Welcome to the Loved Called Gifted podcast.
This is your place to come for musings about spirituality, identity and purpose.
I'm your host, Catherine Cowell.

C: I'm absolutely delighted to be joined this episode by Naomi Fisher.
So thank you very much for being here, Naomi.

N: Thank you for inviting me.

C: I invited Naomi to come on the podcast because I had seen the title of her latest book, which is "When the Naughty Step Makes Things Worse". And I was absolutely fascinated.

Just that phrase really resonates with my own experience and I think the experience of a lot of other parents, particularly those of us who have children with additional needs of one kind or another.

So I bought the book and reached out to Naomi and said, "Do you fancy coming on the podcast?"

And it's really good. It's very, very easy to read and both erudite and down to earth, I would say.

N: Thank you.

Grounded, I think, in some good knowledge and some good theory. So I highly recommend it and I thought it'd be great to chat about.

So would you like to just introduce yourself a bit, Naomi?

N: Yes. So I'm Naomi Fisher.
I'm a clinical psychologist, a mother of two teenagers, and I have written several books now.

And I think when I'm writing my books, my aim is really to shine a light on the sides of parenting that perhaps people don't talk about, that perhaps they feel ashamed of or feel that they're getting it wrong.

Because one of the amazingly privileged parts of my job, so as a clinical psychologist, that means that I am a psychologist who specialises in mental health and behaviour.

I'm not a doctor.

People sometimes get confused between psychiatrists and psychologists.

Psychiatrists, their main training is in medicine. A psychologist, your main training is in psychology.

So the kind of bread and butter of my work would be that I'd see parents or I'd see children or I'd see adults for therapeutic work.

And the meaning of that really is that people will come and tell me things that they don't tell other people.

And so I get this kind of different view on life.

And one of the things that I got, I think, as a parent myself when I had young children was a realisation that lots of people put a front up with parenting. Lots of us are pretending that things are going okay or that it's not as difficult as it really is.

And because I'm a psychologist and I'm a psychologist, I got to see other people who would look perfectly as if they had everything held together. And then they'd come into my room and they'd tell me what it was really like.

And I'd be like, oh, you know, we're all faking it, aren't we?

And what I really realised was that the people who had the hardest time parenting were those whose children were the ones who didn't respond to traditional parenting approaches.

And not only were they having quite a hard time parenting, they often felt terrible about their parenting because they felt and the world told them the reason your child is behaving like this is because you've got it wrong. You should be using the naughty step more, for example.

You know, we see there the TV programs are there, aren't they?

That's where the naughty step comes from.

C: Oh, super nanny is brilliant at it.

N: Exactly.

Stick them on the naughty step. Keep putting them back on the naughty step.

C: That so resonates with my early experience with my boys absolutely completely because they're adopted.

So, things were not as simple at the beginning for them as it might have been for others.

And we were given variations of put them on the naughty step.

N: Really?

C: Oh, yes.

So you don't do time out, you do time in.

N: Time in. Oh, yes. Yes.

C: And there's a bit in your book where you say, "you know, when people say just have your child do this."

N: How? How?

C: So the idea was, well, we're still doing the time out, but we're doing time in. So they will know that they are still with you and they are nurtured.

And the moment when I, it didn't take me long to give up on this, I have to confess Naomi, the moment that I did was one day when one of them was, I can't remember what had occurred, but I had him, I was doing a time in which he was not terribly fond of. And so he was in a bit of a state. My other child
- and this is the other thing that never happened in parenting books, they never talk about things as if there is more than one child in the world.

N: And very often there is.

C: The other child came in, saw that I was with child A, sitting on the sofa trying to keep him in his time in because if I held him here, it would all be all right.

He actually, because he was then jealous of the attention that the other one wasn't wanting, he dropped a glass on the floor and it smashed.

So now I'm in the situation where I need to continue to hold child A on the sofa because if I let go of him, he's going to dash around and now he's going to stand on the broken glass.

But I also with my other arm need to be keeping the other child away from the broken glass, which is all over the floor.

And I came out of that experience thinking this doesn't work any better than time out.

It's another kind of, I will do something which will control your behaviour.

And the number of times I was told by people, you need to be firmer.

N: Yes.
Get them under control.

C: Yes, you need to be firmer.
And I just thought, actually do not think I've tried this.

Being firm as a parent is the first spanner you get out of the toolbox.

N: Exactly.

C: I've told you this and I'm going to tell you it with firmness.

N: Exactly. Or I'm going to call your father who can be even firmer with a deeper voice.

Yeah, absolutely. But that's a classic example isn't it with the time in and time out.

I remember it said in the books on how to do time out or time in.

Either it said they need to be there for the number of minutes that they are old, or it used to say they need to be there until they've calmed down.

And that one was the killer.

Because it's like, so what if actually what's happening is they're getting more and more and more distressed in time out or time in because they want to get out of it, right?

They don't want to be there.

How long do you wait?

And I think there's one of our illustrations which Eliza did on the naughty step with the mother said, come on, we've been here six hours.

All you have to do is say sorry.

And the child says, "no."

It's like, what do you then?

C: The narrative is very much? Well, if you give in, yes, then the world will fall apart, it will be worse next time.

It's gonna be eight hours the next time.

And you really need to be in control. And nobody steps back and says, why do you need to be in control?

N: Or why do you need to be so rigid? That's the thing.

I think a lot of these things encourage parental rigidity.

And they actually sort of hold up rigidity as ideal.

We call it holding firm, but really, we mean being rigid.

C: It's not a really good skill for adult life, though?

N: Being rigid <both laugh>.

Well, the odd thing is that the people who have the most trouble with these approaches tend to have quite rigid children, because you have rigidity meets rigidity, and you are stuck, totally stuck. And it's like, who is going to give way first, and a lot of the manuals basically assume that the child will give way first.

