was. And maybe because it was the book I was anticipating the least, I decided to read it first.

Oh. My. Word.

Wow.

Initially I wondered how it was that in a world where bestsellers include Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey (two books I am NOT going to link you to), a book on vulnerability could make such a big splash. And then, about oh, maybe 2 pages in, I knew exactly why. This book is insightful, profound, challenging and highly quotable. When I was thinking about which passage to highlight in this post, I wondered how I would manage to keep it concise when I could include entire pages from the book. In fact, I had barely started when I put this up on Twitter:

 

15 pages into Brene Brown’s ‘Daring Greatly’ & I’m getting neckache from nodding so frantically and I’ve been close to tears a couple times

— Pauline L (@Badgerwife) February 22, 2014

 

It’s only the flipping introduction!

— Pauline L (@Badgerwife) February 22, 2014

 

What It’s About

So this is a book on the subject of vulnerability. But what does it mean, and why is it important?

Ultimately, it is about learning to live wholeheartedly, embracing discomfort and being fully engaged in our relationships, work, home and parenting. The phrase ‘daring greatly’, as Brené Brown explains in the opening paragraph, comes straight from Theodore Roosevelt’s 1910 speech known as “The Man in the Arena“.

She argues that “Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging. It’s being all in.”

This statement bears the weight of her research. She has interviewed a huge amount of people to draw her conclusions, and she presents the results with great clarity. She investigates our culture of ‘never enough’ and the myths that surround vulnerability, such as the idea that being vulnerable is a weakness, and she shows that true courage means risking the pain of rejection for the sake of connection. She also identifies the various ways with which we try to shield ourselves from shame and hurt (such as perfectionism and oversharing, to name but two) and how this ‘protection’ actually stops us from true healthy connections. This is no mere theory however, Brené Brown also offers strategies to learn how to drop the shield. In the final chapters, she connects her research outcomes to the real world specifically in the areas of work, education and parenting.

One Highlight From Many

One of the great gifts this book has given me is that of language. I was worried that the book would be heavy, dry and academic. I shouldn’t have feared. Anyone may pick it up and uncover deep truths about human nature, belonging, shame, connection and relationships, in accessible words that resonate long after you’ve finished reading them. For me personally, it gave language to things within me that I was aware of but which I could not have articulated in any meaningful way. Until now.

For one thing, it brings shame to the foreground and gives you words to throw at it when you feel like it’s getting at you, like shame resilience, self-love and courage, like knowing that you are enough.

One of the most interesting reactions I had to the book occurred when I was reading the chapter on Understanding and Combating Shame. Brené Brown was sharing her own internal struggles during the time that her TED Talk went viral (more on TED at the end of the post). As she was sharing her innermost fears about the criticism she knew she would get from certain corners of the internet, I as a reader experienced an immediate closeness to her and a rise in empathy for what she had gone through. I shared in her discomfort and most wanted in that moment to reach out through the page and tell her that I understood, and that I thought she had done an incredible job. I wanted to encourage her and tell her that she was not alone. It didn’t matter that I have never experienced the exact same circumstance or that I’ve never met her. It was our shared human experience of shame and discomfort and her honest disclosure that made her real to me.

This is what vulnerability does. It brings us closer, it makes us care about each other, it opens up relationships and makes communication easier. When we are vulnerable, we invite others in, put our differences aside and say ‘see, we are the same after all’. We experience connection.

Vulnerability is not weakness, and the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure we face every day are not optional. Our only choice is a question of engagement. Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose; the level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection.

In Conclusion

I was so inspired by this book that I plan to write a couple more posts on the subject. In the first I will focus on the chapter on parenting and I will close by reflecting on a couple of areas that bring up feelings of vulnerability within me, that reading the book challenged me about, and I hope my grappling with these issues inspires your own journey.

This is a book to read and re-read, so go buy it. But if you’re still not sure whether it is for you or whether it is worth spending money on, I would encourage you to check out the TED talk that started it all. If you’ve never heard of TED, go check out their website, you won’t regret it.