Surviving a History of Being Needed
We decided to take a ju-jitsu class, the four of us. Kris and I are Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) enthusiasts, and our daughters, Marley and Sage-Niambi, weren’t opposed to learning some basic self-protection skills. As luck would have it, there was a boxing/MMA gym walking distance from our new place. Proximity and pricing confirmed—a four-block walk and a free trial week, aayyeee!—we set out to get our basic self-defense on.
The first thing we learned was a series of movements (our instructor called them frames) designed to flip an aggressor onto their back. Working in pairs, one person laid perpendicular to their opponent, chests crossing, body weight pressing against the person with their back on the floor. Then, following our instructor’s directions, we learned to switch the positions so that the person on top became the person on the bottom, on their back. I was mostly paired with Marley (she’s 15) because we’re just about the same size. As Marley and I navigated our bodies’ protests amid the unfamiliar movements, I began to realize that the experience was going to be emotional as much as it was physical for me. It was maybe one of the first times my firstborn and I had been in a position to feel each other’s physical strength.
Life went from me carrying her in my belly, to me carrying her in my arms, then on my hips, then rarely ever, unless she was crying, to now, where I could only carry her if fear-induced adrenaline was involved.
That day, in jiu-jitsu class, managing each other’s whole bodies with the intention to literally topple each other showed me what her strength felt like in this particular way. It brought home how much she had grown, how much time had passed, and how much of her own independent person she had become.
Then our instructor partnered me with Sage-Niambi (she’s 13), mi washbelly as we lovingly call them back home (Jamaican patois slang for “final baby”). She was flipping me, and I was flipping her. I watched her face as I pushed my body weight against hers while we moved through the series of frames. I saw a grownish version of the same face I used to look down at while she was nursing, or while she was just playing with her toes in my lap.
That trial week taught me plenty, most of which had nothing to do with Mixed Martial Arts. The physicality of the experience offered a set of insights I’d never processed before. I began to pay attention to the reality of being physically similar to both my daughters, which magnified the reality of how little they needed me for certain things.
When Marley and Sage were babies, both their bodies and mine were designed to need each other. Their hunger determined my milk production, and I didn’t even have to be physically near them to be in sync with their bodies’ needs. They created a schedule for my body to produce and express milk, so much so that if they weren’t near me, I still had to express that milk, because their bodies and mine had agreed on that. I could hear their cries and, most times, distinguish between a hunger cry, a change-my-diaper cry, or a frustration cry.
As they transitioned into toddlerhood, I carried each of my daughters on my hip while I moved about my life. They’d wiggle and resist when they were ready to be on the floor or ground. Eventually they used words I could understand, and our physical cues became less necessary because our verbal language felt somehow more certain. Words were formed to convey needs and preferences, and it was clear that Kris’s and my jobs as their parents was to help them feel safe enough to express their needs, and respected enough for their needs to always be considered, especially by people who said they loved them.
Turns out that loving my daughters wasn’t always enough to bring clarity about their needs. I intuited much of their needs when they were babies, and I anticipated their needs when they became mobile. Then, as they got to and through the toddler years, I used a mix of anticipating their needs and just straight up asking them to tell me what they felt they needed.
I don’t like lotion, please don’t put that on me.
Can you do my hair like this?
Can we make a playdate with Makaylah?
I’m not cold, I’m gonna take my coat off.
My foot hurts. Will you look at it?
Except…those all sound like wants, not needs, right? And there’s a huge difference between wanting something (like a playdate) and needing something (like sustenance, rest, or education), right?
I certainly felt that way when my girls were wee ones, and to me, it wasn’t even logical to consider that my children might know what they actually needed. They’re children, after all, and that’s why children need adults, right? My thinking was that if Kris and I left if it up to them,…we wouldn’t. Because that sounds like top-class negligence, yeh?
Fast forward to now, when both girls are teenagers and I find myself in a completely different space with the idea of wants versus needs. Why? Because I realize I’m surviving a history of being needed, and I sometimes still do things with the idea that I, not Marley or Sage-Niambi, know what they need; they only know what they want. Turns out that’s dangerous and toxic, because it puts my ideas of who they are over their own assertions about who they are becoming, or how they identify right now.
