Non-Coercive, Collaborative Parenting (NCCP)

"Guiding without controlling." - Vivek Patel

A note: While I prefer not to start with disclaimers, parenting is an intense and personal project. I want to acknowledge that what works for my family is not going to be what works for others. By and large, parents out there are all trying their best. I am no judge of anyone’s parental choices, and the following is not a prescription. I share my experience for anyone out there who might be helped by considering an alternative way to relate to their children, especially if those relationships are proving difficult or high-conflict.

My friend, Evan, told a story recently about raccoons. Funnily enough, when I was in 12-step I designated raccoon moms as my “Higher Power,” so my ears always perk right up around raccoon lore. Evan described how mother raccoons will sometimes climb into suburban chimneys to have their babies on little ledges inside. Eventually, when the homeowner notices that there is a raccoon in their chimney, they call someone in to come help. The solution is to cap the chimney when the raccoon is away from the house. If this chimney professional fails to check inside the shaft for babies, though, and places the cap over the entrance, the mother raccoon will be driven into a fury upon returning and finding herself unable to access her kits. In a frantic rage, she will destroy the entire roof: digging into it everywhere, clawing and gouging and ripping through the building materials on her singular mission to rescue the cubs.

Evan’s story strengthens my faith in The Higher Power of Raccoon-Moms. Not only that, the tale serves as a perfect visual representation of what it feels like sometimes to be a mom in this day and age (probably in any day and age). The body-rooted feelings you come to have as a parent can take you over entirely, sometimes blocking your view into wise rationale (raccoons are so cunning that, had the mother remained calm, she very well may have figured out how to remove the chimney cap). The urge to protect and hold your children close is more powerful than any other propensity I have ever known. And, despite the purity of your intention, this overpowering need can make you wantonly destructive. For me, there eventually came a clarion call to avoid tearing the roof off the sucker.

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I separated from my children’s dad in January 2022, at which time I relocated to New York City to receive chemo and radiation following a surgery that left cancer cells behind. The kids and I properly reunited that scorching July in New York, chasing ice cream trucks and water parks, and then finally made our way to my parents’ home in Blue Hill, Maine, where we have lived since.

That first summer, my mom and I enrolled Athena and Smokey (who were about to turn 10 and 8) in a local day camp, thinking it would be more fun for them to be playing with other kids than hanging with the grown-ups. In practice, however, they disliked the camp. They were late-starters in the session and felt that all the other children had already formed bonds they were left out of. Every morning they fussed and fought about going, and I ended up letting them skip several days. Athena kept saying, “You did NOT have our consent to sign up for this camp!”

At the time, my logic told me that as their mother I didn’t need their consent for such things. I even laughed to myself over this outcry, finding it cute but surely misguided. “I’m your mother. I don’t need your consent,” I told Athena. “It’s my responsibility to help you try new things and have new experiences.” I remembered various moments from my own youth: being dragged up a freezing cold ski mountain, being shipped off to a sleep-away camp every summer. But somewhere along the way, I discovered my love of skiing, hiking, bathing in lakes, and sneaking out of cabins to go to the boys’ camp. Surely my children would similarly make important lemonade from whatever lemons I thrust upon them. Plus, lazing around the house is no way to spend a summer.

But, as they always do, Athena’s self-assured words stuck in my craw. Their dad and I had, after all, taught them about consent, explaining that their bodies belong to them, and that nobody can force anything on those bodies.

//

Come September, the kids started at their new public school, bravely making inroads and trying their best. My health took a bad turn, though, as 2022 gave way to 2023. Fried and decayed by multiple radiation courses, my mouth was besieged with tissue loss and relentless infections, landing me in the hospital more than once. At home, I had to administer IV antibiotics to myself around the clock. My heart broke as I saw the kids’ furrowed brows and tearful eyes as they tried to process their parents’ divorce, their relocation across the country, and my continued need for serious medical interventions. They were so young, yet they had already traversed so much confusion, fear and suffering.

