When my daughter was a baby, Nick taught her how to hit. He raised her hands and, facing her like a flat pad, showed her how to make her little hands into fists and press them into the palms of her own. He allowed her again–Recommended “” is too strong a word, but he was resolutely neutral on the issue. He hits him in a more childish manner, smacking him in the chest and torso with his palms, causing the haymaker to wind up and land on his stomach.
When Margo first saw this, she wanted to scream. She wasn’t raised to engage with her physicality. Her family played sports, but that was it, and in those situations they used their bodies in parallel with other bodies, rather than physically engaging with each other. . I remember that she was violent towards her sister, which made her feel very embarrassed. She had a desire to experiment with her physicality, but she didn’t have a healthy space to explore it, so she bullied her sister, and felt fundamentally bad about herself for doing so. She came to understand that there was. Later, as an adult, she experienced a lot of interpersonal violence. So she came to associate her rough physicality with confusion and fear, and she didn’t want that inside her home. As a parent, the first time I see my child exploring ways to influence others with his body – by hitting his mother or father, but with subtle nuances towards those who can’t hit him. I found it easier to say “don’t hit me” than to try to find out. Don’t talk yet.
Written by Margo Stines. St. Martin’s Press.
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Nick grew up differently. He is a professional combat coach and third-generation martial artist who has been trained in martial arts such as judo, jiu-jitsu, and karate since he was a toddler. As an adult, he trained in Hiraido, an art descended from Danzan-ryu, a Japanese martial art practiced by his Hawaiian family for nearly a century. In his home, hitting and rough touching, what Margo called “violence” before she chose her words more carefully, took on a different context.
Nick has been a parent for 3 1/2 years longer than Margo, and together we co-parent our 3-year-old daughter and Nick’s son (Margo’s stepson), 6. As parents, we try to incorporate and participate in a variety of experiences related to physicality in our homes. Integrating them into a consistent family culture was a learning experience for all of us. It asked Margo to reframe her core assumptions about power, authority, and the meaning of consent.
Children will actually expose gaps and inconsistencies between what you say and what you do and demand explanations. If your opinion doesn’t make sense, they won’t accept it. This is often humbling and shows how far Margo gets by with shit and personality, neither of which work on young children. They demand and deserve a fully unraveled parental understanding of what has been passed down to them, but for Margo, it takes a lot of personal growth and her beliefs. It was necessary to systematically update parts of the.
As a parent, Margo wants consistency and knows that black-and-white rules are the way to do that. Nick is the opposite. He values nuance and is very resistant to absolutes. Margo sometimes appreciates this and sometimes finds it frustrating. Although we are polar opposites in many ways, there has to be some consistency between us when it comes to parenting. We needed to have a unified understanding of what we were doing with our kids at home.
Our daughter is now 3 years old, and we’ve discovered that when Nick holds up his palm, she can punch. “Can I hit you?” she asks him. She also knows that it’s not the same for others and that she has to ask first. When she asks Margo, “Can I hit you?” Margo always says, “No, I can’t.” Part of the reason is that she doesn’t want to get hit by anyone, including her children. Another one is that she thinks it’s important for her daughter to get used to receiving and respecting boundaries. For so many people, boundaries feel like aggression or rejection. We want her to understand her boundaries as an offering, a way to show people where they end and begin. This is obvious from the physical situation.When we enter the emotional realm, it becomes more ambiguous, and the space of physicality provides a wonderful playground for these initial understandings of what no what do you mean not now what do you mean maybe later and yes average.
We tend to think of consent as just for sexual interactions, but sexuality is the most advanced, high-stakes place to learn how to give and receive boundaries. If you can’t say no to unwanted hugs, how can you enter a sexual situation on your own, and how can you be gentle, appreciative, and even accepting of other people’s boundaries? Is not it? When we think of boundaries as something that should only be broken when something is wrong, and as if boundaries are only formed when they are violated, we feel that they are being violated. You end up in the dangerous position of having to practice expressing your needs in the moment you feel them.
Margo often talks with her children about small boundaries. For example, “Mommy doesn’t share straws” or “Mommy’s room is not a place to play.” She wants them to be able to take that boundary as a statement about her, rather than an indictment of themselves. Someone else’s needs don’t mean they did anything wrong. All of this is somewhat invisible, especially to young children, but when we talk about our bodies, they understand it. They can feel and see what we’re talking about. Margo tells us that we all have body boundaries, that they are all different, and that we can change them whenever we want. Sometimes her body boundaries are that she needs personal space (this is hard for us toddlers, but we are learning), this is when she wants. indicates that you have the right to get space. When it comes to striking, Margo and Nick have different physical boundaries and it’s always a conversation. We teach our children never to hit someone without asking, and never to hit someone in the face. For now, I feel like this is enough to work with.