And if you've got a child who isn't going to give way first, then what is going to happen at some point, the parent is going to have to give way my big reframing is really, we need to be as flexible as we can be as parents, the more rigid the child is, the more flexible a parent they need.

And we need to be able to be flexible and feel good about it.

So we need to be able to say, sorry, that timeout thing, not a good idea.

I tried it, apologies, we'll try something else and move on.

C: There are huge advantages to not being rigid, though, aren't there? So I was pondering this the other day.

N: Yeah

C: You can actually make a really good virtue as a parent out of changing your mind. There's so much in that, like you can demonstrate explaining that you've got things wrong.

When I said you couldn't have that chocolate bar. I hadn't listened to you. Yes, I made a mistake.

N: Yes, I'm sorry.

C: Or if the child is next to the chocolate bar and didn't want them to, you don't have to say, that's it. There's no more chocolate for you.

You could just say, Oh, you are very sneaky.

I will have to be more cunning next time.

N: Or indeed, I'll have to make sure I listen when you say actually, I'd really like a chocolate bar now. So you don't feel the need to go and nick it from me, because you know that I'll give it to you.

C: Yes, exactly.

N: And that's what we want our children to learn, isn't it?

Actually, we want them to learn to be flexible, because that's a really important skill in the world. Because if we're modelling rigidity as the ideal, whilst hoping our children will learn to be flexible, I don't really see how that's going to work.

C: No, no, absolutely.

The other thing is that what that kind of rigid parenting is doing is it is relying on a breaking of the relationship between the parent and the child.

N: Yes.

C: And putting all of the onus on the child to mend it.

N: Yeah, yeah, that's true.

The parent says, This is my position. I'm holding it. And you need to comply with that really, you need to bend yourself to what I say is right.

And I guess lots of people would say that's fair enough. Parents are the experts. They're the adults. They know better.

And the children should accept that.

C: Yeah.

But if you've got a child who can't for some reason, and there are lots of reasons why maybe they can't.

N: yes.

C: Or it doesn't feel safe for them to do that.

N: Yeah

C: then you've got a child in distress, who is being expected in that place of distress to be the one who's going to be the grown up and say, I'm going to make the move to repair this relational breach.

N: Yes, you're right, you are you're putting that responsibility on them, because you're saying I'm not going to do it for you.

C: So what would you suggest to people who have got themselves stuck in this sort of downward spiral of hell?

N: Well, it's tricky to know, because there are so many people who've got themselves stuck in that.

But I think the first thing is to really let yourself question what you've been taught.

What you've kind of not taught isn't quite the right word, what you've been immersed in.

So in my book, I talk about good parenting (™) is a kind of slightly sarcastic phrase for switches, the kind of parenting which everybody kind of knows that you should be doing is the kind of parenting where strangers feel okay about coming up to you to give you good parenting TM advice.

So they might say something like, you know, the supermarket checkout, if your child's kicking off and you buy them a packet of sweets, they might say, well, if you give into them like that, no wonder they behave like that.

Because the good parenting TM thing is you do not buy your child a packet of sweets at the supermarket checkout, particularly if they're kicking off.

And the good parenting TM thing is you make your child share, for example.

So if your another child approaches your child and says, can I have a go with your bucket?

And they say, "no", then the good parenting TM thing is we've got to share, let them you know, they need to have a turn.

And if you're just like, okay, that's up to you, it's your bucket, your choice.

That's not your parenting TM.

C: Your boundaries.

N: Yes, exactly. Your boundaries. Good for you for being assertive.

That's not good parenting TM.

And you will feel that you will feel shamed.

Even if people don't say things to you, you will feel the glances of those around you raising their eyebrows, rolling their eyes, tutting perhaps, maybe saying kind of things quietly to their child about how this parent isn't really doing good, good job of parenting, and they would be doing better.

You know, all of that kind of thing I talk about as good parenting TM, the kind of pressure of how we think we should be parenting.

And most of that is controlling parenting.

Most of it is we should be getting our children under control.

And I think one of the things that's really important for me is I grew up in different countries, I've lifted lots of different cultures.

And one of the things I noticed from that was how culturally specific all of these things are.

But yet, we always tend to think that they are universal.

So we think that people will tell you when you have a baby, for example, that you need to get that baby sleeping on their own, that that's a really important developmental step, we'll kind of justify it with science and say, you know, babies need to learn to be independent, they need to learn to self soothe all that kind of stuff.

And then you go to a country like India, and you discover that no one expects babies to sleep by themselves there.

Or even Japan, you know, people don't, there are other countries where it's just not expected, certainly not by six months that that child will be sleeping by themselves.

And lots of countries where babies will not have their own bedrooms, or children will not have their own bedrooms.

And yet, in the UK, there's a lot of emphasis, I remember programmes on TV about children sleeping in their own rooms, and how important it is that they sleep in their own rooms.

And it's kind of like we've made a virtue out of cultural practices.

They're just cultural practices.

That's all they are.

They aren't essential things.

I think lots of parents believe if I don't manage to, I certainly believe this, I think, as a early mum, that if I didn't get my baby sleeping on their own, then that was going to have long term repercussions for their independence and their, or everything, you know, they wouldn't be able to self soothe themselves as adults because they couldn't do it at six months old.

And it's just so unhelpful because it ladens parents with this burden of, I've got to do it a certain way.

Otherwise, what will happen in the future?

This kind of catastrophizing.

Another one of the illustrations we have in the book, I think, is a parent seeing their child having a meltdown on the floor and in their head, they've got a jail cell.

Their thoughts is like, you know, because people will say this to you, won't they?

I'd be surprised if it hasn't been said to you.

If you don't get them under control now, you just wait till they're teenagers.

People have said that with their three, four and five year olds, very young children, and it just gets everybody into a state of fear and shame.

