Letter to my children: Asking for Permission, Power Dynamics, and Family Visioning

Dearest Beloveds,

“Momma, I want a play date with B!”

“Okay, I will see what I can do.”

“Momma, can we go to CVS to look for stuffies?”

“You have too many stuffies.”

“What if I used my own money, pleeeeaaase?”

“It’s your money. But remember it is just your Cranky Monster who wants them. You don’t need them.”

“Can we have cheesy bread for lunch?”

“No, my loves, we are having pizza for dinner. We should have a salad for lunch.”

“Can we have dried mango for snack?”

“Sure, great idea.”

“Momma, I want to bring these sticks into the house and tape them together to make it go FLAM!”

“Dearest, no sticks in the house. You know that.”

“Yes, but what if I wash them first. And they are not really sticks, they are stakes.”

Good point.

“Okay, yes.”

“Momma, I want to go to the library.”

“Not today, we have a full day of doings.”

“But why not?! I need more Piggie and Gerald books!”

And it is so cute when you read those to your brother.

“Sorry Bean, soon. I promise.”

“Pinky promise.” An earnest hand is extended.

“Pinky promise.” Our fingers curl together.

All day long our house is filled with negotiations, requests, and haggling. Your desires and wants bumping into the life your father and I have created.

The two of you are a never ending font of embodied listening. An idea pops in your body as a good idea and you share it with your parents - running into a schedule you don’t understand (why don’t we have time to go picking peaches today, my schedule is wide open!) or rules that seem nonsensical (pizza and cheesy bread in one day sounds amazing!)

Dearests, dismantling that power dynamic when you get to be an adult can be tricky. It took me years to stop looking around my shoulder to see if I was allowed to do something. Years of not listening to my embodied body wants because I had thought I needed someone outside of myself to tell me how to live, what the rules are.

From the: Wait, the world won’t end if I don’t shave my legs? Hold on, no one cares if I don’t wear a dress to a party? Wait, I don’t have to be friends with everyone? Hold on, pronouns are a system of oppression? What, you can put your fork on the right side of the plate and the earth doesn’t stop spinning?

To the: Can I really not do what the doctors are telling me? I can send my urine off to the Philippines to check for inflammation that way? I am allowed to throw a fit in an infusion center?

Or even: I am allowed to ask that man to turn off his idling car because he is polluting the planet. I am allowed to homeschool my kids even though that is not normal. I am allowed to be vulnerable in public, to strangers, to friends. I am allowed to speak my needs and desires. I am allowed to be fully me.

My dearest loves, that is really the crux of it and what I want you to grok. I don’t want the rules and systems of our house to infringe on your sense of self and take away your own power and self-agency as you grow.

As you bounce against the systems (you can’t have food after bath time, the kitchen is closed for more food) or the rules (you may not throw a ball in the house) I hope your realize two things. First of all, they are completely arbitrary and all families make different choices and you can change your mind about these systems and rules when you have your own house and your own family. Second of all, that nugget right there “your own house” has within it the power dynamic of “this is our house and therefore we make the rules.”

I don’t know how to reconcile that fact, that hierarchy of power, with the very real fact that you two are dependent on us for food, shelter, clothing, etc. We are legally responsible for you till you turn 18.* This might be the whole nugget of growing up as a family. That as the two of you grow into your own agency we model and name consciously the power dynamics of our home so you can recognize power dynamics everywhere.

Instead of having it be, “this is our house and we make the rules,” which is where we have been for the last 8 years, perhaps we can change that. Perhaps to commemorate when Dragon loses his first tooth. We could all sit down as a family and make the implicit explicit.**

As we teach you and model the importance of vegetables and real food so we can teach and model power dynamics. So far, our family has been a fairly rigid hierarchy of Momma and Dadda making all of the decisions and you two bouncing against them. There is no reason that needs to continue other than inherited norms.

Within the dictums of safety, health, resource practicalities, and necessities we can sit down and come up with a family vision for a certain time period and practices to support that vision. Together we can write out our family vision. Together we can create a home where the rules and systems make sense to everyone and where everyone feels seen and heard in the process of creation.

We will do this with the goal of launching you two into the world with a clear understanding of your own agency, your own power, your own wisdom. To not have you looking for permission to live your own life as an adult. To clearly recognize the power dynamics and crumbling hierarchies in this changing world.

Because my loves, my prayer for your life as adults will be you savoring, thriving, enjoying, and reveling in this world.

Thank you both so much for being my beloveds and giving me the opportunity to think about these things. Write about them. Speak to you about them. This feels like a good resolution for 2023.

I love you.

*Not only are we legally responsible for you till age 18 - but your brain doesn’t finish maturing until you are about 21-22. “The prefrontal cortex is the last to mature and it involves the control of impulses and decision-making.” So there is that wrinkle as well to add to this mix.

** Shoutout to Micah from the Good Work Institute on such a perspicacious insight.