Parenting in public
When your parenting is criticized
How to express yourself
Inevitably, in gentle parenting, you will run into someone who sneers at the ideals. They might be your parent, or grandparent, aunt, uncle, friend, or the person you are parenting with. It might be you. Sometimes, some days, mainstream parenting gets into our heads and won’t let us be. We aren’t doing enough; we aren’t setting enough limits; we aren’t…
Anyway, that’s not really my point. Point is we have to deal with other people judging our parenting.
For some people, they will never listen. We end up having to lessen our time with them, or cut them out of our lives temporarily or forever. Sad reality. It’s usually the last case. I’ve tried to talk and set boundaries and they aren’t being respected, choices that we’ve made. It hurts a lot to be the one who separates and the one who is being removed. But it happens.
Before we get there, we can try to talk to the person. And sometimes we have to talk to the person, even if we don’t remain living with, married to, or otherwise emotionally involved with our child’s other parent. Often we still have to parent with them. Other times, we are still with them, but parenting conflicts are creating an unpleasant living situation.
Whatever your situation, you can find some peace and easier ways to discuss parenting.
Enter non-violent communication.
Caveat, I’m a big newbie at using non-violent communication. I suck at it. I’d love to take a class, but I live in a small town and I don’t have the time or money for an online class right now. So this is mostly theory and reading from me, but today I read that teaching someone is the best way to learn, so I am going to attempt to teach about non-violent communication and hope I become better by osmosis.
Non violent communication was coined by Marshall Rosenberg, a psychologist. He used it in many contexts and taught about it, and it’s a whole movement on its own. At its base, is a way of communicating feelings and needs. Either you communicate your own feelings and needs, or you invite your communication partner to share theirs.
It’s very similar to “I feel” statements. Emotions are something we can’t argue with, neither are someone’s needs or values. Though some people will try.
It’s validation of everyone’s emotions and thoughts. It’s helping everyone involved be heard.
And it feels awkward as hell at first. And three years in. I’ll update this when it feels natural to me. I often forget to use it when dealing with others. One most famous moment in my life was a fight with my spouse, when my inner voice was screaming at me to use validation, but the talking part was focused on being right. The talking part one and the fight was bad.
Start with observation.
Observation is unbiased, it takes out the emotions and needs and judgement. As Erik Torenberg says in this article, “it doesn’t use “to be” verbs.”
For example, he’s lazy..
It’s a judgement based on your feelings.
What you saw was someone who laid on the sofa for six hours yesterday. Someone who hasn’t had a paying job in 10 years. The messy kitchen. The clothes on the floor.
Another example is, she’s mean.
What you really saw was:
Raised voice, specific words used, stomping feet.
Make sense?
Feelings
Emotions. Again, we avoid mistaking judgements as feelings. “I feel like you don’t care.” and “I feel like you aren’t listening.” Those aren’t feelings, those are judgements.
You feel lonely, tired, afraid, sad, joyful, ecstatic, satisfied. NVC sites have long lists of emotion words that you can use to describe your base feelings.
If you need help getting in touch with your feelings, I like this article about feeling your feelings and why you should do it.
NVC is a very vulnerable space when it comes down to it.
Needs and values
In NVC, our emotions are based on our needs not being met. We feel sad because we need more connection. We feel angry because we need to be trusted; we need independence; we need to be validated.
What do you need? What values and expectations are not being met? Or maybe they are being met and you want to share joy.
Requests
Based on your needs, what request would you make so that they can meet your needs?
If you observe someone using words that make you feel upset because you value compassion, your request might be, “Can you offer empathy before correction?” or “Can you validate the emotions behind the behavior?”
And that’s the basis of NVC. It’s easy to read about and even write about. It’s much harder to use in practice. It feels very stilted and forced when you start out. I’m certain it eventually becomes easier as you practice more.