I meditated on my regard for these young humans. Deep sensitivity and understanding are born from the kinds of hardships they had weathered, and I grew to feel that they deserved my utmost respect in return. Athena’s statements about consent echoed in my ears. They were now struggling with attendance at Blue Hill Consolidated, and instead of forcing them to go, I began allowing them to stay home when they resisted in the morning. This was not easy. We live with my parents, who prioritized rigorous education for myself and my siblings, as well as encouraging us in athletics and the arts (all of which I came to treasure). I anxiously imagined disapproval in the eyes of my family and friends.

And yet, especially with Athena, Tough Love seemed only to increase conflict between us, which felt too damaging to be worth whatever “teaching moment” was at stake. Lessons in heartiness were drowned out by strife; if I met their refusal to go to school or on a walk with increased pressure, they would double down explosively. At that point, we were dealing not just with attendance records but also with a redress of our connection on top of me spinning out about being the wrong kind of mom. I didn’t want my children’s bodies to course with adrenaline and cortisol. It was already too much, what with my persistent health scares. My instincts increasingly told me to prioritize the sanctity and security of our bonds above all else.

Come April, I was hospitalized for two weeks just prior to Athena and Smokey heading to California to be with their dad for spring break. I used the solitude to deep-dive into the videos of a creator called Rythea Lee on TikTok. Rythea espoused the teaching of her mentor, Vivek Patel, who had developed a parenting philosophy he called “Non-Coercive, Collaborative Parenting,” or NCCP. Vivek always said that the name contains “the DO-do’s and the DON’T-do’s.” Don’t force them or try to control them. Do work together to come up with solutions that can satisfy everyone involved. I had found Rythea a couple of months before my hospital stay, and it always felt like she was articulating (with signature humor and gusto) exactly what my inner voice had been guiding me toward. I needed this sense of community to help solidify my commitment to a radically open style of mothering - mothering in which the kids’ thoughts, feelings and desires were actively heard and included.

I completed a course Rythea made on YouTube called “Advice from a Loving Bitch.” This was inner-child work that Rythea explained was crucial as a basis for NCCP. The basic tenets of NCCP are prioritizing the child’s relationship to self, parent and environment. You negotiate everything instead of saying, “No dessert until you finish your broccoli!” or “No staying up past 8:30 on school nights!” Instead, you “trade expectation for exploration,” as Vivek would say. You try to bark less and listen more. And, as parents, you try to heal your own triggers from childhood so you can be less reactive and refrain from stamping your old wounds onto your kids. I watched as many videos as I could on Vivek’s YouTube and read Thick Nhat Hanh’s The Heart of Buddha’s Teachings. Finally, after messaging back and forth with Rythea about it, I resolved to sit down with Athena and Smokey when they returned from California and explain that I was dedicating myself to this practice of “Conscious Parenting,” or NCCP.

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“OK, so I am committing to a parenting approach called ‘Non-Coercive, Collaborative Parenting,’ which basically means that I will not make you do things, nor will I let you do things. Meaning, you can explore what you want to do, and I will be there to talk with you about how everything is going and help you with whatever comes up. When it feels important or difficult, we can cooperate to find solutions. You will never, ever get in trouble with me. And no punishments, ever.”

“You mean, like, no rules?”

“Yes, like no rules. And, even more than that, no wrongness. That’s a big part of this.”

“We can stay up as late as we want?”

“You can. I won’t get mad and try to force you to bed - at least that’s my aim. You both already know that staying up very late on a school night might make you sleepy at school the next day.”

“Yeah.”

“But you can decide your own bedtimes, and we’ll see how it goes together. You can tell me what you do and do not want to eat and drink. You can use your screens when you wish. I am not going to force you this way and that. I’m here! And I have a lot of experience to share with you. I’m always going to want the best and healthiest lives for both of you, and I will always want to talk with you about that. But I respect you as my equals in this life, and I don’t want to use power over you for anything.”