Also, putting my ideas above my daughters’ assertions isn’t something that was once okay when they were little, but became not okay because they are teenagers. It was never okay for Kris and me, we just hadn’t thought it through. We were, like many parents, just parenting based on what we’d seen, experienced, and normalized. We conflated responsible parenting with control and other unhealthy relationship practices, and so we felt compelled, and well within our responsibilities, to manage our children by controlling how they spent their time, what they learned, and how obedient they were to adults.
All of that because we had particular ideas around what children need, and most of that was rooted in the idea of a good education. But now, as I see myself less and less as merely a parent, and more and more as a life partner, my actions veer away from trying to remain relevant in my children’s lives, and instead, trying to be more present in their lives and in my own. Doing this is what helped bring me to clarity around the dangers of this history of being needed. The history itself is not the issue. What is problematic is how—if we are not deliberate about our deschooling efforts—we default to pushing children toward performing for us instead of authentically exploring and expressing themselves and their environments. I don’t have answers here, just my own clarity, a couple of personal definitions, and a ton of observations that shore up our unschooling practice. May these nudge you toward questioning things, gaining clarity, and being a more positive and present partner to the children you love.
2 PERSONAL DEFINITIONS
Unschooling – A child-trusting, anti-oppressive, liberatory, love-centered approach to parenting and caregiving. A way of life based on freedom, respect, and autonomy. A pivot away from the punishment-and-reward or shame-based system we’re used to, toward agile, emergent, trust and exploration-based relationships that allow for learners to create organic structure, to solve problems, and to expand their knowledge and networks.
Deschooling – The lifelong process of transitioning from urgent disruption to a slow and steady practice of facing, naming, and shedding our old normal. The process of shedding the programming and habits that evolved from other people’s agency over your time, body, thoughts, or actions.
9 SELECT OBSERVATIONS
Today, I observe Marley and Sage-Niambi still navigating many frames so as to not get flipped by my, Kris’s, or society’s ideas of what is best for them. I also see how my own lack of space to practice safe decision-making as a young person affects me now in adulthood as a practice emotional wellness.
Today, I observe myself feeling no anxiety when Marley and Sage-Niambi spend hours on their computers or phones because I don’t need to understand what they’re doing in order for what they’re doing to be relevant, or good for them, or valid.
Today, I am rooted in the reality that to raise free people is to recognize how much of my perspective on parenting, childhood, and learning are based on a fear of who they might grow up to be in society if I don’t give them the right things. And to recognize why that’s not actually a healthy fear, but more a feeling of lack of control and lack of power that I can, and should, examine, critique, and ultimately, stop believing.
Today, I am still learning how to celebrate my daughters’ ways of being in their own bodies, making their own choices, and learning to trust the adults who, for years, did not trust them.
Today, I feel joy and usefulness when I can talk with a parent in my community about accepting their own oppression (in their past and for some, in their now) as part of the work toward liberation of children in particular.
Today, I observe the similarities between my actions and the methods inside systemic oppression when I fear that something (or someone) is out of (my) control.
Today, I am learning how to recognize when I am being related to, based on what someone thinks I need, should need, or what they might need from me. And I am slowly learning how to take a human-centered approach how people treat me, instead of what I learned in school and in corporate America.
Today, I cannot imagine a life for Marley and Sage-Niambi that does not include their consideration and consent. Because of that, I choose to practice a way of living together that does not put me or Kris as the only ones whose needs are listened to and built into the choices we make as a family.
Today, I see the continued benefits of becoming unschoolers, one of which is that it gave me the space to develop a rhythm with each of my daughters. Kris and I are learning and practicing what it means for our daughters to own themselves, but still be nurtured by us. Part of how I practice that is by freeing myself from the idea that I should define and design what my daughters need, and that I (and school) should be at the center of those needs.
My girls will always still need me, just as I, in my forties, still need my mama to help me navigate some aspect of my adult life. And actually, I don’t need my mama, I want her in my life. And that is what I hope for with my children, and yours. If we are doing the work to release the focus on being needed, or being validated by systems that tell us how to parent, then I hope our children choose to have us in their lives, mainly because their needs are met, and we fit into the space of what they want. That feels good. That feels like a goal worth having.
***
Akilah S. Richards