C: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

The jail cell thing and the teenage thing is interesting.

I have had some people say they'll end up in the Young Offenders Institute if you don't sort this out, which is not terribly helpful.

N: Really painful to hear though, as well, also, isn't it?

I mean, it's not just not helpful.

It's really like, yeah, it is the kind of thing you wake up at night going, what if they're right?

And also, what if then if they do end up there, and everybody says, well, it's her fault.

She didn't get them under control when they were four.

Oh, yeah.

C: What's really interesting, though, is that the teenage thing, I was taking one of my boys, we were needing to find another educational establishment.

And we were we were visiting somewhere and just to comment by one of the teachers who were showing us around at school with sort of expertise in behaviour.

And she said, well, of course, teenage years are a good learning time.

And I thought, oh, that is an interesting take.

And we weren't quite there yet at that point.

But my observation having walked this journey for some while is that a lot of what happened to the teenage years is that parents who have managed because of their character, the character of their kids, whatever, who have managed good parenting and think that they are in control, they suddenly discover that that was really illusory.

They're not and their children discovered that they're not.

N: I agree.
Yeah.

C: And so all hell breaks loose was actually what's happened in our home is that the teenage years have been beautiful, because there's been a growth in maturity.

N: Yeah.

C: And an increasing ability for them to control their own emotions.

Because that's what we've been working at for a really long time.

N: Yes.

C: All of that time, we've been working on understanding how you feel and being able to articulate it.

And that teenage adolescent has enabled that to sort of take big leaps forward.

So things have been better.

And we have a better relationship now than I had with them when they were eight and five.

N: Yes.

C: Which is not the way round people expect.

N: No, you've also spent those years building a collaborative relationship with them because you have to.

I've noticed exactly the same thing that parents who really think they've got everything sorted, get to 13 or 14. And all hell breaks loose sometimes, because it's like the children go, hang on a minute.

This whole relationship is based on control.

And actually, I always say to parents control has an expiry date and you want it to have an expiry date because you want them to grow up into independent people who can disagree with you, who make their decisions for their own purposes, not for your purposes.

Because otherwise, as a therapist, I meet people aged 25 or 30 who say to me, I have no idea what I want in life.

Everything that I have done in life has been what my parents wanted me to do, including my choice of career, even maybe my choice of partner.

And now I'm sort of here and I'm like, where is me?

Who am I?

One of the reframings that I do is say that some of us are really lucky to have children who very early on say, I'm not doing this.

You've got to do things better.

They require a better standard.

They see right through it.

They're really clear sighted.

You need something better.

And the parents have to step up.

And that means that by the time they're teenagers, you've already had to do a lot of the work of, okay, actually, this person is a separate person to me.

They are completely different.

And I have to work out how to respect that in them, rather than assuming that I can make decisions for them.

And some parents, as you say, are able to make decisions for their children all the way through to when they become teenagers.

And some of them are able to make decisions for their children for longer than that.

But at some point, it's going to stop.

It needs to stop for the health of that child and actually for the health of the parent as well.

You both need to kind of become level with each other.

And yeah, you put in the work, you put in that work in the early years, and then it's different when they're teenagers, isn't it?

C: Yes. Yeah.
Because you've been there.

N: Yes.

C: I like your description of needing to step up . I've been leading a parenting course for people in just that situation.

And we talk about it in terms of "advanced parenting".

N: Yes.

C: Your children are demanding of you advanced parenting.

N: Yes. They require a really high level, which is often seen as a lower level of parenting, including by parents themselves, because the flexibility that's required, they think means they're doing it wrong.

C: Yes. Yeah.

You talk about the models of parenting that are recognized or have been by sort of professionals, the authoritarian. "So you're going to be in charge and you're going to very, very, very strict."

And then authoritative parenting, which is, "well, I'm going to be strict, but I will listen to you before I tell you what I need."

N: Warm and controlling. That's how the researchers put it.

Warmth combined with control.

C: Yes.

N: And then you've got permissive, which is just warmth, no control.

And that's seen as essentially giving up the ghost really. That's kind of not bothering parenting. That's the way it gets portrayed.

C: Yes. And actually, it's not as simple as that.

The core thing here is our relationship and our collaboration together.

That's the thing that we're working on.

N: Much more nuanced really.

C: It is really nuanced.

Really interestingly, the relationship-based parenting, it's not on the list.

So if you're having trouble and you get sent people to help you from social services or early helps or whoever, often what we're doing, they don't have it in their vocabulary, which I thought was really interesting, particularly given how long we've known about it.

N: I know, well, this research came from America in the 1950s.

And it's been kind of universalized as these are the forms of parenting.

But yes, Diane Baumrind, who was the kind of lead researcher on all this research, she really saw parenting as just varying along these two dimensions, warmth and control, or she calls it demandingness.

And but she basically saw that a combination of the two was the best.

I mean, she was pro-spanking children.

So, you know, she very much was of her time.

C: "Violent, but with warmth."

N: Yes, exactly.

That is actually, yes, you're not meant to hit children, you know, in a state of rage, you're meant to hit them out of a state of love, which is actually a whole nother level of strangeness.

And what are they learning from that?

Yeah, anyway, but yes, I agree.

It's like we don't have the vocabulary for a relationship between parents and children, which are actually teachers and children as well, I think it applies to both, which isn't controlling, but isn't neglectful either.

People will always say, "Oh, so you do nothing then."

In fact, I've got a banner that Eliza Fricker made me because one of our other last illustration in our book, I think is me and her holding a banner up, which says not doing nothing.

And it's because so often, you know, you say, well, we don't punish our children, for example, and they'll say, "oh, so you do nothing."

It's like, well, no, there are actually lots of other choices in there between harsh punishment and doing nothing.