This seemed to make intuitive sense to them, and we talked it through for a long time. They wanted to know that, while I wasn’t going to impose strict regulations, I was going to remain involved with their decision-making and I would care for them as usual. I had already begun walking this path more or less, so I don’t think it caught them too off-guard. But making this pledge evoked palpable curiosity and thrills in their bodies and minds. They felt important, which they are.

//

It was seven years earlier, in 2016 and 2017, after completing my first round of treatments for oral cancer, that my mindset as a parent first shifted significantly. Athena and Smokey were just turning four and two at the time. Achieving remission and finally shedding the effects of a cabinet full of medicines, I entered a period of shimmering awareness of the present moment. Everything felt bountiful, touching and fully alive. I began to eat my favorite foods again as my taste buds returned. More and more, I was able to walk and play with the kids. After missing some of their cutest times, my body pulsed with gratitude to be still-alive and to be with my family on our beautiful planet.

In this awakened and attuned state, there was no room for conflict with my angelic children. I felt there was nothing to be gained from punishing them, even with a brief time-out, which had started to become a mainstay before my diagnosis. There was no rule I had to impose that was important enough to interrupt my connection with them.

//

I’m not perfect, obviously. This practice runs counter to cultural conditioning, which mostly instructed me to be “kind but firm.” I was very institutionalized in my youth, attending a private prep school that accounted for every second of every busy day, threatening severe disciplinary action for breaking their codes of conduct. The motto of my high school was “Be Worthy of Your Heritage,” which at the time felt like it placed the weight of all my ancestors squarely on my shoulders. In that conservative New England context, it also struck me as a white supremacist call-to-arms, as in: “be worthy of your dominion.”

With all this training in my body-memory, I definitely still slip into second-guessing: fear that they will never find self-discipline, for example. Fear that they won’t be gritty enough. Fear that they will be spoiled and unappreciative, or that they will become sick from sweets or depressed from screens. There are so many podcasts and news articles about these pandemic kids becoming sometimes fatally sad at such tender ages, and it is enough to terrify any parent into drilling down on their children in a bid to produce safe, optimal outcomes. To be honest, if both of my children were naturally compliant, I would probably be doing the same.

But they are not both compliant. Athena, now age 12-going-on-17, has never been compliant. They were born fiery, fierce and boldly confrontational. Their desire for autonomy has been evident from quite early, even as it is paired with an equally potent need for validation and understanding. They have never responded well to forced transitions away from something they love (like watching TV, or, during the school closures of Covid-19, their iPad). Athena’s anxieties run deep, threatening to cause eruptions that are more distressing to them than to me. I learned time and time again that when their temperature rises to a blaze, I cannot cool it with more fire.

Instead, I’ve found the best course to be offering kindness, fluidity and accommodation. I have to switch from my need to correct their behavior to my need to get curious about what is driving them. I have to help Athena draw out what is hurting them and what bubbles beneath that hurt. In even the tensest moments, when I am feeling provoked, I have learned to try to take a beat. I have learned that I should, in those moments, release my will to control and instead share unconditional love. I forget everything else and focus on first helping them regulate their tidal nervous system. Athena taught me these new patterns over years and years, and I am eternally grateful to be a student of theirs. They have reinforced in me an embrace of nonviolence and nonconformity, and they have inspired me to become evermore committed to my Buddhist practices.

Of course, on many occasions, when Athena refused school, I’d let my stress and fears of being judged a “bad mom” get the better of me. I would tell them that I didn’t want them to fall behind or be held back a grade. I would issue threats disguised as entreaties to get up and get dressed and be better, causing them pain and self-doubt on top of their painful nervousness. In effect, I would mess up my pledge and shame them.

It was immediately evident how ineffective and harmful this was for Athena. When I lost my footing, I would look at them and register their desperate need for protection and empathy. I would quickly pivot to repair, explaining that my knee-jerk reaction had arisen from my own childhood experiences with the pressures of personal performance and, to borrow a word from my freakish high school, with the question of my worthiness. I’d apologize for projecting these insecurities onto them and vow to keep working on it. In turn, they would remind me: “I’m not you, Mom. I am different.”

