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Welcome friend! This is the Living With Joy Renewed podcast, where adoptive families find healing for the present and hope for the future.
I'm Jeanette Nafziger, and I'm here to come alongside you on your parenting journey each week with tips, real-life stories, and encouragement to help your family find renewed joy at home.
Hey everyone, welcome to the living with joy renewed podcast where adoptive families find healing their present and hope for the future. I'm your host Jeanette Nafziger. And I'm here to come alongside you on your parenting journey each week. With tips, real life stories and encouragement to help your family find renewed joy at home. Here's this week's episode.
I wanted to talk today about why it's okay to be a non traditional parent. Okay, if you've never heard that phrase before, I did look it up. We've all heard the phrase non traditional family with Webster describes as a family not consisting of one mother, one father, a child or children. But I have found myself using this term non traditional parenting. And if you look up that phrase, think it's something I made up actually. Now it is used, but it's mostly used when talking about raising children within non traditional families. But for me, it holds a different meaning. And I want to share that with you today. What it means to me. If you've listened to my previous podcasts, I share the story of how our family evolved, our three adopted children, one biological child, and one acquired child. And I mentioned that my husband and I moved 500 miles away from our hometown when our children were quite young. This move, it meant leaving our extended families or parents or grandparents or siblings and their families, which was a really difficult decision for us to make and execute. Especially for me, I was very close to my family, I still am very close to my family, I am thankful to be back in our hometown with my family. But moving turned out to be the best possible thing we could have done. And that is a realization that actually came in hindsight, it was not something we knew. Before we did it, I often share that I want to tell our story, because I long to give families a shoulder up meaning I want you to be able to gain some personal knowledge from our story that is relative to your parenting, not techniques, not how to guides, not daily tips on parenting but more of a mindset that helps you feel encouraged that you have what you need to parent your children. Sometimes we as parents just need the confidence to be able to implement what we know. So I guess what I'm saying is that I will share with you this experience what this experience of moving meant for our family. Some of our tough moments, our mistakes, our successes, this will come out. And I guess it's so that you don't have to move 500 miles away to learn the same lessons unless you really want to that is I shared before I always wanted to have children I always dreamed of what it would look like to have children running around playing goofing off. And I always just assumed I would know how to do it, the raising the disciplining the teaching. And at first I thought I did. Of course we read the books that were popular in the culture we were living in at the time, we learned how to be authoritative parents that gently had control over their children's behaviors. I even attended mom's book clubs that discussed how to discipline and have obedient children. We disciplined according to how these books told us how our parents raised us. But basically, and maybe you've already caught on to this. Our parenting style came from expectations of the people around us, our parents, our social groups, our church, our culture. But when our first adopted daughter was approximately two years old, we began seeing behaviors in her that were quite defiant. And it was confusing, because we thought we were doing everything by the books. But it seems that someone forgot to tell her to read the same books, because she was not responding according to them. She wanted to have control over every situation. And the more we tried to take control, the more defiant she became. Now this is typical two year old behavior. But it was different. She thought she was being sneaky with it sometimes. For example, we would always give her fair warning when bedtime was coming. We would tell her 15 more minutes 10 more minutes, five more minutes, okay, it's bedtime. She would often completely ignore the fact that we were relaying any information to her at all. And she would just keep playing it whatever it was that she was doing. When we finally got to the point where we said okay, bed time, she would continue to not acknowledge us at all. And we soon learned that if we do Just let it go about 30 seconds to a minute, she would suddenly get up from what she was doing and announce she was going to bed. She started this at a very young age, so it wasn't always in complete sentences. But that was the gist of it. And she would proceed to go to the stairs and pause waiting for one of us to follow her up to take her up for a bedtime routine. Now, this doesn't seem so bad, except for the fact that it was quite obvious, she was reading the book on how to control the behaviors of parents instead of the other way around. She compliantly went to bed, there were no arguments. But our books were