But in the eye of the beholder, it might look like doing nothing, particularly in the moment, I think it's getting comes back to that kind of good parenting ideal.

If your child does something, then the good parenting approach is a stern telling off or punishment or, you know, we are leaving right now kind of thing.

And if you do something different, I mean, people are very worried about being seen as permissive.

I think I don't know if this is still the case.

But certainly when I was in parenting Facebook groups when my children were younger, people would endlessly say, is this permissive parenting?

Am I being permissive?

It's like everybody has kind of learned this idea that permissiveness is the worst thing to be.

But yet we don't have the language for this other way of being where we're saying, "actually, I'm right there with my child, I'm really involved with everything, but I accept that I can't control them."

Ultimately, I don't get to say what this other person does.

And again, the other thing that people always say is, "Oh, so you mean you let them run across the road?"

And I was like, "No, anyone, if I'm with anyone who tries to run across the road, adult child, dog, no matter what, I'm gonna stop them."

It's not controlling parenting, it's just basic road safety.

And if you have a small child who's likely to run across the road, you're going to stop them.

Of course you are.

And that's something different.

C: Yes, yeah, absolutely.

Takes a lot more creativity, this kind of parenting, doesn't it?

N: Flexibility.

C: Yeah.

And thinking on your feet and working out, okay, if we're in this situation, What could I do next?

N: Yes, because there's no night script, is there?

It's like, you know, often with a more controlling role of parenting, there's actually a script, follow the script, say this, hold your boundary, stick with it.

And suddenly you're like, actually, if that doesn't apply, what do I do now?

C: I'm thinking of a day when I'd ended up with one child upstairs leaning out of a window, throwing things at the other child who was attempting to throw stones back at them.

N: Yeah.

C: And this all sounds really dangerous, doesn't it?

But we live not far from a canal and both of my kids have been really good at skimming stones.

And it was bits of ornamental slate that were kind of being held.

N: Okay, yeah.

C: I just had this moment of inspiration.

I said, "you're wasting these skimming stones."

N: Brilliant. Yeah.

C: Let's take a handful of these. Let's skim them on the canal.

N: Yeah. And did it work?

C: Absolutely. Yes.

N: Oh, brilliant. Yeah.

C: Yes.

Yeah, it did.

But I mean, that is not in the handbook.

N: No, no. And it's very specific to your situation.

And also, born of a really deep knowledge of your children and what they love and what works for them, which is I think the bit that you can never really get from a book.

And no parenting technique will ever have that kind of intuitive knowledge of your child that you get from being with them 24/7.

C: Yeah.

You talk quite a lot in your book about the difference between invisible and visible reaction.

N: Yes.

So basically, a lot of parenting focuses on what I've called visible reactions, which is basically behaviour, what the child actually does, what you see.

But visible reactions are always driven by an invisible reaction.

So something happens, the child or the adult, anybody has an invisible, which is an internal reaction, that could be a thought, a feeling, a body sensation.

And then what you see is the expression of that invisible reaction.

So then, often what parents are told to do is they're told they need to stop that visible reaction.

So maybe the child's behaviour is that they're chucking things out the window, perhaps it's because they're bored and frustrated.

And they've, you know, ready to get out and do something.

And parent comes along, and if their response is something that actually exacerbates the invisible reaction, then they're going to get more, not less, of the visible reaction.

For example, maybe they're bored, frustrated, maybe they're feeling disconnected with you because you're busy with the other child.

And you say, "Stop throwing stones out the window."

They feel even more disconnected with you, so they're going to chuck more stones out the window.

So you're like, "What's going on here?"

So then you shut the window, then you're breaking the window, and everything's going up and up and up.

Because the invisible reaction isn't being addressed.

And I think by going in there and saying, "Well, you're wasting these stones, let's go out."

You've immediately connected with the child, you've shown them that you get where they're coming from.

You have also provided some stimulation.

So we don't know exactly what the invisible reaction problem was there, but you've solved it probably by coming up with another solution.

And so off we go, and we can skim stones on the canal now, and we can get rid of that frustration or anger or whatever it was, and we can feel more connected to the parent.

I call this the pressure paradox, which is essentially when the more pressure they put on the child to stop behaving a certain way, the more they get the behaviour that they don't want.

And it's because they're pushing that invisible reaction effectively, rather than actually dealing with the reason why the child's behaving this way.

C: Yeah, yeah.

And the naughty step is an absolute classic example of that, isn't it?

N: Oh gosh.

C: Very often there is likely to be some level of distress or some sense of disconnection.

N: Yeah, there's going to be some reason why children behave.

Behaviour doesn't just happen.

It's not just something that happens in a vacuum.

Yeah, so you put them on the naughty step until they stop doing their behaviour, but you haven't solved the reason why they were doing it in the first place at all.

C: And the chances of them actually sitting on the naughty step.

N: Well who are these children?

Well, I mean, even in the TV programmes, if you watch it, you can see they spent hours putting children back on that naughty step.

So it's effectively a battle of wills that you've set up at that point.

It's who is going to break first.

And I always used to think to myself, you know, I as the parent, I've got other children to manage, I've got to cook for everybody, I've got to make sure we've got food, I've got to, you know, there's all sorts of things I've got to do.

The child doesn't have any of those issues or responsibilities.

They can focus all their energy into I am not going to stay on this naughty step.

Whereas I've got all this stuff going on.

And you just like you, your example with the broken glass, you've also got another child going, "Mummy, you said that you'd come and play with me. Why are you spending all your time doing this, putting them back on the naughty step?"

You know, that's not factored in.

And so, of course, this assumption that the child will break effectively before the parent, I just think it makes no sense in any world that I live in, of course, the child is going to be more persistent and consistent.

And yeah, why wouldn't they be really?

C: I worry about if you've got a child who isn't complying quickly.

