Story
When I was teaching a parenting class a few years ago, one of the class members introduced me to a quote about parenting by Max Lucado. He’s a popular Christian author and father of 3 girls. His quote is, ”children are not a blank slate awaiting your pen, but a written work awaiting your study.” (My paraphrase, “Our children are a story, read them.”)
Let me offer an analogy first to help illustrate what I'm attempting to teach. Imagine a bunch of flowers seeds have been given to you, but you were not told what types of flowers those seeds would produce. You have the choice to plant them around your yard even though you may not know what will spring up. You might hope for your favorite flower, like a rose, or a daisy. But if you didn't get it, I’m going to guess you probably wouldn’t attempt to force that blooming flower to become the one you had hoped for. I’m betting you wouldn’t argue with the seed about it’s bloom, either, but instead accept the flower that came from the seed as a natural result of it’s “DNA”. I’m also betting you would most likely enjoy it’s unique beauty. With our children at times, however, instead of enjoying their unique story as it emerges, we seem to feel the need to “change” their story, or at least change their outcome, often times arguing with what is. And while they are not as disposable as flowers, there is a good parenting lesson in this analogy.
I love Max’s philosophy, because it’s foundational premise is that we are not responsible for our children's storyline, but instead are partners with them in their unfolding narrative. The idea of partnering with my children helps me look at them differently than when I see them as a “blank page” that I’m responsible to fill. My experience is that when I feel responsible for their “content”, I get stressed and more frustrated if I don’t see the “progress” I’ve plotted for them. But if instead I let them make their progress in their own timing, their own way, and at their own pace because it’s THEIR story, my stress level and frustrations decrease as I let go of what I want their lives to look like. Ultimately this lessons the stress for me AND BETWEEN me and my child! And honestly, I believe stress between parent and child is never the goal or desire of either. So let’s explore the idea that children are born with their own story that we get the privilege to read, and hopefully it will make for happier and healthier parent/child relationships.
First, allow yourself to notice how unique each of your children are. That uniqueness didn’t just happen because you were responsible for what was “written” on their “blank page”, that uniqueness actually came with the “package” you were introduced to at birth. That uniqueness is their “story” you get to read. You have an influence, don't get me wrong, we’ll explore that in the next blog, but let's examine the components that help to influence those unique personalities in your children.
Some theorists who study personality postulate that human uniqueness is influenced by at least three basic components - nature, nurture, and pneuma.
- Nature is basically our biology, or DNA. It's been estimated that biology’s impact on our personality is about 50%. That means this “Earth suit” we are walking around in gives us a lot of unique feedback about the incoming information. Think of the five senses, sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. That's a lot of input, and our physiological filter receives that information in a unique way based on our own unique DNA. For instance, if you are nearsighted you will literally see the world differently than someone who is farsighted. If you don't understand that people have different physical vision you might interpret their vision as wrong because yours is the only one you know.
Another term I’ll use periodically to refer to nature’s influence will be “the horizontal”. Because life on planet earth is greatly influenced by what and how we experience this horizontal plane.
The other 50% is divided between nurture and pneuma.
- Nurture is the influence of how we are received in our environment, with varying degrees of love and rejection, nurturance and harshness. The atmosphere that we live in culturally, societally, and domestically greatly influences our perception of the horizontal plane, too. And again, our perception of our environmental influences how we will respond to the atmosphere around us.
- Finally pneuma is our unique, intangible spiritual influence. In my previous lesson called “Spark of the Divine”, this is what I was referring to as the divine nature we inhabit, the goodness of our truest selves, our eternal soul. Pneuma is not actually a filter, but more of the “I” that looks through the filters of nature and nurture. I will refer to this personality influence as the vertical plane. It's influence is much harder to describe, but just as important.
As you can see there are at least three ingredients to consider when reading our children’s story, as well as our own.
If this idea appeals to you as a way of reading your child story, there are tangible ways of making sense of personality for keeping these three components in perspective. Basically personality is a pattern of protection against psychological and emotional pain. I use a tool called the Enneagram to help introduce my clients to their patterns of protection. While I refer to it as a personality tool/test, it is much more. Here is a link to more information if you would like to explore it for yourself or your children: https://www.drbrainchange.info/enneagram-links
My caution regarding using this tool for children, however, is that they have not fully formed their "armor" yet. To definitively decide on a personality type for them may actually be more damaging than helpful. So please hold the results loosely when it comes to your child. But it would be advantageous for you to discover your own personality pattern of protection so that you can monitor and have more choice over your own reactions to your children’s challenging personalities.
Another way to “read” their story is more direct, through asking questions. Asking your child questions is a great way to hear their hearts and allow them to hear their own heart. It also teaches them to be curious and ask questions rather than make assumptions about what someone, like you, is thinking so that they can want the truth over resorting to assumptions. Questions between two people in a relationship is also a bonding experience, and a therapeutic processing technique. It appears that at times parents, and people in general, are afraid to ask questions of each other. Perhaps the lack of curiosity on some folks part is actually because they themselves had never had someone read their story as a child. They may simply want to be the storyteller now as a adult, rather than the story reader as a parent. And they may not know how to interact with questions. My bottom line is check your my own motivations regarding whether you are the storyteller or the story reader with your kids, and when possible be curious about your children’s story.
My caution is to do the opposite, in other words to attempt to be their story writer, would basically be just writing a version of your own story, which borders on narcissism, and paves the way for their own narcissism. But when a child is allowed to live out their story, they become what they were uniquely destined to become. They’ll have a much more solid sense of self, a confidence in their gifts and talents, they’ll see and respond in the world more authentically and courageously. They’ll even begin to fulfill what they were designed to become here on planet earth, maybe even fill a need for healing in some local or even global capacity. Any attempt on our part to make them become our version of a story “sentences” them a lifetime of attempting to fill ill-fitting shoes. It's a counterfeit and it’s damaging, leading to self betrayal throughout their lives.
So how do we raise a child with structure and guidance that doesn't cross the line of writing their story? Let's talk about that in the next blog - Options.