It is Athena’s difference that makes them exquisite, special: a force of nature. It also seeds in them a ravaging concern that they are not normal and will never fit in anywhere. “All kids crave boundaries,” we’re told. And it sounds right. Boundaries are vital and healthy. I agree that consistent structure makes way for a sense of safety for many children. I read the books. But what happens when the child’s sense of safety has been obliterated by domestic unrest, by the devastating suspension of the pandemic, by divorce, relocation, and most of all by cancer in the body of their parent? What happens when they clearly see how little control we have in life?

For Athena, these experiences in the tumult of life embolden their desire to defy norms and discover themselves. They seek far reaches for clues about who they are, what they want, and where they can locate true support. For my younger child, Smokey, it is the opposite. She rushes toward self-control (this being the only kind of control to which we have true access). When she got a cavity, Smokey chose to no longer eat hard candy. When she felt overwhelmed after leaving all her weekly homework assignments for Thursday night, she developed a system for breaking up projects over four weekday evenings. She designed her bedtime to get the recommended ten hours of sleep each night. She determined to charge her iPad only once weekly, rationing her screen-time each day. When the device ran out of battery, she refused to charge it back up until the weekend. Smokey often still asks me if it’s okay to have a fifth popsicle, skip a bath, or to stay up an extra hour past her self-determined bedtime. I remind her that it’s up to her and throw in some common-sense considerations, aware that she already knows all that. She likes to ask me anyway. She is, like me, eager to please and perform, and that would make her easier to parent in a traditional, authoritative modality.

I could impose rules on Smokey with little push-back. She would make me look good in that way, and I suspect that is quite intentional on her part. She is highly attuned to those around her and wants me to feel like I am doing a good job. (For my birthday, she bought me a book called, There Are Moms Way Worse Than You: Irrefutable Proof That You Are Indeed a Fantastic Parent, which describes all the hectic shit different animal moms do in the wild, including eating their young.) At the same time, if I chose to go the stricter route with Smokey, it would reinforce in her a sense that she is responsible for my feelings - that her behavior determines how much love and pride I feel for her. I do not want Smokey to view my love as conditional. I do not want her to feel that any choice she makes could dim the brightness of my care. I want her to know that our love means I accept her always as she is, no matter what. I want her to know that nothing she does or doesn’t do could change her access to my open heart. Just as I want this for Athena.

//

I like to imagine that when we are born the hand of the universe strikes the taut rubber band (or guitar string if you prefer) of our life-force. Boi-oi-oiiiing: one great karmic strum as our spirit enters the world of consciousness. Each elastic band has its own unique pattern of vibration: some have giant, wild oscillations; others are much softer and less varied. The amplitude of our pattern determines the extremity of our life experience, bouncing from high highs to low lows, or remaining relatively close to center from the get-go.

My wave pattern has been vast and chaotic. My feelings and thoughts have tended to leap passionately from positive to negative, creating an exhausting, often dissonant sound. Over time our rubber bands incrementally settle, moving more and more gently until finally reaching perfect stillness in the instant of our death.

I recognize in both my children an amplitude similar to my own. While they are dissimilar in many ways, each of them features an intense vibration, producing all-consuming passions, yearnings, constructions and imaginations.

I visualize myself as the foam on the wall next to them, quietly working to absorb and modulate their pendulous shocks. Sometimes it works beautifully, and other times I feel that any minute the neighbors will call the police to lodge a noise complaint.

//

Parents worry. There is no way around it. We worry about small stuff, big stuff, irrational stuff, projected stuff and real stuff. We worry about the past, and we worry abut the future. And these worries often taint our presence in the moment. We know the painful lessons of our own missteps, and we naturally want to impart these lessons to our children while sparing them suffering. The trouble is that they will need to make their own mistakes to grow.

To my mind, the scariest worries involve addiction. I am an alcoholic who has been in recovery for over eight years. It took me much too long to stop damaging myself with substances of all stripes. With my innate measure of melancholy, altering my state-of-mind was too delicious. I also lost beloved friends to addiction - and that’s before our current age of pervasive, premature death from Fentanyl-laced everythings. I saw that as much as you want someone else to get better, to take care, they have to choose that path for themselves.

