Abbie: Hello and welcome to the CosmoParenting Podcast brought to you by the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution. In this space, we invite you to see yourself as someone who is curious about and actively participating in creating your own meaning around parenting.
This is our ‘Communicate’ episode, in which the fourth episode of each month we will wrap up our theme by offering some ideas for communicating with your children, co-parents, or whoever else might be a part of your parenting to start having conversations about the things you are learning here. Let’s begin.
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Abbie: Today, I am joined by Nana Bonsu. Nana is a qualified social worker, family and systemic psychotherapist, and systemic supervisor. Nana is the Director of Relational Practice in Camden. And she's worked in children's services for over 20 years, both in children's statutory services and CAMHs (Child Adolescent and Mental Health Services). She's also parenting two sons who are currently 15 and 18. Hi, Nana. Thank you so much for being with me today.
Nana: Hi, Abbie. I'm really pleased to join you on this wonderful podcast. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Abbie: I'm really looking forward to what you have to say today. So, in the last episode I did with Stephanie, she offered us a strategy called ‘Notice and Wonder,’ and that was to help us expand on the stories we hear and tell in our lives. I'm wondering… what would you add to the topic of how parents might go about communicating around stories?
Nana: Yeah, I think that's a great question because I think stories organize and shape our sense of being in the world and how we position ourselves and what we think about ourselves. And I think it's a really great opportunity to ‘Notice and Wonder’ the stories that your child may bring. And what they might want to share with you that may not resonate with your own story.
So, if I think about my two children- who are adolescents- their sense of being parented by me and their father and their experiences of growing up may not be how I perceive the story to be because my vantage point is different to theirs. And so I think as a parent, being willing to be curious and create a space just to say to a child: help me understand that more. Help me understand why you might think that.
I think stories have a way of- in wider discourses, wider society- stories shape our sense of what being a “good parent” is. And I think sometimes we can be quite self-critical and blaming of ourselves as parents because we're organised by what the media tells us a “good parent” is, or what stories on TV shows or news outlets. And there's this constant need to get it right and be perfect, and do all these amazing stimulating activities with your children, and never be upset or never be angry or never be tired.
So I think stories are an opportunity to really open up and broaden ideas about what it is to be a child in a family, and what it is to be a parent as well.
Abbie: Yes, I really appreciate that idea of helping your child learn to tell their own story. And I think that, you know, ‘Notice and Wonder’ is a great tool in the CMM parenting toolbox. Another one is, I love a, you know, tell me more- that's so open ended and beautiful. Or another great question is, well, what does that mean to you? Or what do you mean by that? Because storytelling- it's how we make meaning. That's kind of what's going on there. And we really take for granted that we're all making the same meaning. That's part of what I'm hearing and what you're talking about with these larger stories we have as a society. That's kind of saying what it means to parent should mean the same thing to every one of us. When it's really different, what it means to parent to everyone.
Nana: Yeah. And I think that ability to appreciate that you take stories lightly and tentatively because it can position you to think that your child-rearing practices have to look a certain way. And I think there's so many cultural influences.
There's so many ways in which technology and social media are shaping how parents parent. And I think that that's okay as well. I think it's okay to introduce new ideas and new ways of parenting that perhaps you didn't have. And I think it's quite nice, as a parent, if you can be able to share your story of your parenting or your story of your childhood because oftentimes in interactions with parents and children, they can maybe not be communicated very clearly what your intention is.
And sometimes you're drawing from a story about what you think you should do in this moment, because it's what was done to you by your parent or culturally it's expected to. And it might be that your child is not understanding the logic of your intentions. So I think by sharing stories, it opens and it's expansive and it helps the curiosity in the family.
Abbie: Yes, that's a great point that as you're asking your child, you know, what does something mean to you? And helping them. You also have to think of yourself as a storyteller who's making your own meaning. So it is great to be asking yourself in the context of parenting- in any context- what do I mean? And try to articulate that. I wonder if you have stories from your parenting that you could share about how you navigate stories?
Nana: Yeah, I mean, I think when I was a child growing up, my parents were immigrants to the UK- England. And so I had stories of my parents having to go through coming to a new country, and assimilation, and not having the resources around them because their family were in another country, and how they created family, and how they created connections.
So those stories of survival and overcoming adversity are quite strong. And I think when I talk to my children, they laugh often because I would describe, for instance, a contraption that we used to have, which would give off heating- it was called a paraffin heater. And they find that quite funny, and I said there was no other way of having heating that heater was portable and it moved around the home depending on where you were. And so those stories that I tell my children are ways in which they can connect to my logic when I say things like, come on, you need to be grateful or come on, this is expensive or come on, you know, you can't always expect things when you think that you ought to get them because I'm coming from a position of storytelling that has adversity in it.
But I also have to appreciate, as we talked to Abbie, what my children's stories are and what their lived experience is and what it is for them being the third generation of immigrants in the country. And their stories are different to mine.
So my son would share things around experiences with his peers which would not be the same as my experience with my peers because time is a factor. So that's just a snippet of my own kind of experiences around stories and how I weave that into my parenting, but do it in a way to connect and do it in a way to explain the logic for my thinking about some of the things that I value and hold dear.
Abbie: Yeah. How about in your work?
Nana: In my work, I think about children where we may be what's called a “corporate parent,” where children are being looked after by the state, using American jargon. And what can happen is for those children, if they've been displaced, if they've experienced trauma, they may not have a full coherent sense of a narrative about themselves and their identity.
So we would often use tools like Life Story Work, where you begin to develop a narrative and a story about a child's experience from the moment of birth to the point of where they're at at this given moment in their life.
And it might be that they were fostered and you would have pictures of their foster family, addresses, you might have keepsakes, memorabilia, so that a child can begin to develop a more coherent sense of who they are without a fragmented story.
And so I see that in practice as being really quite helpful enabling practitioners working with children where they may have experienced adverse childhood experiences or they may have lost connection with family members. And how do you still enable a child to have a coherent sense of self? So, storytelling is quite powerful in those moments.
Abbie: Yes, well, Nana, thank you so much for sharing everything you have today. So wonderful to get to speak with you and we'll be joined again by you in future ‘Communicate’ episodes. We'll look forward to hearing more from you. And to everyone listening, thank you for joining us, too. Don’t forget to check out www.cosmoactivities.com for our other free resources in this series and be sure to comment on this podcast episode on the CosmoParenting Substack. Like Nana said, so important to share parenting stories with each other. We are so grateful to be on this journey with you, wrapping up our very first month. And we will look forward to joining you next week for the first episode of our patterns theme.
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