It's your responsibility to brainwash your kids.
Solid foundations. Encouraging free thinking, self-determination and agency.
If you don’t brainwash your kid, someone or something else will and I promise you they won’t have your kids best interests at heart.
We are all brainwashed to some degree by our upbringing. The unique conditions, environment and parenting or lack thereof we were exposed to are the dish washing liquid our brains were bathed in.
I’ve been a mum for three years and a stepmom for nine. In those years like every prowling mumma lion watching for threats on her babies, I’ve seen some interesting influences try to infiltrate my kids lives. Myself included.
Some malevolent, some benevolent. Some obvious, some sneaky.
When you’re young, you’re more vulnerable. You lack experience in seeing these visible and invisible forces trying to shape you for their own agenda. And your brain is super plastic and hungry to soak everything and anything up.
So as a parent we have the responsibility to be old and ‘wise’ and brainwash our kids first. Brainwash them with as much good stuff as possible.
What do i mean by brainwashing?
Isolate them from the world? Control every input? Create fear and uncertainty associated with everything and everyone outside the home to manipulate their emotions to train blind obedience to our authority? Have them recite a pledge each morning to back up that blind acceptance and will-bending faith?
No.
Brainwashing here refers to psychological techniques that shape the mind.
Not control it.
Encouraging foundations and frameworks that set them up to be free thinkers. To question everything including themselves. To value reason and objectivity making them difficult to coerce for others gains, including ours.
Ultimately we want to brainwash them to develop their own inner authority.
Sounds like chaos, like the trailer to gremlins. Maybe. Which is why we need to develop that inner authority with good inputs leading to good outputs and good decision-making.
So what do we want to brainwash them with?
What foundations are we trying to lay?
What frameworks are we helping them build?
What brick and mortar inputs should we focus on?
And are there cons to a good brainwashing?
FOUNDATIONS-
There are universal physical, social and emotional foundations parents are encouraged to lay.
Healthy relationships
Physical activity
Community
Safe home
Education
Nutrition
Sleep
Play
The basics done well can never disputed. But how do you determine how to do them well?
FRAMEWORKS-
These are the structures and decision-making tools built upon the foundations. Problem solving strategies and mental models to help find order from chaos and bring clarity to thinking processes.
This is where sometimes we drop the ball as parents. Mental frameworks and problem solving was not something my parents encouraged for me, nor do they encourage it now for my kids.
Their script is ‘I’m the adult and I tell you what to do, to protect you.’ Literally the words spoken to my three year old two days ago by my Mum.
Well intentioned but doesn’t support free thinking, questioning or problem-solving and has the underlying value for authoritarianism. A hangover from strict religious upbringings.
The frameworks you as a parent will focus on will be unique to your values. The important point here is to consider frameworks that encourage accountability and free thinking in your kid. We want to encourage self-determination and agency.
Currently in our home we are focusing on the following mental frameworks.
Questioning of everything. Parents, teachers, friends, books and self. Search for reason, objectivity and understanding.
The difference between comfort and happiness.
The difference between feelings and behaviour.
Sustaining focus and flow states.
Feelings aren’t facts.
BRICK AND MORTAR inputs-
These are the inputs that build, strengthen and reinforce the foundations and the frameworks.
Environment (people, place, things)
Neuro Linguistic Programming
Role modelling
Puppets (3-8y)
Books
Environment-
We soak up our environment like sponges.
We are a product of our environment. If we don’t actively curate it, it will curate us by default. Our environment affects the expression of our values, internal dialogue, our behaviour even our genes if you take an epigenetic approach.
5 chimp theory. You can predict the mood and behaviour of one chimp by observing which five chimps they hang out with. People are the same. Kids have their primary caregivers and then..?
Who are they being exposed to?
What do their top 5 people role model?
What are you role modelling?
Neuro Linguistic Programming-
What language is being used to shape values and mindset? Growing up i developed a scarcity mindset, completely invisible to me until a few years ago. This was not because we lived in an old run down cottage or sewed our own clothes but because of the excessive use at home of terms like ‘poor’, ‘no money’ and ‘can’t afford’.