And I can see how if you've got a child who is complying quickly, at least on the surface, it looks like this works.

What has to happen within that child in order for them to get to the point of complying?

N: and giving in.

C: So what is the invisible stuff that's going on?

N: Yes. And I mean, some people will be explicit so that you need to break their will, won't they? Or you need to even break their spirit in some cases, which is horrible.

But yes, I agree what is going on?

And what's that child learning?

And if you think about it, they're learning all sorts of things like I have to hide how I feel, it's not okay for me to be angry.

There's learning all sorts of stuff about hiding their emotions and hiding their expression, because the way that young children in particular express their emotions is through their behavior.

You can see it, you see toddlers, it's all out there.

You know, as adults, we've often learned to hide it in but in toddlers and younger children, the emotions and the behavior are very much the same thing.

And so you're telling them these aren't acceptable.

You can't behave like this, which I think isn't necessarily a great long term thing for life.

C: No, not at all. Not at all.

The other thing that we sort of touched on is the relationships that we have with people outside of and the kind of the culture that particularly if you're not sure that the kind of alternative parenting that you're trying, if this is the right thing, you just know that the other stuff isn't because it flipping isn't working.

And that's making life more miserable.

N: Yeah

C: it's really hard to do that in public.

N: Oh, it's really tough. Yeah, yeah.

It's particularly tough because we tend to evaluate parents on the behavior of their children.

So we look at the behavior of the children and we say that's a good parent or that's a bad parent basically.

And parents do that as well.

If their children are well behaved, they assume that they're doing a good job.

If their children aren't well behaved, they assume they're not doing a good job.

And the problem with that is that the people whose children are having the hardest time get the most judgment.

And that means the parents that are having the hardest time get the most judgment.

The parents for whom it's all going swimmingly and whose children are quite compliant get the least judgment.

And it's all the wrong way round.

I think because I think that the parents who have the children who find life hard and who find the world difficult, they really have to level up.

They have to do a superior level of parenting.

And yet we see that as inferior.

And parents often see it as inferior.

So they'll say things like, "Oh, I just give in."

And I'm like, "That's flexibility.

You've just been really flexible."

And they'll say, "Oh, I just had enough and I just gave in."

And I think we're really bad as parents at valuing responsiveness, creativity, flexibility, getting alongside our children.

We tend to overvalue the controlling.

We think we should be able to get our children to do what we want them to do, basically.

But yes, the judgment of other people, it's parenting in public.

I've got a whole thing about parenting in public, haven't I, in the book?

It's just how much harder it is to do it in public.

Something that another mother said to me, actually, when my children were small, which I found really helpful, was just to focus on what is the most important relationship in this room.

And pretty well always, it's going to be your relationship with a child.

And I sometimes say to parents, if you're having trouble at school, for example, you are hoping that your relationship with your child is going to be there way beyond the point when all of these school people are memories.

You will not be worried about what the headteacher thinks in 15, 20 years time.

But it will still matter what your child felt about it.

And so if you can kind of get that almost tunnel vision to, okay, right now, me and the child is what matters.

What decision can I make here that's going to make things better in that situation, rather than what does the checkout woman think I should be doing?

Or what does the other parent at the school gate think I should be doing?

I find that can be quite freeing, but really hard to do.

Not too easy.

C: No, but it's really, really helpful.

I read that thing about you know, which is the most important relationship.

And it's not the person who's tutting at you.

N: No.

Often you don't even know who they are.

That's the thing.

You might not even know their name.

And yet the weight of what they're saying and thinking about you is so feels so strong, doesn't it?

C: Yes, I remember being in a playground when one of my children's read on the slide fairly dramatically.

N: Oh, yeah.

C: And I understand the angst of the other parents, particularly given that there was a queue of kids and they all just went down the slide after this had occurred.

N: Oh, yes. Okay.

C: So you're sort of like surrounded by this cabal of parents who felt wet,

N: wet children.

C: I mean, the level of the level of embarrassment and shame was really quite significant.

N: Yes.

C: But there's nothing I could do about it.

And there's that bit of you that thinks, do these people need to see me go and have words?

N: Yes, they do. That's what they're looking for. Yeah.

Yeah, it was such a vivid image. I really like it.

You know, the other great coping strategy that I found when my children were smaller was exactly really well illustrated by your example there, which is to say to myself, this is going to be a great story in a few years time.

C: Yeah.

N: Right now. It's utter misery.

But in a few years time, I'll be able to laugh at it.

And they might be able to laugh about it as well.

I will all it will be a good story.

C: And it's a future anecdote.

N: Yes, yes, exactly.

C: I'm living through an anecdote.

N: Exactly.

Let's just take a step back here and realize that actually, this is quite funny.

It just right now feels awful and awfully shaming.

Yeah.

C: Yes.

But having that in mind, that mantra of the most important relationship here is the relationship with my child.

N: Yeah

C: I think is really I think that's a really helpful hint.

And actually, reading about alternative ways of parenting can be really helpful.

And that's where things like your book, I think are just such a gift.

Because once you know what that kind of structure is, what are the principles that you're basing this on, it becomes much, much easier to make those decisions and feel comfortable in your own skin about making them.

N: Yes

C: Very often what you're doing is that you are following your intuition.

We have deep knowledge, don't we about our kids?

N: Yeah

C: Quite often society is telling us to ignore.

N: Yes, we feel like we're winging it, don't we?

That's it.

But actually, we're basing it on our knowledge of our children.

C: So if you come back to I've got a relationship with my son with my daughter.

And from that, I know.

So I can sense the distress, I can sense that taking this child back to the naughty step, however much somebody might be telling me this is what I should do.

Inside somewhere in my gut, there is something saying, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, this isn't comfortable."

N: Yes. Learning to listen to yourself again.

Learning to listen to your own intuition.