After that initial meeting with the kids, when I shared with them about NCCP, things definitely got crazy as they tested their new freedom. Athena’s love of staying up late brought on a new interest in caffeine. They wanted Monster Energy Drinks, like they’d seen in their favorite creators’ YouTube posts. They wanted to spend their modest Friday allowance on as many of these tantalizingly designed cans as possible to help them stay up with their friends during slumber parties.

I was scared that this would make school even harder to attend and that their body would be negatively impacted. I shared these notions as gently as I could whilst not outlawing the drinks, mostly just annoying them in the process. Well-meaning friends came to visit during this time, and told Athena outright that this was unhealthy and a bad habit to cultivate. Instead of hearing these protective words, Athena burst into tears. They said that they felt judged. They said that they felt shamed. Instead of learning a lesson about their health, Athena spiraled into insecurity and self-doubt. That is simply where they usually go when anyone tries to deliver a correction or command.

Later that week, in a private, quiet moment, I reminded Athena that grown-ups worry based on our own experiences. I talked with them about my alcoholism, and how adults can see that the marketers of Monster are making way for the marketers of spiked seltzers and hard lemonades. I talked about how I started out using alcohol so I didn’t have to think about hard stuff or feel nervous at the party, and then how alcohol brought my unprocessed misery right up below the surface, where I felt its rattle but had no vantage on it. I told them that I didn’t think they were addicted to Monster, but that my own struggles with addiction colored my feelings about caffeine and whatever else they put in these drinks. In short, I was vulnerable, and in that Athena did not feel judged so much as they computed that adults want children to be less afflicted than they had been.

It’s easy to think that the way to prevent our kids from risky experiments is to erect firm structure around their accesses and behaviors. The rationale is that if we tighten our control, we can ensure their safety. If we impose discipline, if we scare them a bit, they won’t stray off the good path.

But when has that plan been as foolproof as we’d like? How many times have you transgressed for the delight of transgression? How many times has being told NO manifested an insatiable YES in you? I can think of dozens of examples from my life where absolutely nothing felt sweeter than chucking expectations and demands out the window. We’ve all heard about the slow shoring up of a kid’s prefrontal cortex and their under-developed executive function and impulse-control. Most kids want to grow by testing limits. Many kids want to carve out any little space of subversive control they can find in the face of so much parental and institutional pressure. For those of us with less obedient personalities, we define our edges over time based on the values we develop from our own hearts. We don’t just ingest-as-instructed. Once you remember this, it becomes easier to parent as consultant and guide rather than foreman.

//

When Athena asked me this year if they could download SnapChat, I was in the hospital nine hours away from them. I had just had a massive surgery. I said, “I think it’s best if we wait on that until I get home.” Not a no. Not a yes. I had issued a request to hang on. Regardless, Athena found a way to download the app without me getting a texted request to authorize it. At that point, they were involved in social media without my knowledge and without my guidance and support. My urge to control, mild as it was, backfired quickly and entirely, and now there was a secret wedged between us.

When I got home, I told them - without reproach - that I knew they had the app (their sister tipped me off, out of concern). I didn’t ask Athena delete it, though, because I knew that they could find a way around me, no matter what I said or did. Instead, at Athena’s suggestion, I downloaded it, too. I friended them so I could see their posts, message with them, and hopefully help them be safe. So far, it’s working okay. I observe and respect that they have a natural suspicion of strangers. Representations of sexuality still embarrass them. They have chosen never to show their face or their real name online. They post about the music they love and the exquisite animal masks they make. They search for digital community in the form of nonbinary, body positive creators - most of whom also deal with mental hardships like acute anxiety. They message a lot with their friends. I have learned so much about them (and about the internet) by asking them to share what they consume.

