What if I told you that you could parent your teens and tweens without setting any rules for them?

Well, my guest today, Lainie Liberti, says it’s not only possible, but she did it with wildly successful results, and wrote a book about it.

See, Lanie raised and schooled her now, young adult son, Miro, while traveling the world. In fact, she almost single-handedly kicked off the whole worldschooling movement and co-founded and facilitates Project World School.

Over the years, she’s worked with and mentored hundreds of teens and pursued a course of self-study and self-discovery, which culminated in her book, Seen, Heard and Understood: Parenting and Partnering with Teens for Greater Mental Health.

She calls this “no rules” type of parenting, partnership parenting – and it’s going to make so much sense to you, stay with me.

This is Speaking of Teens, the podcast that helps parents who are struggling to find peace and connection with their teens. My name is Ann Coleman; I’m an attorney turned parent educator and a mom who has been there - and I’m on a mission to help you build a stronger relationship and decrease the conflict with your kid so you can help them grow into the young adult they’re meant to be.

Lanie’s son Miro, is Project World School’s co-founder (yes, he’s 23 and they work together every day) – as I said, “wildly successful results”. I want to read an excerpt from Miro’s Foreword to his mom’s best-selling book, Seen, Heard and Understood:

“Growing up, I never had the near mythological idea of my parents that so many of my friends had of theirs. My friends had parents who could do no wrong, whose say was final, who demanded respect unconditionally. My friends had parents who in their relationships more closely resembled gods than they did people, and how does one learn accountability and vulnerability from a god? My experience couldn’t have been any more different; instead of an iron fist, I was raised with tenderness and transparency in a partnership paradigm.

In my family, I was able to practice valuable skills like negotiation and compromise, something that was only possible because my mom was ok with being wrong from time to time. I realized that no one was entitled to my respect or trust, because my mom never demanded it, but earned it instead. Through my mom I learned that it was okay to be wrong, to apologize and to admit my own shortcomings in order to grow. Through watching her, I learned how to improve myself and how to genuinely connect with others. Instead of hindering me, our family dynamic prepared me for the relationships I would have later on in my life.

The beauty of having an authentic parent is that it prepares us for the inevitability of our own imperfections and allows us to see others for who they are, not who we want them to be.”

Wow, right? Don’t we dream of our kids saying something as beautiful about us one day?

So, I started out asking Lainie to explain this partnership parenting concept and how it came about.

Lainie Liberti

Awesome. This is a great question. I love talking about partnership parenting because it's really near and dear to my heart. So, for me, the whole partnership parenting paradigm came about from several places. Number one, I am a self-proclaimed anarchist and I generally do not like to give consent to anybody to have authority over me. I am very intentional with the kind of engagements that I will participate in, whether it's with systems or other people or other things along those lines, but I am not blind, I'm not somebody who blindly gives away my authority and gives people the right to have authority over me.

That requires a lot of communication and accountability. And I've been like this for my entire life. Being diagnosed as somebody with ODD, which is oppositional defiance disorder, I do not like being controlled. I do not like being told what to do. And as somebody who was raised in a very controlling household, it really cemented my dislike for those things. And so understanding how I function as a human and what's important to me was big part of my internal healing journey.

And when I became a parent, I knew flat out, I did not want to engage in that kind of relationship with my child. I knew that I wanted to support, facilitate and guide my child, but I never, ever, ever wanted to be the person that was the authority over another person. I also chose not to live with rules in my household in our relationship. And one of the ways that we managed to live in accordance to our core values and live without rules was to define what our individual core values were and what the family core values are.

And then when decisions what options were in alignment with those values. And here's the dynamic that parents that come, to parenting from a very conventional framework. If they are going to be an authority and they're gonna live, there's the rules of my family. You as somebody who is choosing that paradigm, as somebody with a lot of rules, somebody has to make the rules somebody has to enforce the rules and somebody has to punish the person if they break the rules.