Inappropriate use of ‘cant’ can shrink a kids world. Narrowing their vision and trust in themselves by putting ‘fixed’ mindset lenses over their eyes.
How do we talk to our kids? And how do we talk to ourselves? Our voice will become their inner voice. What internal dialogue are we writing for them?
Role modelling-
We are their biggest role model. The biggest constant in their environment. We rub off on them. They will observe us until we die. What life example do we want them to learn off?
Puppets (3-8years)-
This is a funny one we stumbled upon and are enjoying. There’s a lot of literature to back it up. Puppets can be almost anything. A humble sock, a teddy or doll, even a smiley face drawn on a finger.
Puppets give the kid a chance to interact, express themselves, solve conflict, learn and discuss new theory and concepts without it coming from mum or dad. Even though it is Mum and Dad talking. Its weird, but it works.
If it requires talking for a bit longer than their attention span usually hold up, a puppet is a fab teaching aid and valid way to deliver high quality inputs.
Books-
Choose them wisely. Put them everywhere. Read them every day, multiple times a day. We are loving ‘Salt in his shoes’ this week. Written by Michael Jordans mum. The message it’s helping brainwash into our three year old is ‘effort and practice beats mere talent’.
CONS TO BRAINWASHING-
We want to brainwash our kids into being self-determined free-thinkers who question everything and have high agency. We want to actively consider the environment we put them in and the inputs we encourage.
How could it go wrong?
Our wants won’t always be their needs. What we determine to be ‘good’ foundations, frameworks and inputs might turn out not to be.
We’re not god. We’re disastrously human. And as much as we try to postulate the long-term effects and interaction of the multiple variables we fiddle with all in good intention…we really can’t know the outcome of our experiments in alchemy.
I’m sure my parents did what they thought best, yet i’m still a little fucked up. Aren’t we all? Indeed the fuckedupedness from my childhood serves as the fodder for changing the script of how i raise my kids. I’m sure it will be the same when they have their kids and so on.
We do our best and we do it with a solid underlying reason we believe in. The reason is it will support our kid to be the best version of themselves. To expand on this, we are supporting our kid to support themselves to be the best version of themselves. That’s what i hope to do.
There is one more con worth mentioning and this is one every child/parent relationship experiences in some degree. The trap of a child behaving a certain way to ‘please’ their parent. All kids learn to do this. If you behave well you get my love and praise, if you behave poorly you have less of these or they are withdrawn.
As parents the challenge for us is how do we grow good humans who are authentic to themselves. Instead of behaving and building a life in search for our of approval. If we want free-thinkers, and we don’t want them to be coerced, then we have to acknowledge that our praise and approval might act as a factor for coercion. Unbeknownst to us or them.
As parents we have to be aware of this and constantly question ourselves, what we are supporting and why we are supporting it. It has to be for no self gain of our own. We can’t be brainwashing our kid to make them into some status symbol for us or a bragging point at parties.
Our oh so divine and hefty responsibility as parents is to parent for the kid.
Not for ourselves.
We’re on their side.
We’re encouraging them to think freely and make choices best for them.
That’s what we are brainwashing them into.
Takeaways. Scooby snacks-
If you don’t actively brainwash your kids, someone or something else will.
The environment you put kids in and the role modelling you expose them to, are the biggest influences on their lives. These shape their value systems, foundations and frameworks and the quality of their minds and lives.
Upbringing forms the basis of who we believe ourselves to be, our self determination and agency. It’s much harder to unlearn wrong values and practices than it is to learn good ones.
Brainwashing can go awry. We are tasked with brainwashing our kid into being a free thinker. Not brainwashing them for our own benefit. eg social status, good parenting awards.
Parenting is bloody hard. But in the spirit of NLP and good role modeling, I believe we parents are so bloody capable.
Great article Bonnie !! Love the insights & ideas 💙