And you know, I was thinking that one of the things that I think is hardest about it, because we have this thing of judging whether a parenting technique is successful by the child's behaviour, that a lot of relational techniques don't result in compliance, for sure.

They don't result in all those kind of good parenting outcomes.

So I think the really hard bit about it is like, what does 'works' mean in this context?

What do we when we say is it working?

What do we really mean?

Because this kind of parenting doesn't result in compliant children, because that isn't actually the aim.

And I think that's an important thing that's difficult to get your head around.

Basically, it's more about mutual respect between child and parent, but also, a lot of the consequences of parenting in this way, you don't actually see until they're quite a lot older.

So I don't know if you had that experience.

But certainly among people who I knew parent this way, they get to a bit older, like 12 or 13.

And they'd say things and you'd be like, oh, my goodness, that's what I've been saying for the last 10 years.

They were listening.

C: Yeah, interesting.

I've recorded a conversation with Sarah Fisher, who talks about NVR, nonviolent resistance.

But one of the key things in that is that you make decisions about what is important to us.

And I think that's really helpful in terms of thinking about, well, what are the outcomes that we're after?

So I still have, I'm in my 16 and 18 year now.

And there are still things that they are not doing.

But those are things which we decided, it's not a priority, it's not the hill we need to die on.

There are other things that they are able to do, which are really, really quite remarkable in terms of levels of empathy for other people.

I got remarried just over a year ago, which was really lovely.

But one of my sons took my future husband aside about three months before we got married, and explained to him that he might find it quite difficult because he struggles with change and new things in his life, explained that he might find it really hard, that there might be a couple of weeks when his behaviour was going to be really tricky, but that he likes Stephen and he's pleased that he's marrying me.

And so he just wanted him to know that.

So that I mean,

N: that's amazing.

Wow, most adults couldn't do that.

C: So he might not be regularly brushing his teeth.

But if you need somebody to understand what's going on for you emotionally and be able to express that, that is pretty decent.

N: That is just incredible.

Yeah, those moments.

That's when you see, wow, that's what I was working towards.

C: Absolutely.

Although I might have had a bit of a bad day and been quite grumpy.

I'll say to one of my kids, I'm really sorry, I've been grumpy today and my youngest in particular, oh, don't worry about it. I know exactly what that's like. I know how it feels. I understand.

N: You're like, that's what I've said.

C: Yeah.

What a beautiful, beautiful interaction to have.

So what I have found is that the level of peace and harmony in our home is lovely.

So no, it doesn't look like everything is going well.

But there is a sense of deep affection and love for one another, which flows through everything.

And my oldest bless his heart.

When I was reading your book, he wanted to know what it was.

He said, "You don't need to read parenting books. You're really good at this. Look how well you've done with us."

Bless you.

I don't think I have got to the point where there is nothing to learn. Absolutely not.

But that's not something which going back to the whole thing about teenagers, that's not on the kind of stereotypical list of how your teenager talks to you.

N: No, not at all.

But I think it is very hard to hold on to the faith when perhaps they're six or seven and throwing things out the window or smashing glasses or that any of this is going to have an impact, isn't it?

C: I think there's been many, many years when I've just felt like I've kind of I'm just closing my eyes and keeping going and clinging on and trusting.

N: Yes, I call it being in the parenting trenches.

I think those early years where you are just like just one foot above the other if we're doing well, if everybody gets to the end of the day, nobody has had a major accident.

Everybody's eaten.

And the floor is more or less free of accident. I won't go through all the kind of accidents that there might be.

But yes, you know, you have to you just have this is a time to get through really.

I think those early years.

C: Yeah.

So some wisdom around how you manage that and knowing that you're not on your own and that this is an experience which lots of people have, even if it doesn't always feel like it.

And you're in it for the long game.

N: Totally.

C: Because I'm pretty sure that although encouraging my children to bathe, I haven't done a lot of that only when it's been absolutely desperate because it wasn't a priority.

But the thing that I've held in my mind is when they are in their 20s, they are not still going to be this stinky because they will grow up.

N: Yes, exactly. They will grow up.

That's a really good mantra as well.

Often parents are very concerned about children sleeping in their bed, younger children. And I often say to them, you know, they will at one point want their own bed. And that will probably be led by them.

And it might be a lot later that you think it should be and that the culture tells you it should be and society tells you it should be.

But it will happen.

And we've kind of lost that faith, I think, as a society that children grow up.

It's like we think that we have to make them do it. It's like with babies, where there's this emphasis on they've got to sleep independently, they've got to learn to soothe themselves.

You know, those are things which babies aren't developmentally capable of doing.

It's like we're always pushing.

In fact, I remember my me and my husband used to joke that about this kind of narrative would say, you know, "You don't want to be using nappies, they're gonna get the idea that we're nappies for the rest of their life!"

Where is this idea that we have to kind of force them to develop, we have to make them grow up.

And actually, it works much better if you're able to be alongside them at the stage they're at right now deal with the needs they have right now, even if those needs don't chronologically fit with whatever age they are - what years they are, and help them grow and help them develop, because that's going to be much less painful for everybody, basically.

C: So, how did you start on this journey? What drew you into children and parenting?

N: So, I have a doctorate in clinical psychology.

But before I did that, I did a PhD in developmental psychology, which focused specifically on autism.

So, I had quite a lot of background in developmental psychology before I did clinical psychology.

And then a few years after I finished my clinical psychology training, I had my own children.

So, all of those things came together in maybe a 10-year period.

And when I had my own children, I started to think about what I knew as a developmental psychologist, and yet what I was being told I should do to my children.

And specifically, actually, there was a lot about school and how schools worked.

And I was just like, this doesn't match.

How does this come together with what I know about how children develop and how children learn, and yet what I'm being told to do and what everybody's sort of thinking you should do is so different.

So, there was a kind of clash, I think, between the different parts of me.

And then I had this experience as a parent where there are lots of things that one can't say as a parent.

There are things which people do share and things that they don't share, and how much shame there is around parenting, particularly if you've got a child who doesn't comply to conventional techniques.

But certainly when my children were young, there was a lot of posting on Facebook.

I seem to be surrounded with people posting their children getting swimming certificates and just everything was achievement and how well their children were achieving and how it feels to be a parent when your child isn't doing those things.

And why our society kind of values particular ways of children being and particular ways of parents being, and doesn't talk enough about the reality for so many parents and so many children.

So, I think it kind of came from that.

And as I said, it really came from this amazing job I have where I get to hear about what life is really like for people in a way that I think lots of people don't get.

Lots of people would say to me like, "Oh, everybody I know seems fine with it."

And I'll be like, "I bet they're not fine. They're just not telling you that they're not."

And there was that kind of always that level of what people present to the world and what they really think.

And those two things are almost always really different.

And yet we kind of assume, one of the phrases I use sometimes is we always compare our own insides with everybody else's outsides.

So, we know how difficult it is inside us.

And then we see how everybody's outside looks like they're all managing fine.

And we assume that that's real.

And actually, it's just that we can't see their insides.

We don't know how difficult things might be for them.

C: Yeah, so, creating safe spaces for people to be able to be honest about that is so valuable because I think one of the really hardest things is when you don't have a safe space to have that conversation.

N: Yeah.

And people are often terrified, I think, to talk to professionals about how difficult things are because they think they'll get, as you said, the kind of standard advice of you need to be firmer or they think that they might be threatened with social services.

People are really anxious about letting on how hard things are.

And also there's just massive levels of shame.

C: You don't know whether this thing would create a reaction that's going to cause shame in you or not. But your guess is that it probably will. And sometimes you'll horrifically prove right.

I've been through some of those situations as well.

N: Yeah. No, it's just luck of the draw really, isn't it?

How the person reacts and you don't know.

C: So that space where it's all right to just be you, and be honest about what's going on, I think are really, really helpful.

And just hearing somebody else say it or reading somebody else write it is really useful, I think.

N: And a lot of, I think, what I see myself as doing is partly kind of shining a light on things but also giving permission to parents to follow their intuition about what works here and what doesn't work here for their child and saying, "You cannot just do that, but you can value it as well." And saying, "This is me being flexible."

That's a lot of what makes this kind of parenting so hard.

It's hard in itself, but then there's your perception that other people will be critical of what you're doing and your own criticism of what you're doing.

Like, "If I was doing this differently, it wouldn't be so hard."

And I think that's really destructive for lots of parents.

C: Yeah.

One of your descriptions in terms of your own journey was that sense that different parts of you were hearing different things.

And I think that's often the case.

N: Yes.

C: As a Christian, often doing spiritual direction and things with people of faith, that can be one of those areas where there is a bit of disconnect between what you might be reading, what you might be hearing in yourself, in your own intuition, and what you're beginning to learn if you're lucky enough to come across some really decent material or some decent training or whatever, which is about how do you parent relationally, however that might be labeled, and what you think everybody else is going to think and how you view yourself.

And sometimes for some people, their image of God, their image of faith also kind of gives you this, "Well, everything must be firm," which I don't think is the case.

I don't think that's what God is like.

But a lot of people do have that image.

N: Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

There's lots to unpack, isn't there?

I think one of the things people often say when they become parents is it brings up so much stuff for them, which they haven't known was there.

But also at that point, you have no time to think about any of it because you're parenting.

From the moment you bring the baby home from the hospital or you adopt, at the moment you've got the child in the house, there is not much space to think or reflect on stuff because you are basically going from thing to thing to thing to thing.

It's completely relentless.

C: You have to be quite good at doing it on the fly, I think.

N: Yes, you do.

Yeah.

C: Or just finding a different way of framing it because actually although you're saying there's no time to reflect, all of that kind of cogitating of, "Well, I'm doing this wrong and everybody thinks I should be firmer," that is reflection.

N: It's like a self-critical voice.

There's a picture that Eliza did where a mother is going about her daily routine and she's got a little gremlin on her shoulder saying, "Oh, you're doing this really badly."

If you did this better, you know, anyone else would have prepared a better dinner than that. "You mean you're giving them cereal for dinner again?"

It's like having this little voice on your shoulder undermining you all the time, isn't it?

C: I suppose what I'm thinking is that if you've got mental space for that voice, then there is mental space available.

N: And maybe this is part of what you're doing with your course and things.

It's about being selective about what other inputs you let in.

So actually that was one of the things I realized of myself was that certain inputs made me feel terrible and certain inputs made me feel better.

And I had to be really intentional about choosing which inputs I was going to listen to because otherwise you could very easily surround yourself with people who reinforce that you're doing an awful job or that you shouldn't be like this.

For me, it was a lot about leaving a lot of Facebook groups actually and thinking just not only do I not need this input, but actually I can't manage hearing about everybody else's distress right now as well as my own.

It's just too much.

And I think being quite deliberate and saying these are the things that help me, these are the things that don't help me and so I'm going to focus my energies there can be one of the things that helped with reprogramming that inner voice.

C: What you're saying about observing what is it that makes you feel better and it will be those things which align with that deep sense of knowing and intuition that we're taught not to listen to and that bring a sense of wholeness and peace and connection both with yourself and with your child.

N: Yes.

Yeah, allowing yourself to listen to those things and allowing those things just to be, I think, rather than saying I shouldn't be thinking that, shouldn't that, that isn't helpful.

C: Yes, you kind of need to befriend your gremlin and work out what he's doing there.

N: Yeah, they're going to be there.

So it's like saying thank you, thank you for trying to look after me, but there might be a different way of doing this.