So you have to watch and then, you know, be the judge, jury, you know, executioner, all of those things. And that's not a role I wanted to take in my family. I was very, very clear about that. And I also was quite, you know, I was confident in knowing that I live by a moral code and ethics and values and very, very clear that my actions were in alignment with those things. So I had a very clear moral compass, but I didn't feel like I needed outside rules to give me direction, nor did I want to raise a child with somebody else being their authority. Together as through partnership, we defined what our family culture looked like.

And as another human being, everybody is born with their own sets of likes, dislikes, desires, and so forth. So I knew he was capable of articulating what worked for him and what didn't work for him.

And by having a family dynamic or family culture based on partnership that really gave him a safe space to experience and practice making decisions and failing and making mistakes and you know finding how it felt to be in alignment and what emotional stuff came up with certain decisions and the foundation of our partnership, our relationship is based in communication. And I can't think of a more important skill to really cultivate in a human being. And that was really, really important to me. And then finally, I just want to add this caveat, as we spoke about before we started recording, we're both autodidactics. We're both really deep learners. We both are self-study.

I read everything I could get my hands on in terms of different modalities for these alternative parenting styles. I read everything about conscious parenting and partner or peaceful parenting and gentle parenting and aware of parenting and attachment parenting and hand in hand. There's no lack of modalities that you can learn about. But what I discovered and what I really...It stood out to me as something that just didn't work for me - that was the parents having an agenda to change their children's behavior for the convenience of the parent or the family culture.

And that means somebody has authority making rules and dictating how somebody else's behavior should look. Instead of understanding that you're dealing with an individual and our job as the guides or the parents or the adults in the relationship is to find ways that we both get our needs met. To find ways that serve both of us or all of us, depending on the size of your family, in a very healthy way that respects everybody's agency.

And that is some, it's hard work and it's a struggle and it's messy and it's, nobody has the right to change another person's behavior for the convenience of another person. And I really was clear about that. Yeah.

 

Ann

I mean, that is kind of mind blowing and it's just so enlightened and I'm like, how the hell did you figure all this stuff out? Did you figure this out before your son was born? I mean, did you study all this before he was born or was this something that came about later?

Lainie Liberti

Both. I read every parenting book I could get my hands on before he was born. And I really gravitated towards when I was pregnant, that's all I was doing was reading. But I gravitated towards attachment parenting. And that really resonated with me in a really powerful way. And there was another book that I read that just blew my mind. All the traditional Western parenting books. Yeah, there are tons of them out there. And you can find anything to serve your ego, to justify how you're parenting, you know, oh, this is, I'm doing it right because that's how I was doing. This wasn't about that. This is called The Continuum Concept. It's an older book that came out in the seventies and it's written by a woman, I think her name is Judith, Dr. Judith Lidoff. I believe that's her name if it's wrong. Yeah, it's powerful. Now this woman is an anthropologist and lived in community for over 20 years in a tribe in the Amazon and studied their interactions. And one of the most powerful observations was not only does it take a community to raise a child.

That's really beautiful. But the belief that our children are born whole blew me away. And all of the different ways that was expressed in this community is mind blowing. They're born as a whole human being. Whereas in contrast, in Western culture, we believe children are empty vessels. We open up their head. We pour our stuff into it and hope become a good person. And this eradicates that belief altogether. And so what do you do when you've got a child born that already has a personality and a sense of self? Well, you try and cultivate more of that and bring that out and affirm who they are. Whereas some of the other parenting modalities in the Western world, “I want you to be a good person and I want you to value these things” and whatever. Yeah. And without asking what the child wants or desires or feels or believes or dreams about, none of those things are taken into consideration.

So I wanted to parent like that. And this book gave me permission really to look at this human being that is entrusted in my care. And I looked, I reframed the relationship in a totally different way. And the last thing I want to say about partnership, because this comes up a lot, people ask, wait a minute, you're the parent, you're responsible. How can you trust a child to make a good decision? Trust is a big part of it, but in any partnership and I want you or your audience to think about their romantic partnerships. Think about the people that you choose to be in relation with. The person that you chose is not a carbon copy of you. It's an individual with different likes, desires, preferences, skills, abilities.

And just because two people come together doesn't mean we're the same. When two people come together, we need to honor our differences and understand we play different roles. So as a mom in this relationship, I am the breadwinner. Doesn't make me more entitled than the human being that is entrusted my care. It just means this is the role that I play and the responsibilities are there.

And yes, generally the parents have lived a little bit longer than their children. You know, I mean, it makes sense from a whole perspective. So we do have greater experiences, just more of them. We have more experiences and our role is to model and to help our children make choices that are good for them by showing, by modeling that we're making good choices for us and helping our children to unpack what the natural consequences may be, the outcomes may be, because we've got the ability to cognitively, decipher what a natural consequence can be where some children haven't, most children haven't developed that skill because of their biological development. Their brain development, you know, restricts that. And so, yes, hand in hand is a great way to parent but I like to call this partnership parenting and collaborative parenting. It's a collaborative relationship, yeah.

Ann

Brilliant. Yeah. Well, so I can think of a million questions, but I mean, one thing I know parents that are listening are like, okay, wait a minute. So are you saying that we just let our kids kind of decide what they want to do and when they want to do it? And, and actually, you know, if you get to the point where they're, they've started adolescence and you haven't been parenting this way, because I can see how this would absolutely be wonderful when you start out that way. How could a parent take this new perspective on parenting once their kid reaches adolescence? Is that possible or is the kid gonna take it and run with it and things get out of control? How does it work at that point?

 

Lainie Liberti

Yeah, I'm going to answer that question after I sort of interject in another way

 

Ann

Sure.

 

Lainie Liberti

So in conventional parenting and conventional, you know, family structures in our culture, we expect our children at 18 to be, you know, treated and acting as an adult. And a lot of times finally they get freedom or they move out of the house and they make their own decisions. But the problem with conventional parenting is we have not given our children the practice to make decisions, to understand how it feels to make mistakes, to understand consequences and live those out. Because a lot of times conventional parenting is parenting with hyper control, a lot of fear, lack of trust, and the time that it takes, the messiness that it takes, and the discomfort that it takes to be connected to another human being usually is not a priority in many families' lives. They have busy lives, they've got jobs, they've got responsibilities, they expect everybody just to do their part.

And instead of taking the time out of their busy day, and it's justified, right? Because we understand Western culture. It's exhausting to sit down with a teenager and let them unpack and let them share and be there without judgment. A lot of parents don't have the time or the patience for this.

So the decision to step into partnership has got to be a commitment of time. It's got to be a commitment of understanding your own internal worlds as a parent. And many of us haven't done that. Some people have been on an internal world or mental health healing path, but still haven't figured out things like triggers over their own childhood wounds, how to understand that when my child is really triggering me and annoying me because they're ignoring me, part of my inner child felt that, you know, not being seen or heard also. And there's a wound there that I'm functioning from.

And you've heard the expression, hurt people, hurt people, right? If I'm still resonating as the younger part of me in a very hurtful way, my subconscious patterning will give me a response from that place. And if we are not aware as adults, we haven't taken accountability for our own internal worlds, we will continue this cycle. Being a partnership parent is a commitment to breaking cycles, breaking these hurtful, you know, trauma cycles.

 

Ann

Right, right. So one of the most important things then it sounds like to me is that the parents have to do the inner work that if they need therapy, they get therapy. If they need to unpack their childhood, they unpack their childhood. And it's I think there's no doubt that we all come to parenting with some baggage from the past. And it's just you can't help it. And, you know, the way you were raised is going to come up the way you were treated is going to come up.

And so I did not come to that realization until my son started acting out a little bit. And then all of that started coming out in me. And so it took me a couple of years to figure out where that was coming from. But what would you say to parents then who, because I know they're still out there. There's lots of them still out there who are still wanting to parent from that authoritarian, I set the rules. Like you said, I'm the breadwinner. I own the house. It's my house. It's.

They're my rules. And so how do you go from that to a partnership? And what does partnership like logistically look like when your kid is wanting to go out and party and they're wanting to smoke weed and they're wanting to go spend the night with a girlfriend and all these things. I mean, what does that partnership parenting look like at that point? Because everybody's still gonna be like.

Nope, I set the rules, you're not gonna do this, you're not gonna do that. What do you do instead?

 

Lainie Liberti

So I am gonna answer that, but I'm gonna go back to it. So the thing is really understanding from your perspective as a parent, understanding not only yourself, your internal worlds and the spaces that you need to be to heal and what it feels like when you are dysregulated, your nervous system is dysregulated.

The other part is understanding the developmental process in a human being in a child from a neurobiological perspective, psychological perspective, even hormonal and chemical perspective. If you can understand those things, your judgment of their behavior becomes a little more compassionate.

Trust is a big part of it, right? We are talking about, you know, how does somebody build trust in a relationship? Well, that requires connection and communication. And if we can remember as parents, the time that our children are with us is so minute in the greater scope of a human's life. We tend to look at our children being stuck in the age that they are or the stage that they are right now and that's the entirety of everything and we react to that and some of these stages that they travel through will trigger us to no end. It's going to be uncomfortable. I remember my son going through 13 to 14 just being a total jerk just you know like, he was rude. He was he wouldn't answer in full sentences. And when I started to really recognize that from a developmental stage, there was so much happening. I let go, which was healthier for both of us. I let go to let go of being offended. And instead, I embraced his rudeness as being safe in a space where he could be exactly where he was in his own development. I let him know through communication that this doesn't feel good for me so I need to take care of myself because this is not feeling good and here's the stuff that's coming up for me - but it's not his.

And what you're doing by approaching it from this perspective is you're creating greater bonds and because our children are with us for such a short amount of time, really, and the greater scheme, the greater goal is to create a connected connection, a connected relationship, because, you know, you've got a 20 something. I've got a 20 something now and what has created this bond, this connection from those really, really difficult times was the commitment to staying connected, the commitment to being authentic, the commitment to rolling up our sleeves and doing the work when it was really, really uncomfortable. And that means us as parents being fallible, us as parents showing our own struggles and communicating. And that creates the connection and the bond. And it models so that when they start creating adult relationships, they know how to communicate. And they're not afraid of those tough moments because they have the practice and the experience. So our goal as parents is to stay connected. How do we move into it if we've never done this? Through openness, authenticity, and vulnerability. Those are the spaces where we create bonds. Love, too.

But a lot of parents believe, I love my child. That's enough. I don't have to do anything. They should respect me because I'm the parent right? They should love me because I gave birth to them and I provide for them. And that kind of entitled thinking does not recognize where the human being that you're in relationship with is in this moment.

Think about how you would treat a partner that you've chosen to be in a relationship with, right? Versus, you know, there's, there's a totally different dynamic there. If we looked at our children, you know, through those lenses of respect, like you would never tell your partner, you didn't make your bed, you know, I ripped off the blankets, do it again, and do it right. You would never say that to your husband or wife or partner. Like who does that? Right? If you do that, then you need to really look at, you know, this is a good behavior.

But why do parents feel justified to create that kind of dynamic between themselves and their children? A lot of times parents are strapped for time. They just don't feel like they have the time and that is the curse of Western parenting. I get it, I don't have an answer for, you know, how to make ends meet and...be present for your children at the same time. I don't know, but I do know once we prioritize, we don't step away from doing hard work just because it's hard. We have a greater opportunity to really work in partnership.

 

Ann

Well, and it does. I love what you said about understanding where they are developmentally and having, you know, more respect for that and maybe more empathy for that. And so that helps you not to maybe take these things so personally and not to let them rub you the wrong way.

And I think it's, you know, we expect our kids and kids in general to just like lay down and let us be their ruler and tell them what to do. And then we're shocked when they push back.

And we, you know, as they get older and they reach adolescence with a time when they want to be even more autonomous than they have. And we start pushing even harder to try to make them do what they should do. I mean, it's no wonder it blows up in our face and things go to hell in a handbasket.

 

Ann

Well, yeah, and you said you said something earlier about your values and how instead of having rules that you and your son, for instance, had just discussed your values and just went off that so that if something, you know, went against your values or his values that you discussed it and you did do it. Explain more about that, like how parents would approach that with their teens rather than having rules, because what I've always said is, you know, you have to discuss everything at least, you know, if there's going to be a rule, it needs to be a rule agreed upon between you and your child and the reasons for it need to be discussed and everybody's you know, concerns need to be discussed. But taking that further then and just talking about values, how is that different and what would you do? How would you do that?

 

Lainie

Sure. And I never answered your question directly about what do you do if teens like do drugs or want to have sex or drink or stuff. So I answered it, but I didn't really address that. So the one of the ways, and it's going to answer the values part two, one of the ways again, that my son and I created our family culture was to define our core values.

 

Ann

Oh. Well, go ahead.

 

Lainie Liberti

And I've got a couple of exercises to do that in my book. The first way is to really pull apart with some, I've got 13 questions, but to pull apart those answers and distill them into the core values that you're currently living. Because it's important to know, what values am I currently living? I've never defined it, but I hold these things dear. Here are my ethical choices and here are the things that I currently do.

And that gives teens pretty much or anybody doing this a pretty big aha moment. Like, oh, yeah, I always knew freedom was important to me. But yeah, through the evidence of what I'm living. Yes, I am already living this value. And here are the ways and you can see that these tools. But the other aspect is so there's the evidence based values that you're currently living. And then there's the challenge to create a set of five core values that are aspirational, that you wish to start integrating into your life. And so when you're living your life with this scaffolding of 10 values, you're very clear on what you're going to do. Is this opportunity that's coming my way? Is this in alignment with freedom, individuality, consent, equality, creativity, and whatever the other stuff is. It's pretty clear when things are in alignment and it's pretty clear when things are not in alignment. Having these conversations in your family, one of the exercises that I challenge families to do is to create a diagram. Here's this child's core values. Here's this child's core values. Here's this parent's core values. And we can see in a pie chart on the refrigerator what everybody's core values are. And that gives us the visual reminder. And then together through a family meeting, define what are the core values of the family and have that conversation. And they could be different. They could be overlapping or the same. And that helps in a really big way.

 

Ann

Yeah.

 

Lainie Liberti

And so when there are challenges and understanding from a developmental perspective, yes, you're right, children, when they hit adolescence, they're starting the process of preparing to be an adult. So when teens or when children move into their adolescence, their biological wiring is really heading them down a path of starting to individuate. They are preparing for adulthood. And it's that simple. And because also the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed. It's very difficult for them to process and project what potential consequences of choices may be. So if you as a parent in partnership understand that you can help them unpack some of these potential consequences of their choices. Now, risk taking is a part of adolescents. And in fact, I don't know if you've read anything by Dr. Peter Gray, he's an evolutionary psychologist. He talks about the role throughout history, throughout human evolution of adolescents on humanity. And they're there to be idealistic, to make social changes and create movements uh, you know, tap into their idealism and make changes in the world. That the adolescent years are magic. They're pure magic and us as parents, we cannot fear these changes. We need to embrace them no matter how uncomfortable they are, because the more that we try and control and keep our children small, the more of a disservice we are doing for them individually and the world as a whole.

 

Ann

I never thought of it that way. That's a brilliant way to look at it.

 

Lainie Liberti

So true. This is part of the reason why I love teens. I love it because what a magical time in their life. Now it is natural for them to experiment and you as a parent have got to create safe spaces where these topics are not taboo. I grew up in the 60s. My parents were hippies. There was always pot smoke in the house. I can have a very logical and rational conversation about cannabis and I'm not a user probably because my parents were.