I hope that by prioritizing closeness and curiosity, my relationships with Athena and Smokey will continue to deepen even through the tumult of the teenage years and the frenzied twenties. I want them to know in their bones that their mother will never again turn away from them or shut them down with the dreaded, “I’m so disappointed in you.” I want them to trust that I will not admonish or punish them - that I am here, open and soft, no matter what troubles they get into or which terrible decisions they make.

They remind me of the times I was not this way, times when I yelled at them and chastised them. They remember these incidents so clearly and describe in detail how horrible they felt. I see now the pain I caused them on a molecular level - it still lives in their bodies. Today, if my voice veers too severe or stern, they react immediately, saying, “I don’t like it when you yell at me. Please don’t talk that way.” I catch myself saying, “I didn’t yell,” but I know that’s not the point. The point is that it hurts them. I try to remember to thank them for correcting me, instead. It scares them to feel that I would pull away from them, and so I renew my vow to try my hardest not to slip back into that old mode. Try again, Mom. Keep working on it. I remember that both Smokey and Athena are innocent beings full of innate wisdom - prefrontal cortices be damned. If I resist the urge to scold and correct, if I make a curious space for them to feel what they feel, they consistently come to their own moral takeaway from a hard situation.

After adopting NCCP, I noticed that they chose to share very intimate discoveries and experiences with me, like questioning whether they were queer, their fear of and interest in death, or the exact substance of fights at school. When I didn’t reprimand them after hitting each other, I saw how often the hitter felt badly and apologized on their own, and that the hit-ee felt that apology to be more meaningful when it wasn’t offered because I demanded it so. After the heat of the moment, they would naturally process a sense of guilt and a wish to do better next time.

I’ve always chosen to see the best of people, sometimes to my own detriment, but I will never stop believing that all children are good. They have a strong sense of right and wrong. They falter, as we all do. But, far more than not, my kids don’t need a big lecture from me to understand “natural consequences” - they are natural, after all. They tend to teach themselves. When I shut up and let them tell me about it, they feel less wrongness and more agency in their evolution.

//

If I can succeed with this approach, I hope that it will make me a more effective shepherd through the inevitable tribulations to come. Negotiating everyone’s needs equally is hard, constant work. It is certainly more time-consuming than a flat NO or a black-and-white list of what is acceptable. But, within these ongoing collaborative discussions, we find new points of connection, deeper discussions of values, and a nuanced admiration for one another’s perspectives. In the absence of judgment and power-struggles, perhaps my guidance will feel easier to trust in the toughest times.

I try to model self-compassion and self-love, and that might be the hardest part. Doing that inner-child work guided by Rythea helped me clock just how self-critical I can be. Careful listening to my heart and theirs is infinitely rewarding. And even though I still frequently panic that I am fucking them up, I feel not just our love but our closeness. We are friends, which means to them I am safe with their secrets. I know we’ve all heard: “Be a parent, not a friend!” I get it. It’s what we know. Breaking with eons of authoritarian societal bedrock is not easy or straight-forward. Authority is the structure of home, the structure of work, the structure of institutions, the structure nations and law. Everywhere we go in life, threat of retribution or failure is meant to keep us in line and on track. To let go of that feels like free-fall, but only at first. I don’t want to be a cool, permissive mom. I want to be a soft, openhearted mom with knowledge to offer and, even more so, a grounded ear to listen. I want to accept them as they are: deserving of boundless love. It’s not that I will sponsor their bad decisions, but rather that in flowing with them and offering my steady support, they can come to see their mistakes for what they offer - not to me, but to them.

There is another adage that I do find helpful: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I want a world where we desire to ask a million questions of those we love, drawing them out together as they grow. I want a world where we police each other less, where we pledge goodness out of nothing but our own volition. I want a world for my kids where they develop their intuition and pull benevolence from their own hearts. I want a world where Athena and Smokey define the boundaries that they truly need, not just the fear-based ones that I might require. It starts with the small, immediate stuff, and it fans outward all around us from there, like the infinite Taoist web of which everything in the universe is an integral part.

However all you raccoon parents are making it work out there, I commend you. This is how it’s working for us.