Parenting for Peace in a Nonviolent Society

By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.

The personality of the child is sacred. Alcoholics Anonymous and the Codependency movement demonstrate that when the child's personality is damaged through some sort of childhood abuse within the family system the child has to adopt a false self and corrupt their personalities in order to protect themselves from the abuse. The personality cannot mature until the damage that was done in childhood is healed. Childhood abuse of any sort is a breaking of the child's boundaries. Having a damaged and hurt inner child in the unconscious and presenting a false self in one's social life are the main psychological damages that perpetuate wounded boundaries and breaking of other people's boundaries. For example, a person abused as a child may abuse his own children through physical, sexual or emotional abuse. This is a continuous cycle of wounding through the generations that makes adults use drugs and alcohol to conceal their fear, anger, depression and anxiety. Fear of abandonment felt by the hurt inner child is one of the main causes of domestic violence. Breaking of boundaries moves along a continuum of violence from inappropriate punishment to child beating, molestation, rape, domestic violence and ultimately murder. The social violence of racism, poverty, sexism and war interact with intergenerational family and society systems of violence incorporated in child rearing practices. The whole American tendency toward addictions is in a chronic cycle of abuse that is demonstrated in the weakest link in our great democracy-the child.

Parenting for peace comes out of a holistic family systems approach that sees the sacredness of personality. Almost all societies, as reflected in their legends and mythologies, have some form of spiritual practice that establishes that the human personality is made in the image of the Goddess/God. Parenting for peace is interested in moral development based on the basic sacredness of the child's personality and tries to eliminate punishment. A society that uses punishment in their child rearing practices is a society that needs to be prepared for violence.

The holistic family uses family mirroring, a process of being focused-sometimes called being one-pointed-and emotionally and mentally present when a family member needs to be heard. Being one-pointed and mirroring back the message of the speaking family member reassures them that they have been heard. For example, an adolescent has a problem so he asks for a family meeting. During the meeting he tells his parents that "you embarrass me in front of my friends when you drive me to the theatre and pick me up." Then, mirroring the message back, the parent practices being selfless by not getting defensive and by setting their ego aside. Mirroring the message, they might reply, "I see that you're angry at me because I don't trust you to go to and from the theatre on your own." By the parent being one-pointed and selfless the adolescent feels heard and not judged. The mirroring process allows an ease of communication between parent and child that leads to solutions that meet the needs of both parties. In this example, a decision was made to drop off and pick up the child two blocks away from the theater, thereby satisfying the parent's need to assure the child's safety and satisfying the child's need to exercise his growing independence. The anger dissipates because the child and parent have brought about a solution that is a win-win experience. Both parent and adolescent are valued and feel pleasure by reaching a nonviolent conflict resolution. The Buddhists would see this procedure as right action, right effort, right speaking and most of all, right concentration.

The feeling of love is a powerful force in the family because it is so pleasurable. The experience of both the parent and child feeling valued that comes from family mirroring is a great happiness. Anger and hatred cause hurt and resentment and are very unpleasurable. Being valued and loved is so pleasurable that the child feels alive and respects life. Respect for life becomes central in this parenting style. In a holistic family the roles and rules are flexible. The example above demonstrates to the adolescent that he has some influence on his family. The family mirroring allows the parent and child to reconsider the family rules. The adolescent was complaining "the rules that were made for me when I was younger need to be changed as I get older." Changes in the roles and the rules in families can cause major conflicts. The family mirroring process turns a potential crisis into a major family change using a conflict resolution style that is nonviolent.

Dysfunctional family conflict resolution styles that damage children are permissive parenting and authoritarian parenting. In a permissive parenting style the conflict in the example would have been settled though a lose-win resolution where the parent would have felt emotionally blackmailed into giving in to the adolescent. The authoritarian parenting style would have resulted in a win-lose decision, demanding that the rules and roles stay the same that were established at a younger age and the child would feel like he had lost and would feel angry and hurt.

Permissive parenting makes the parents feel disempowered and insecure in guiding their children. The child feels over-empowered and experiences a lot of fear because "if my parents can't make decisions and I have to make the decisions for them, this is a frightening world for me." When the parent has to constantly lose and the child always has to win, it shapes and forms an unconscious life plan for the child that says I'm Ok-you're not Ok. This brings unconscious psychological pain games into the family that ensures that the child keeps power and the parent constantly loses power.

Authoritarian parenting makes sure that the parents always win and the child constantly loses. This makes the parents feel guilt and shame for crushing the potential of their child while it makes the child feel low self-esteem and a lack of influence on his world. Children in authoritarian families that have a chronic win-lose conflict resolution style develop an unconscious life plan of I'm not Ok-you're Ok. Although the children who come from this type of family feel disempowered in the home, they are the bullies and the ones who get in more physical fights with other children; and they lack creativity and flexibility in problem solving.

Permissive parenting and authoritarian parenting demand a winner and a loser, leaving all family members feeling bankrupt. Both parenting styles are actually lose-lose situations. When one family member loses all the family members lose. The chronic lose-lose conflict resolution policy develops within all of the family members an unconscious life plan of "I'm not Ok and You're not Ok." This means there is a feeling of basic mistrust in all family members. The boundaries in these families are enmeshed and penetrated or they are walls of disengagement-the types of boundaries that encourage drug addiction, child abuse and neglect.

The practice of being one-pointed and selfless through the family mirroring process develops empathy and altruism in the family members. The internalization of nonviolence reassures a respect for life. The nonviolent attitude in the holistic family develops a win-win conflict resolution style and makes all family members feel like a winner. They develop an unconscious life plan that says I'm Ok-You're Ok. This is the life plan of the great peacemakers and Nobel Peace Prize winners-Jewish scholar/activist Elie Wiesel, Catholic Saint Mother Teresa and Tibetan Buddhist Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso.