Growing (as) Humans: What the messy job of parenthood teaches us

For our ConsciousU newsletter, we conduct a monthly interview. This is an excerpt, you can watch the complete interview with Valerie and Alis here (59 mins). To access all interviews with change makers at the intersection of inner work and collective action, join our free Conscious Tribes Community!

This parenting gig has been one of the single most powerful catalysts for our own development.

Alis Anagnostakis is a researcher, a long-time facilitator, and an executive coach who is working with leaders, teams, and companies on at least two continents, supporting them on their journeys of personal and organisational evolution. She has a master's degree in positive leadership and in strategy and completed her PhD exploring transformative learning and leaders' vertical development. Alis is the founder of the Vertical Development Institute. She lives on the Sunshine Coast in Australia with her daughter, her husband, and her dog.

Valerie Livesay is a distinguished expert in leadership development and organisational transformation. She is the author of the book Leaving the Ghost Light Burning: Illuminating Fallback in Embrace of the Fullness of You. Val earned her Master's degree in Nonprofit Leadership and Management and a PhD in Leadership Studies. With the Ghost Light Framework, she developed a methodology to accompany individuals and teams as they enter a virtuous cycle of increased self- and other-awareness. She lives in Southern California with her husband and two children, aged 10 and 14.

?

Valerie and Alis, what led you to co-create the Growing Humans initiative?? ?

A: First of all, for me motherhood is the place where I find my biggest growth edge, alongside my relationship with my husband. Additionally, as a parent you receive so much advice and I noticed that there is a gap between what I know I should do and what I'm actually able to do, especially when I'm very triggered. Out of that came the question, can we actually look at what it takes for us to grow as adults so that we're able to embody those wise behaviors with our kids?? ?

V: I would like to add the community aspect. We found that we grew and develop in community, and that this parenting gig has been one of the single most powerful catalysts for our own development.

The role of being a parent, or a teacher, is calling on us to have a kind of bigger mind, more capacities—not just 'this happens and then you do this'. But rather, how can I take on more perspective? How can I be more conscious of where I am in relationship to me, the world, and my children? How can I respond with greater wisdom?

What is vertical development and how does it matter for parents and for educators?

A: For me, vertical development is describing how our thinking, feeling and engaging with the world changes and shifts as we mature. It's largely about our lenses, mindsets, and our ability to take perspective, as well as to manage and understand both our own and others' emotions.

These are the intangibles you don't typically learn from books but instead learn the hard way through personal experience. Most often, without any kind of map, you simply have to figure it out.

For example, I may know that I need to be patient when my child is in the midst of a tantrum. It's easy to understand that. But being able to manage my own emotional overwhelm in that moment and create the internal space to respond with maturity—that's a function of my vertical development.

V: This field of adult development, which is vertical development, is exploring how we as adults can continue to grow and change over time. It doesn't happen as automatically as it does in childhood, yet it is still built upon the child development stages.

How do you make peace with 'fallbacks' and your shortcomings as parents?

V: What I call 'fallback' is when we have a set of capacities: the developmental ability to take on complexity, see different perspectives, regulate ourselves emotionally, and have a degree of consciousness about ourselves and others — and then we don't. Suddenly, we find ourselves smaller, more constricted, with no options left that we had just a moment before. And that happens for me often in my parenting. So, I don't have it figured out. It's a practice. And you can also be in this practice in the presence of your children, which I think is really important because it is very helpful for them to see that we are also forevermore practising something. We may have mastered our multiplication facts, but we haven't mastered this whole thing of being human and showing up in alignment with our intentions. So, we're inviting them to be in the practice of this as well. It's wonderful to be in practice with them and to be able to say, 'I am doing my best, and I'm trying to hit the mark. Sometimes, I'm going to miss the mark, and it gives me an opportunity to try again.' ?

How has the understanding of vertical development made a difference in your parenting?

A: Vertical development has built that self-reflective muscle in me and it allows me to be more aware of when my fallback is coming. I can say to my child, 'I have very little patience right now; I'm tired and stressed. It's not you, it's me. But I know I'm going to react in a way that's not good.'

It's about the fact that I can see it coming, and I can say that it's coming. And my daughter says it to me as well, like, 'Mom, I'm not having a good day today'. That, to me, is a really huge gift: the trust we have in each other and how we're able to navigate the rough patches together as a family.

Can you tell us a little more about managing our fallbacks and frustrations while we grow as humans?

V: There's always loss with development, and there's a loss of privileging the gifts at each stage of development because we're so busy pushing them away. I think just knowing that I can grow, and that it's going to be hard, and I need to opt in for the difficulty of the journey, is really helpful. However, the fallback here is that we still have access to all of these other ways of making meaning that we've experienced before. We can consciously opt into those—sometimes there are black-and-white answers and rules in our house that need to be maintained. At other times, there's an opportunity for more fluidity and perspective-taking. And sometimes, we simply don't have access to our highest state of development because we're locked into a smaller, more constrictive way of knowing.

A: We have a few rules in our house around what things parents have veto rights on. Usually, it's health and safety and social responsibility matters, such as 'You need to brush your teeth'. But then, there's a lot of dialogue in other areas.

I distinctly remember, when my kid was about three, it hit me how this actually plays out for her. She said, 'I want to wear my gumboots to school.' It was summer, super hot—completely inappropriate weather for gumboots. But she loved her gumboots and just wanted to wear them. My response was, 'No, you can't wear your gumboots. That's crazy.' And she asked, 'Mom, is this health and safety? Is it dangerous for me to wear my gumboots?' So, right there, I realised I was in my diplomat fallback, thinking of the teachers seeing my kid walk in with gumboots on a scorching summer day and judging me as an irresponsible mother. I just had not realised how much my imposition of a rule was not motivated by my mature kind of self, but by my diminished fallback self. It was not about the kid; it was just about me.

V: This also points to another thing that I think vertical development gives us, which is access to pause and to notice. 'Why am I saying no to this? Is this about me, or is it about the child?' And so, we get into the practice of being in the inquiry around, 'Why am I showing up the way that I am?'

Challenges to identity are one of the triggers for fallback, as well as the ordinary triggers of life—just being tired, stressed, and hungry. Then there's also the contextual gravitational pull, which means that a system pulls us back into a smaller way of being. For example, our family of origin system often does that. There are actually all sorts of systems that we come in one way, and then the gravitational pull drags us back. Additionally, there are the unresolved traumas from our own growing up and the parts of us that were never able to fully develop. Therefore, when we encounter a triggering person or situation, we go back into that more constricted space of behaving.

So, just even having a sense of what a certain situation is about, and being able to inquire into it, is super helpful.

To access all interviews with change makers at the intersection of inner work and collective action, join our free Conscious Tribes Community!

The Conscious Tribes Community supports you with ideas and practical tools to develop your consciousness and build your tribe/ community.

As a member, you will get access to

?? Curated content in the form of podcasts, webinars, articles and courses

?? The Conscious Tribe Wheel survey and other helpful tools

?? Regular live events that support you getting conscious or build your tribe:

???Ask Me Anything with Peter Koenig

???interviews with change makers

???free online coaching workshops

Click here to register for our free community!