saying she shouldn't have control the situation. And this wasn't the only way she wanted to control things, she would do most of what we asked her to do in the preschool aged years. But she would always tell us why she didn't want to do it. And she would get terribly upset if we didn't respond with a word. Okay? Just responding to her desire to not want to do what we're telling her to do. Basically, what she was doing was attempting to be OBEDIA in order to not have to suffer the consequences if she wasn't, but her mind wanted to feel like she was actually the one in control of the situation, and that she was not being controlled by someone else. There were no books to help me figure this one out. The behavior was so overt, and I'm not sharing all of this story, it would take actually a very long podcast to be able to share with you all the instances of her wanting to take control of every situation. The behavior was so overt that I talked to our pediatrician about it, and described what she was doing. And he basically diagnosed her as the youngest patient he had ever seen with obsessive compulsive disorder. He went on to tell us she would probably be heavily medicated by the age of five when they were actually permitted to start giving these medications. But I believe at that time, when I talked to our pediatrician, she was only three and he said she's too young to medicate. So you just have to deal with it till she's five and then we'll put her on medication. So when our second adopted child came along, we also struggled to understand how to parent him because once again, he refused to read the books and act accordingly. This dear little guy just cried, especially the first year of his life. Now, I know many parents deal with colicky babies, but this was different. We had many friends in our circle that had children. We knew what colicky babies were. His cries were just different. He could be perfectly fine. We could be playing with him in the evening read to him do the bedtime routine, he would happily allow himself to be put into his crib or into his bed when he was a little older. Believe me this kiddo he loves to sleep. But as soon as we shut the door, he would scream the scream of a terrified child. He was always looking over his shoulder he was always seemed worried that he would see something that might frighten him or might be coming after him. As he got a little older and he could follow a cartoon or a children's show he would leave the room as soon as the situation presented itself where someone might get into trouble. Once we took the kids to a circus, that clown had this act, where he would turn his radio on he'd start dancing around. Of course, all the kids are raised laughing at this clown dancing around was suddenly the ringmaster he'd come out of the backstage and he told the clown it wasn't time for that and he turned the radio off. ringmaster would go backstage again. Well, of course, the clown crept back over to the radio and turned it back on and back to dancing. He would go much to the delight of all the children. ringmaster come stomping out with an angry look on his face and the clown would drop his head and shame while the ringmaster pushed that radio button off again. But as soon as the ringmaster went back behind stage of that clown would go right back to the radio. My little guy he could not handle this. He cried. He screamed know when the clown would turn the radio back on. He cried his eyes out when the ringmaster came storming in and the clown would get into trouble. I actually had to take him out of the arena because what started out as cuteness that elicited some sweet little chuckles from the people around us quickly turned into looks of what is wrong with that child. It's just a funny skit. I struggled to know how to parent has sensitive spirit and again, I found myself parenting out of expectation. The thoughts I had to parent this out of him, he had to get a bit of a tougher skin, he needed to understand the reality of the world around him. This is the stuff that was swirling in my head and caused the reactions, the reactive parenting style that I was displaying. Well, this is where our move comes into the story. When we moved our oldest was eight and our youngest was three. I was really scared to how difficult it was going to be to be away from the supportive family. But once we were in our new home and had gained some stuff ability as a family, trust me moving a family is a whole other story of upheaval and chaos, especially that far. I found myself breathing a little freer. Now don't get me wrong. Parenting out of other people's expectations was my choice and my decision. I wasn't in this new environment thinking that I had gotten away from overwhelming systems and overbearing families because that wasn't the
