The First Principle of New Danish Parenting: Children always make sense
On Parenting from the Inside Podcast we have released our third episode: New Danish Parenting (part 1): Children Always Make Sense.
In this article I will dive into this first principle of New Danish Parenting, which includes: (1) Children are born competent and social, (2) Children need to be translated and (3) Meet children where they are, not where we want them to go.
New Danish Parenting (NDP) is a concept I have put together based on Internal Family Systems (IFS), attachment theory and what we in Denmark call The new child view; This is the new paradigm of parenting based on equality, integrity, authenticity and accountability.
The new child view is based especially (but not exclusively) on the work og Danish Family Therapist Jesper Juul, Family-lab and Blackbird Institute from where I have my Family Therapist education.
This is a new paradigm of parenting and of being a human being in the world, based on connection, love and trust.
Why is this important?
We know so much today about what children need, what their symptoms, reactions and behavior tells us and how to care for them in ways that they do not need to heal from later.
Still many of us keep repeating so much of the old paradigm of parenting (based on fear, control, abuse of power and inequality) because (1) it is so ingrained in our modern societies; it’s the air we breathe; it’s so normal that we often don’t see it, (2) a lot of the knowledge we have about development, attachment and (mental) health does not reach the parents in a digestible and relatable way and (3) because when taught, the new paradigm is often only taught to our heads, while parenting and being is something that happens in and between our bodies and nervous systems. — And when we ourselves have been brought up in the old paradigm based on fear, shame and seperation, our bodies hold deep and painful memories that new knowledge alone cannot change very much. In order for us to be the parents we want to be and to meet our children the way they need and deserve, we cannot only focus outwards on the external family, but must also focus inwards into our internal family of parts to heal and to connect.
When we can be with our own wounded parts (our inner children), it becomes much more possible for us to be with our (external) children the way they need us to and to choose how to respond and what to pass on to them.
This is what Parenting from the Inside podcast is about. This is what New Danish Parenting (NDP) can help us do.
How is New Danish Parenting unique?
Attachment is the foundation of New Danish Parenting (NDP). It is through the secure external attachment to our caregivers that we develop a flexible nervous system, a felt sense of safety and an internal secure attachment between Self (the inner parent) and parts (our inner children).
From a nervous system perspective (and the nervous system is relational in this way) when our parents are able and willing to help us co-regulate, we slowly become able to Self-regulate. A secure outer attachment becomes a secure inner attachment.
The New Child View and it’s understanding of children and relationships is a core part of what New Danish Parenting brings to the International audience. It gives us concrete knowledge and tools; it gives us a lens to see through “the myth of normal”, helping us be the parents we want to be, helping us see what children need and understand what they are telling us through their behavior, feeling, symptoms and reactions.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) as a healing modality, as a human view and as a clear systemic understanding brings New Danish Parenting into an embodied relational human experience where what we know about children, about relationships and about attachment can be more than top layer knowledge to guide our lives and it can be more than changing things through willpower and (spiritual) bypassing. Through the IFS lens, NDP can help both our external and our internal children receive the loving connection they need in order to feel seen, safe, loved and valuable as they are.
In this way NDP helps us see what our children need, be with the parts of ourselves that makes this difficult and to create the inner and outer attachment relationships that both we and our children deserve.
There are three principles to New Danish Parenting:
About the Child: Children Always Make Sense
About the Relationship: Relationships Matter Most
About the Parent: Conscious Parenting
In the first NDP episode of Parenting from the Inside Podcast and in this article we will dive into the first principle:
Children always make sense
Children are born competent and social
As human beings we live our lives on a continuum between integrity and cooperation.
What I call Integrity (this is what Gabor Maté calls authenticity) is feeling yourself from the inside and showing on your outside what you feel. Whereas Cooperation (Maté calls this attachment) is about fitting into — and being part of the external realtionships to our caregivers, family members and society. This is not either-or as both integrity and cooperation is immensely important to human living, but will easily become unbalanced.
Human beings are born in our integrity so to speak. As babies we cry out for help when we are uncomfortable, when we are hungry, when we feel unsafe. We search for milk, for moms eyes and face, and respond with and to facial expressions, smells, touch and sounds. We seek connection and we turn away from it when we have had enough.
This is very competent.
The baby-caregiver connection— the attachment relationship — is not a one way thing, it’s a mutual relationship, where caregiver and child reaches out to each other — meet each other — through different senses and communication forms.
For instance: the baby makes a sound and a facial expression, mom/dad makes an almost mirroring sound and facial expression, making the child react with a new sound and facial expression… In such an interaction both brain lights up and creates new neural pathways together. Both brains and inner systems react and change from these interactions.
We come to this world competent and social, and therefore soon start adapting to our environment. This increases our chances of survival, of felt belonging and the possibility of joy; it helps us fit in, connect and feel loved.
On a practical level, we learn to be part of our group, to wait our turn, to share, to play together, to feel into other people and help each other.
In an optional environment we learn the healthy balance between integrity and cooperation: We learn to be ourselves together.
Of course no environment is perfect and this is where we learn to over-cooperate. To over-cooperate is to cooperate away from ourselves, away from our integrity.
So a child might feel sadness on the inside but sadness not being acceptable or safe, the child shows something else on the outside. Perhaps a smile. Perhaps anger. Perhaps numbness.
A child might not want someone to touch or hug them, but has learned that it is not okay to say no to unwanted touch, so overrules their own boundary even though it feels uncomfortable or might have shut down the boundary and not feel their own no.
A child might be full, but is not allowed to stop eating till the plate is empty, thereby overruling the physical boundary and the signals of their own body and listen to what others say instead.
We all learn to over-cooperate in a myriade of different ways and often the symptoms or unwanted behavior that we see in our children is a result of this.
What some might define as bad or difficult behavior, is not about the child being bad or difficult, but about the child feeling bad or having a difficult time.
In this way children always make sense and there is always a good intention behind their behavior. They are often in some way trying to protect themselves by over-cooperation to fit in or they are refusing or reacting to protect their integrity.
Again; children are competent and in the continuum between integrity and (over)cooperation there is a deeper meaning and a good intention in their behavior, feelings, reactions and symptoms. They are always doing the best they can in the given situation. The impact or result might not be great, but it was the best they could do.
Us meeting them in that will help them feel that they are still loved and accepted, help them understand themselves better (instead of having to shut down) and will enable the best they can do to slowly evolve.
Where the old paradigm way for parenting would have punished unwanted behavior, the new paradigm knows that there is meaning in the madness and will, with that knowledge, go towards the child (instead of away from them through punishment and seperation) with curiosity and respect, with the intention of helping the child with the underlying difficulties.
This brings us to the second part of the first principle:
2. Children need to be translated
Carrying the belief that our children always make sense, helps us stay open and curious about what is going on with them. This does not mean not having boundaries or setting limits, but that curiosity and acceptance (that the child can actually feel) is primary and comes first.
I will focus more on how to set loving boundaries — and old paradigm misconceptions about boundaries in the next episode of Parenting from the Inside podcast.
There are no bad children (just like there are no bad parts inside of us). There are explanations and meaning in all behavior and reactions. This explains the behavior — it does not always excuse the behavior — but children are always doing the best they can and as caregivers it is our responsibility to create the environment for growth; this responsibility does not rest upon the child.
So hitting might not be morally acceptable for us, but since it is the best solution the child can find to their problem, it explains it. And in the child-caregiver relationship it is our job the help our children understand themselves and learn other ways to cope. And it is our job to help translate their signal flags.
A signal flag is what is “sticking out” or catching our eyes — the problematic behavior, the symptom and so on.
Imagine for a moment a sinking ship sending out a signal for help. What will you do? Will you go and reprimand them for putting it there, help take it down and tell them to go think about what they have done putting it there in the first place?
If this is the solution you come up with, the ship will of course still be sinking and the crew is probably now feeling misunderstood and feeling shame about reacting this way or reaching out for help.
In this analogy, obviously the signal flag was there to tell you that something else is going on in the layers below. The signal flag was not the problem but an attempt for a solution: getting help.
The same thing is true for our children (inner and outer): behavior, symptoms, language, reactions — the hitting, the yelling, the stomach aches, the headaches, the control, the clinging, the pushing away and so on — are all signal flags — solutions — telling you about an underlying problem and pain.
Therefore what we must focus on as caregivers is becoming curious towards our children: What is my child over-cooperating with right now — or — how is my child protecting themselves?
Remember: children always make sense and children cooperate with their environment (the attachment relationship to their caregivers), even when it does not look like it. But some does so by leaning more towards integrity — for instance with anger and rage to protect themselves — towards fight response — or distancing themselves from the relationship or situation — towards flight response— and some does so by leaning more towards over-cooperation — for instance by “being nice” and being “an easy child” — towards fawn response — or shutting off to how their feel — towards freeze response.
And sometimes children are just being children and what we must focus on is what is happening inside of us (often as a result of our own childhood). More focus on this in the later episodes and articles on NDP.
Just like we cannot make a manual for parenting, a dictionary for children’s behavior, symptoms and feelings would never be accurate. All human beings, all relationships (inner and outer) and all situations are different, therefore the examples below are just some ideas to help open up your own curiosity towards your unique child and relationship.
“I hate you!” = “You are just not getting me. I feel so misunderstood!”
“You’re the worst mom/dad in the world!” = “There is no space for me here and I do not feel seen by you.”
“I wish I was an only child”/”I wish my sister was never born!” = “It feels like you don’t love me anymore and like everything I do is wrong.”
Hitting = “My boundaries have been overstepped and I feel trapped.”
Yelling = “You are not hearing or seeing me, so I need to be louder and louder. Negative attention feels safer than no attention at all.”
Stomach aches = “I feel really anxious about something in my life”
Headaches = “I keep thinking and worrying about something.”
