I call it parenting intelligence.
You know it's like IQ, which is basically analytical. You have EQ, which is emotional quotient, emotional intelligence, knowing how to socialize and cope with people.
I think that parenting requires a highly specific set of skills which are nurtured and cultivated to the point that they become a form of intelligence.
Gardner suggested that there are nine types of intelligence. You know, it could be a mathematical genius. It could be dexterous to the point of amazing, fascinating craftsmanship. You could be a musical genius.
I think parenting is yet another type of genius.
It's a fact that most parents get it wrong. Or many parentsget it wrong. So clearly there's some people are born to be parents their natural born parents.
So there is this parental intelligence and when I try to break it down into its component I think the first thing is to love the child, to love the idea of having a child, to love the idea of being a parent, the concept of parenthood, and to love the child.
When I say love, I'm not talking about being enmeshed with a child, merging or fusing with the child. I'm not talking about breaching the child's boundaries, instrumentalizing the child, parentifying the child. All these are forms of abuse.
I'm talking about loving the child, seeing in the child the potential to become an individual, an adult. You see the child as a separate entity, is something that is not you and you at the same time. You see yourself in the child, of course, but you also see the child as a kind of evolution in progress, kind of a process in the making, which is amazing.
And that is a great definition, I think, of love generally.
And I think the second element is care, caring, caring about the child, that is a psychological mechanism, but also caring for the child's needs.
You need to identify the needs of the child correctly, which is not easy, especially in the pre-verbal stage, then you need to cater to these needs. You need to make sure you are there for the child whenever the child needs you, but at the same time, you need to avoid dependency.
In other words, you need to make sure the child doesn't become an extension of you. The child doesn't become dependent on you, addicted to you. These are all pathologies, of course.
So again, it's a fine-tuning exercise. It's a delicate balance. It's walking a very, very thin line, very high up. You could easily tilt towards a pathology if you don't know how to do it.
So caring.
And then protecting the child, protecting the child initially from itself, and then protecting the child from others. And I think most importantly, protecting the child from you, from yourself.
Because every parent has the tendency to kind of become overprotective, to digest the child, to immerse the child in a bubble and encapsulate the child in a way because it's very painful to observe when your child is hurting.
When your child has been mauled or assaulted or mocked or ridiculed or humiliated or shamed or attacked, it's very, very painful to the parent.
And the parent's initial instinct is, I'm going to isolate my child, so this would never happen again.
And it's a bad instinct.
Protect, but never overprotect.
The way to protect the child is to teach the child how to protect itself.
And then the next thing is socialization.
It's when you as a parent introduce the child initially to other members of the family, and then to peers, and then to role models and so on, gradually bring the child into the social remit and ambit.
Socialization involves teaching the child a variety of skills required to interact with other people and to establish interpersonal relationships. This is known as object relations in psychology.
So socializing the child, the parent is a socialization agent.
While all this is going on, you love the child, you care for the child, to protect the child, you teach the child to become involved in socially, so in the social milieu, well all this is taking place, you also need to discipline the child.
And you discipline the child not by placing your own boundaries, because this would lead to a situation where the child is dependent on you, never separates from you, the equivalent of trauma bonding.
So you discipline the child by establishing boundaries for the child that the child can then adopt as his or her own boundaries.
In other words, the way to discipline the child is to teach the child to develop their own boundaries.
And when these boundaries are appropriated by the child, when the child feels one with the boundaries, the child feels ownership of these boundaries, then there is self-discipline. You don't need to discipline the child anymore. The child disciplines itself.
Now this involves a variety of mechanisms such as introjection and internalization and even imitation.
You as a parent, you don't need to have a master's degree in clinical psychology. Most of this comes intuitively.
But bad parents try to impose on the child their own reality, their own values and boundaries, their own discipline. They try to render the child a kind of instrument, as I said, an extension.
And that is very bad.
The child needs to separate from the parent and become an individual through a process of self-discovery, self-revelation, and above all, safe exploration.
The parent needs to act as a secure base. The child needs to know that the parent has the child's back, while the child explores the world around with a modicum of delusional grandiosity and a lot of curiosity.
The parent is there to navigate, to calibrate the child, to help the child, to draw the child's attention to this and that.
But the parent should never substitute their own processes, their own cognitions, their own emotions, their own boundaries for the child's.
A child is not a blank slate and not pate.
You need to let the child evolve in his or her own way. You need to let the child explore and discover reality, however harsh and sometimes painful and hurtfulit may be.
This is called nurture.
You need to nurture the child, cultivate the child by providing the soil and the water and the sunshine of your presence.
But the growing up, the evolution, the sprouting of leaves and flowers and the deepening of roots, all this should be done by the child himself or herself.
You can't do it for the child.
Your instinct, your reflex as a parent is to try to make the child's life easy. That's a mistake.
Reality is about friction. Reality is aversive. It's adversarial. It's adversarial. Reality is about pain and about loss.
These are the engines of growth. These are the engines of growth and you need not deny them to your child.
So do not cosset the child, or spoil the child, or pamper the child, do not idolize or pedestalize the child.
These are all forms of abuse because they stunt the child.
Do not idolize or pedestalize the child. These are all forms of abuse because they stunt the child's growth and development.
Nurture the child by providing the conditions for the child's evolution and development.
You are in charge of the framework, you're in charge of the template, you're in charge of the operating systemif you wish.
But let the child decide what kind of person he or she is going to become.
Teach the child. Teaching is a critical faculty of parental intelligence. Teaching does not involve the authoritarian imposition of information or values or teaching is not about imposing. Teaching is about exposing.
When you teach, you lay out a table, you provide a menu.
It is the child who decides which dishes the child finds most palatable.
You teach by example. This is known in social cognitive theory as modeling. You model, you become a role model to the child.
The child emulates you and imitates you and this by far is the most important form of teaching.
All the rest comes later.
You encourage and foster the child's curiosity by exposing the child to art and culture and books and movies and what have you.
You provide the child with the necessary basic instruments, perhaps a tablet, perhaps a smartphone.
You create an ambience at home, however poor you may be financially. You still provide an ambience where learning is rewarded and perceived as a sublime activity, and so on.
Create a teaching environment, teaching opportunities and a learning curve.
Having done all this, we come to the most important part, the most crucial part of parental intelligence, letting go.
At some point, you need to let go of your child. And if your child refuses to depart, refuses to venture forth, you need to push the child away.
If your child is dependent and addicted and somebody's wrong, you need to push the child away.
You need to let go of your child. You need to allow your child to develop personal autonomy and agency and to reach independent decisions and make choices. You need to allow your child to make mistakes, including very, very, very dangerous mistakes, mistakes very hurtful, mistakes. Mistakes are tools of learning.
You need to let go and letting go is very difficult. It's like letting go of part of yourself. It's probably the mental equivalent of physical amputation. It's horrible.
And yet this is your test. This is your test as a parent, the ultimate test bar none.
Will you at some point be able to say goodbye to your child, farewell, and allow the child to become someone who is absolutely not you?