C: Yeah, or which part of my theory are you representing?

Because that's often what it is, isn't it?

N: Yes, that's true.

And it's thinking about the catastrophic future, isn't it?

It's so often I think with parenting, we're not really in the here and now, we're not really thinking about this is my child right now.

It's a bit like we've talked about earlier about focusing on the relationship, what's the most important relationship in the room, but it's also I've only got this, this aged child right now.

But often parents will say, you know, but what about when they're 15?

What happens if they carry on doing this when they're 15 and the child's five?

And you're like, well, all we can do is do the best job we can with the five year old.

And when we got the 15 year old, then that's a different set of things.

But you can't always parent with this kind of older child in mind, because that often leads to a really controlling set of behaviors, I think, because you're like, well, that wouldn't be acceptable if they were 15.

No, it wouldn't be but they're not 15. They're five. And so they are developmentally in a very different place right now.

C: Yes, yeah.

I'm wondering if there's anything else that you feel it would be helpful to say that we've not already covered?

N: I think actually one thing we haven't talked about much with the book perhaps is that there's loads of Eliza's illustrations in it.

I think that's one of the things.

C: Oh, they're gorgeous.

N: That's one of the things when we were thinking about the book, we just thought we want a book that you can just really easily look through, flick through and go, oh, that's interesting.

And one of the ways to do that is lots of illustrations, lots of stories, and lots of kind of little bits in boxes.

So we've tried to make it a book for parents who don't have any time to read books, because it's just inevitable that you don't have time to sit down and read a book when you're in the parenting trenches.

So we hope that if you look through it, some of the illustrations will immediately kind of encapsulate some of the ideas and might resonate.

C: They're little cartoons.

They're all brilliant sort of little cartoons of what might be going on and they ring true immediately.

There's a parent and a child in most of them.

And so there is that sense of kind of connecting with somebody who knows what it's like.

And that kind of knowing observational humour, there's quite a lot of that.

N: Yeah, Eliza's amazing at that.

And the ones I love most actually are the ones that when she does the parent child reversal to just think about, okay, if I was in my child's position, how would I feel about this?

Because so often we expect children to put up with things that we would never put up with.

I mean, just think about the naughty step.

If somebody said to me, "I don't like your behaviour, I'm putting you on the naughty step."

I would not want to comply. I would be like, "You what?"

Why? You want me to sit on this step? Why?

If you think about it from an emotional response as an adult, it makes no sense.

And Eliza has lots of illustrations of things like a child saying to the parent, "Put down that phone, you've been on it for 30 minutes now."

Or the cat litter tray hasn't been emptied again. And I made my feelings completely clear about this. You're going on the rain cloud.

C: Yes, there's one at the dinner table where the little lad is saying, it's important to be consistent. I've told you before that I don't eat greens.

N: Exactly.

Yes, exactly.

And then I think you're just not listening.

You're just not listening to me. I told you not to cook any vegetables.

C: It's a really good reminder of looking at those illustrations is what we do, we are modelling for our kids.

And so do I want my child to treat either me or anybody else in the world this way?

Is this the kind of language and manipulation that I would like to see them do?

And if the answer is no...

N: yes, why am I doing it?

That's a really good point.

C: Yes,

N: absolutely. And I think we don't think enough about that, do we?

The kind of clear sighted child who refuses conventional parenting techniques and who requires something better, they're often also really good at using your techniques back on you.

So, you know, the moment you use something like I'm counting to three, then you regret it because your child is counting to three on you for the next six months.

And you're like, hang on a minute, this wasn't meant to be that way round. It was meant to be the other way round.

Where did you learn that?

C: from you!

N: Exactly.

You know exactly where they learnt it.

There are some children who haven't read the parenting books, and it's the same, they haven't got the memo that their job is to do what they're told, well, your job is to tell them what to do.

They think it should be a different way round.

And, you know, they're very clear sighted.

I think they see through a lot of the structures that the rest of us just take for granted.

C: Yes, yes, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Anything else?

N: I think we've done a good tour of the book.

C: And you've also written books around schools and education.

Yeah, a couple of books about self-directed education, which is really about children who aren't going to school and how they can learn.

And we have another book coming out in December, which is The Teenager's Guide to Burnout, which is a self-help book for teenagers about recovering from burnout.

And that's also illustrated by Eliza.

And it's a kind of short book, particularly for teenagers who have been burnt out by their experiences at school.

C: A lot of the stuff that we've been talking about in terms of kind of old fashioned, traditional parenting really holds an education.

That's one of the areas that we often get up against it.

And I know you've written some books around that as well.

N: Yes, definitely. Yes, it's one of those things parents often say, it's like, we're doing things differently now but school isn't.

And how do we manage that?

And it is really difficult, I think.

C: Yes. Yeah.

So if people wanted to kind of connect with the stuff that you are doing, how would they do that?

N: So my website is NaomiFisher.co.uk.

And that is the kind of place to go to find out all the different stuff that's going on.

I have a Facebook page. I'm Dr Naomi Fisher on Facebook.

And I also have a substack newsletter, which is called "Think Again".

That's free.

They're all free.

And you sign up to the, if you sign up to the substack, you get just a short post from me every Monday into your inbox.

So that's good for people who maybe don't like social media, don't want to be on Facebook.

But yeah, there's lots of different ways to get be connected.

C: Excellent.

Thank you, Naomi.

That's been absolutely brilliant.

N: It's been lovely to talk to you.

[MUSIC]
Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Loved Called Gifted podcast.

If you'd like to get in touch, you can email lovedcalledgifted@gmail.com.

You can find a transcript of this podcast at lovedcalledgifted.com.

And that's also the place to go if you're interested in the Loved Called Gifted course, or if you'd like to find out about spiritual direction or coaching.

Thank you for listening.

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