Nick introduced the children to combat play early on. “and [our daughter]”I put my hand up and she hit it. This is our game now, this is how we play. It’s not allowed outside of our home. Also, we were both almost born. I’ve been watching martial arts ever since. When she was a newborn, she would sleep in my arms while I shadowboxed. [My son]As a baby, the first time I left the house was for an international Muay Thai tournament. ”
Nick points out that women are primarily the victims of violence in the world, but in his family he was in contrast to his mother, who taught her children the techniques of judo and jiu-jitsu. His aunt was a national judo champion and the best judoka in her family. People would come sparring with their families, and on good days they would sometimes be paired with their 5-foot-4-inch aunt. He grew up seeing pictures of her throwing guys weighing 200 pounds, heels flying into the air. Then he would see other people’s families where violence was simply framed as negative, the end of the story.
Margo wants Nick’s female relatives to trust her daughter, whether or not she wants to become a martial artist. Margo has felt that he is physically unprepared for many of the situations he finds himself in. It started when she was a young woman in New York City, where she was grabbed, groped, followed home, and forcibly taken away on the subway. She wonders how she could have responded to all these events differently if she had practiced physical skills that didn’t rely on her size or arm strength.
Nick and his family were taught that the tools they were learning were not to be abused or used lightly. His earliest memory is that he was taught karate, judo, and jiu-jitsu techniques and that he was told not to use them on children at school. It was framed as a necessary tool in life to protect oneself and defuse conflicts. It wasn’t about fighting. When he had children, it was only natural to teach them how to deal with physical conflict. That was normal. After a lifetime of watching people react poorly to conflict, he realized how valuable physical preparedness is and how disadvantaged those without it are. did it.
As a boy, he was bullied and was taught not to use martial arts until absolutely necessary. If an older child was getting physical with another child and tried to do so with that child, that child could respond appropriately rather than preemptively. “Take the right action at the right time,” says Nick. He witnessed situations where people around him were in conflict, reacted with violence early on, and ended up in fights. Because even as a child, he knows where the line is between patrolling and testing conflict and outright physical aggression, and he is able to defuse conflict verbally. This is because the. He believes that because he was not in a state of fear, he was able to maintain a thoughtful process about the unfolding situation.
After seeing these dynamics throughout his life, Nick wants the same for his children as he was given. It is the power to protect yourself and those around you, and the knowledge that allows you to know what merits a physical response and what does not. . “I give them a space in the house to practice learning about those parts of themselves, so if they find themselves in a situation, they’re not entering that space for the first time. ” he says.
“I want to raise children who can protect themselves.”
For children, consent is a practice. The kids are literally putting it into practice, testing what happens if they violate the agreement, making sure it’s mutual, and feeling every inch of it. Sometimes our child hits Margo outside of the allowed rough play space. It’s all the wild exuberance of a still-forming human who can’t always control his impulses, and sometimes wants to see what happens if Margo lets her body loose. She turns her face up and swings her arms around to unleash a slap, but her small body moves so fast that it’s hard to grab her wrist and stop her. This is just like the gentle parenting guru recommended by Margo. This is not cruelty or anger, but disregulation. Sometimes it seems like there’s no thought involved at all, but when Margo reminds her daughter that she’s not supposed to hit her like that (“like that” means without consent), she’s like, You look really surprised, as if you’ve forgotten that we’ve talked about this before. We respond calmly and do our best to remind her that she must ask before hitting on her. She knows that if she needs to let off some energy, she can always get her boxing gloves and hit the bag. We also model this by practicing martial arts in front of her and showing her how to ask for and receive consent in that context.
The tenderness of a young child is as sincere as its roughness. It’s not one competing with the other. It’s her two parts of the same whole. The other day, as we were cuddling on the couch, our little one got up and suddenly, out of nowhere, slapped Margo hard on the stomach. Margo may have been taken aback and said it a little harsher than she intended. “Mommy doesn’t want to get hit,” she said, looking at her long and laughing. Margo wondered if she would do it again. (If she’s ever met a toddler, she’s probably familiar with this vibe.) Instead, she stroked the spot she just hit, then leaned in and kissed her. that.