Of course what is underlying the behavior, symptoms, feelings and reactions is most ofen not conscious to the child, so asking your child to explain what’s going on with them is not fruitful. Being curious and naming what it might be like can help them feel seen, understood and to get to know themselves better. In many cases feeling seen and accepted is much more important than fixing “the problem”, but of course that depends what the problem is. For instance with physical pain you might need to check with your doctor.
Some parents will fear that meeting our children with curiosity, acceptance and love when they behave in ways we do not condone, will make them think that the behavior is acceptable. But I assure you this is not the case. When we meet our children lovingly, they learn that they are loved and that this love will not be removed by anything they do. This is safe and it is not the same as condoning unwanted behavior. This leads us to the last part of the first principle:
3. Meet children where they are, not (just) where we want them to go
I first learned about the concept of Moral vs. Existence from Danish Family Therapist Jesper Juul, who asked the important question: “Do you want to parent your child through moral or through existence.“ He himself chose existence every time. Of course when we look closer it is not either-or, but one is primary and the other is secondary.
Existence: What is.
Moral: what should be.
When we parent through the lens of Moral (in the old paradimg sense), we focus on should; on right and wrong; we judge behavior, WE define the child and WE punish unwanted behavior — like a judge in the criminal system.
Our modern societies are very much built up around the concept of moral and an old paradigm belief that humans will be bad if not punished and shaped. From this perspective it is the responsibility of the justice system to keep criminals in a tight grip and it is the responsibility of parents to shape and mould our children into good citizens.
Moral in a new paradigm sense focus more on personal boundaries and supporting our children in healthy cooperation.
When we parent through the lens of existence, we focus on being with what is. We are with our children as they are, and as we are (from a balanced Self-led place). This is true relation and connectedness human being to human being (or subject to subject), instead of lifted above and into our heads (subject to object). More on subject/object relationships in the next episode of Parenting from the Inside podcast.
From the new paradigm perspective we know that children want to be good for those that they are attached to and when things go wrong, we must focus primarily on attachment and connection, not on punishment and separation.
Existence: What is or Meeting children where they are — is the first — the primary — step.
Where we want children to go (shape behavior or set boundaries) is secondary. Primary is to meet them where they are.
Meeting a child where they are is simply being in the present with them naming what is (through words, body language or otherwise) with no particular agenda. When naming what is, remember to do so with curiosity, not through defining the child. You only hold your truth, not the truth of your child.
Meeting a child where they are is: “I see you”, “I hear you”, “I am right here.”
The most important thing in relationships is being seen with loving eyes. Being really seen and still being loved. This is the opposite of shame and it is what melts shame. More on this in a later episode of the podcast and in later articles.
Moral: What should be or Where we want children to go — tells children who they can be in relation to us.
Parents often worry that their children will not fit into the rules and norms of society if we don’t focus first and foremost on teaching them how they can and they cannot be(have). But the truth is (for most of us) that we have said it so many times before. “You cannot hit” — your child already knows. The primary thing is not to repeat it but to meet the child in why they hit.
In the old paradigm punishing, scolding, ignoring, shaming, blaming, “consequences”, threat of separation, actual seperation and so on was seen as normal ways of parenting. This shaped children’s behavior through fear and separation (making them shut off to themselves), instead of through loving secure attachment (being ourselves together).
Today we know that children always do the best they can and punishing someone for doing their best simply does not make sense.
So when we focus on moral, we focus on the secondary. We want to do so after the primary (meeting the children where they are) and we want to set our boundaries without shaming, defining and scolding our children (which belongs to the old paradigm). Again, boundaries will have a stronger focus in the next episode of the podcast and in a later article, but I will end this article on the first principle of NDP with some examples — first on how to focus on existence instead of old paradigm moral and then on existence and new paradigm moral together. Here is what this can look like:
Primary: “I can see that you are crying and that you fell down”
Not: “Stop crying” or “Up again! It didn’t hurt that much!”
Primary: “You got really upset and yelled at your brother”
Not: “I told you not to yell at your brother!”
Primary: “Hey, I can see that you’re upset. Is it okay if I sit here next to you?”
Not: “Stop crying and tell me what you/they did.”
Primary and secondary: “I see that you got really angry at me, is that right?… And I don’t want you to hit me.”
Primary and secondary: “Oh you really hurt your knee when you fell… Let me help you.”
Primary and secondary: “You’re sitting here all alone and it seems like you don’t want to talk to anybody… I will come check on you once in a while and when you’re ready we can talk.”
Primary and secondary: “I know you’re upset and you don’t want to go to school today. Am I getting that right?… And I want you to come. Let’s find some clothes to wear.”
When we meet our children as they are, they can keep their integrity and still feel accepted and loved. When we meet our children with curiosity and help translate their symptoms and behavior, they get to know themselves better and symptoms can become unnecessary. And when we trust that our children are competent and are always doing the best they can, we can better meet them with an open heart, enabling them to keep their hearts open to the world and to themselves.
The next article on NDP will focus on the relationship as named: Relationships Matter Most.
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