case. I just realized, when I was there, that I finally had space to think about what parenting my children really meant. Let me explain it this way. Most of the decisions that we had made as parents were reactions to behaviors, and those reactions were based on what would people think, for example, if my child cried, every time someone looked at him funny, I was worried that people would assume I was babying him, and I didn't have control over his ability to cope with real life. But when I suddenly didn't have anyone I deemed important enough looking over my shoulder, I realized I was free to take a minute and assess the whole situation. I never realized how much time and energy it took for me from me as a parent to worry about what other people thought of my parenting. So I started listening to my children more. No, I had the time, I started watching the patterns. Before we had moved, I actually would not have been able to tell you that my daughter could not handle being controlled, not in a screaming fit, throwing rebellious way, like I explained before, she was acting in a way that caused her to take back control in her own way. Sometimes it wasn't even noticeable because she would usually be doing what was expected of her. And I had never really connected with the fact that our youngest son sensitivity was most often a response to people getting into trouble by someone else in authority. I just I didn't see them. I didn't have the time, I was too busy reacting. When I stopped reacting to my children's behavior because I was concerned with what anyone might be thinking about their behavior and how it was reflecting on my parents skills or lack thereof. I learned how to watch, listen and respond to their needs. I didn't always do this perfectly. I'm telling you. This was a journey and many years I wish I had known this sooner. I tell my children now, so many things I wish I had known sooner. So many things that they taught me I wish I had known sooner. So this was a journey. I started learning how to watch, listen and respond to them. Here's what I learned. When my daughter was in the womb of her birth mother. We knew that that dear birth mother was attacked and violently raped while she was in her 36th week of pregnancy. This caused premature labor, and our daughter was born four weeks early. Now I didn't have a lot of knowledge back then about how babies may respond to prenatal events. And I am still in the process of learning more now. But back then I knew enough to realize that when her birth mother was attacked, most likely this baby felt and heard her emotions, and experienced all of the adrenaline and all the other biological happenings going on in her mother's body. During and after the experience. Everything that was going from Mom's brain through her bloodstream and through her system was also going through baby. In this situation. The mother was being controlled, she was being hurt. And I began to understand that when someone was trying to tell my daughter to do something she didn't want to do. She was smart enough to know that expectations were to comply. So instead of rebelling, she simply made it her decision. By doing this, she wasn't giving over any control to another person. She was calming her brain down by convincing herself that she had all the decision making power here. Our son had a similar story. birth mother was in prison for most of her pregnancy with him. And again, I believe our son was reliving the fear that he felt her feel when we would close doors, especially with a loud bang or a click, he would immediately start screaming in terror. But when we stopped and thought about the fact that in utero, he could hear the clicking and banging of closing doors, and then the consequent stress and fear that would flow through mom and then through him. We realized he was responding to a fear he didn't even understand. Learning to leave doors open or at least not let them make any noise while closing made all the difference in the world. For him. It stopped the screaming and terror. He was also respond Due to a fear of an authoritarian style of control, there would have been a lot of getting into trouble at prison. And somehow, I believe he was sensitive to it outside of the womb. And you might be thinking to yourself that this is all quite imaginative and a little far fetched. But when we start responding to our children's behaviors, according to these insights, it really did change things. It didn't take the behaviors away, actually. And they still, to some degree struggle with it today. But we all understand a little better. So despite the fact that it didn't take away that behaviors all the time, my husband and I actually became safer for our children to process those feelings with restarted parenting according to their needs, instead of other people's expectations, and our desire to maintain a positive parenting reputation. This is what I call non traditional parenting, self help books, parenting guides, they're all very valuable, and they're written by people much much wiser than I am. But at the end of the day, every child is different and unique. They have different gifts, talents, they have different struggles, different challenges. They have different purpose and different destinies. So one book is not going to cover what you need for each of your individual children. Give yourself the freedom to let parenting be a response, not a reaction. It's okay if you believe something about your child that may seem far fetched in someone else's mind. Watch their behaviors, listen to their cries, listen to their words, pay attention to patterns and what seems to be causing them. This is what responding looks like. And then parent them according to the needs that you've identified. You are equipped to do this. Always remember, no one knows that child better than you do. And no one else is as responsible to be a safe place for that child than you are
Transcribed by https://otter.ai