When you're anti-authority and you have an antiauthoritarian kid

Lots of conflict.

Years ago, I was at a cafe with my then three-year-old son. He laid down in a shared booth and slid back and forth cackling gleefully. The more I kindly asked him to stop, the louder he got. That’s because, like me, he doesn’t like being told what to do.

I didn't think he was being too disruptive, so I ignored him for a few seconds. Then, of course, an older man next to me said nastily, "Can you control your child? We're trying to have a conversation here and he's being very loud."

I’m sure many parents can relate to this experience, but here’s where maybe we differ.

My response was instinctual: "Are you kidding?" I turned to my kid and instructed him to be louder, but quickly changed direction out of shame. I edited my response: "Just because that man is rude doesn't mean we need to be rude." And guess what? The kid finally complied.

But then I got REALLY pissed that this stranger shamed me when I was trying to be a patient parent. So I cursed the guy out on the way out because, as it turns out, I am rude when other people are rude, especially when it’s some rando telling me how to live my life.

I am, in my soul, antiauthoritarian. Instead of mindlessly following someone else’s arbitrary rules, I believe in following them based on my values. I believe in questioning, in community, collaboration, and leadership. Because I value these things, it means I am setting myself up for the nearly impossible task of nurturing my child’s joy and strong spirit and being his parent — a default oppressor.

Parents like me, who maybe have a little bit of the ADHD and are maybe a bit oppositional, are often raising kids who say “no” a lot. As a parent, you’re not exactly a leader. You don’t get the respect of a leader, you get the intimacy of a protector, a confidante, a guide. You are an authority figure. For me, that makes me feel some self-loathing. I don’t like running around telling someone else what they have to do all the time. And then to be told “no” all the time can be angering, exhausting — it wears you down.

And it’s hard to hear those nos. His nos are a no to rules and structures that might give him the security he so craves if he just went along with them. His resistance makes me frustrated and question myself endlessly and sometimes means I am not a good mommy. So everyone feels anxious. Everyone is upset a lot. Everything feels big even when it’s just time to brush your damn teeth.

But resisting is not a bad thing. It’s a quality I want to preserve in him while also getting him to eat a vegetable and shut off YouTube without a protracted argument. Like this isn’t the time to resist. But how can you teach relativism to a little person without a fully-formed frontal lobe? How can you show emotional regulation when you feel disregulated about being “The Man”?

I often fail to rule with kindness but I do have my child’s trust. He knows he’s a small, vulnerable creature in a big scary world and his family is his safe place to act out and speak up. He expects a lot from me just like I expect a lot from him. I’m glad he holds me to a high standard even if I don’t meet it. He deserves the best mommy, even if I fall short all the time. I try to remember that he may defy me now, but that the guidance I give him will stick. One day, he will brush his teeth without being asked. One day he will remember what I taught him and vote with empathy and caring.

People like me who know parenting is political (check these folks out), we’re doing our best to “rule” with an open heart, sharing age-appropriate truths so that our kids can use their own personalities to join what are essentially generational, familial conversations and larger societal efforts for the greater good.

Recently, I linked up with another family and we had our kids write letters to leaders about how they felt about the things happening in the world, in our communities. Now more than ever, we’re attending events that are aligned with our values to say: “The world can be better.” My son needs to see how to stand up to authority when authority turns into autocracy. I seriously cannot believe we’re living through this right now, but this is when our contrarian traits are useful. Pushing back is the only way to maintain our space to live authentically and protect that space for others who maybe can’t fight back.

We need to make sure our kids can write their own stories in the running narrative that defines our families and communities so that they contribute to the world in a caring, thoughtful way with an eye toward justice, equity, and kindness not authoritarianism.