But those are conversations that I can have with my child and have had. I have some belief systems around marijuana cannabis use, but primarily I believe it's up to the individual. However. After the age of 25 in this particular circumstance. And the reason being is cannabis or marijuana inhibits some of the brain development that I would not want to have as the outcome just because my child decided that he liked this thing and wanted to use. Now experimentation is another thing and create the safe spaces around that because experimentation and social use is a common part of a child's adolescent experience.

But if it moves into numbing using narcotics or any substance to numb, or if it moves into the fourth stage of addiction, these absolutely 100% you need to intervene and do something about that. I'm not pro-drinking and anti-smoking or pro-smoking. It just, it, they're, they all deserve a conversation and letting your children know that the consequences, even though commonly pot is used among teens, one or two times and casual use is not a massive problem, but you don't want to, you know, get into a habit or be in an environment where you're using that because you are affecting the consequence of your brain development is too big to play with during this time.

 

Ann

Well, and I think when it becomes a problem is when the parents make it a problem like I did, because I think, you know, when you freak out at the first sign of it and instead of looking at it, maybe as experimental or whatever, but you freak out and that fear drives, you know, your control over the child. That's when you, I mean, I kind of created a lot of the problems there. So.

 

Lainie Liberti

Yes. And here's the thing too. If you have a family that values health and one of your family values, you know, is about really being healthy and it may not be everybody's family, that's okay too. The conversation can be, look, I'm not telling you what to do. You're going to be in circumstances and when you're 18 and you're an adult or you move out of the house at 20 or, you know, 27, whenever that is, you're going to be forced to make choices on your own. So I understand that's part of being a human, but please recognize here's some of the consequences you may not know. Please recognize that we're considering these consequences, but we're also not going to judge or punish you with experimentation, but come back, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. So you've got to know your position and you've got to understand that every human being has the right to autonomy to their body. And if it moves into a dangerous situation like numbing out or addiction, you absolutely need to intervene as you would with a partner. Would you not? So you care and love the person, but make sure the communication is open.

 

Ann

And so establishing those values within each individual in the family and then the family values, the conversation then takes on a wholly different tone than you are not going to do this.

I don't know if you've had experience with families who have just interjected this, like in the middle of adolescence, where they just then start talking about their values and start kind of doing a reverse on all the rules and the more authoritarian mindset. Have you seen that? Is that possible?

 

Lainie Liberti

It is possible. I'm working with a family now actually who had a very traditional structure in their household. They had rules about like technology use, and that tends to be a trigger for a lot of families. And they had rules about all sorts of things, right? And when we switch the family to...values based connection versus rules based parenting. Things shifted and yes, there was greater ease around creating boundaries around expectations with technology. Now, one of the kids that I'm working with, one of his, he's 12, one of his big values is learning and education.

 

And he finds it very, very difficult for him to self-monitor his time on technology. And so the mom, instead of saying, the rule is you've got two hours and it's up, instead of approaching it from that way, she now approaches it as, you know, I'm here to support you so that you can live in alignment with your value for education. And I know that you've been gaming for two hours and now it's time for me to support you in shifting your attention to this. And they work on that together. So that approach is very, very different. You know, stop, do this now because I said so, or how can I partner with you so you can get your needs met, your desires, your values, you know, and you may have a blind spot or you have not developed the skill yet. So I'm standing in to support you to do that. Yeah, it's different.

 

Ann

Oh my gosh, I'm smiling so big because I just think that how much of a difference that could make in so many families lives to approach things that way.

 

Ann

Does all of this not make so much sense to you? Parenting, especially during the teen years, should be a collaborative effort, between you and your teen, built on your family’s values and individual values – respecting the human you’re helping to grow up to be true to themselves and who they were meant to be.

This builds connection, which is how you will earn your teen’s respect – not through demanding it. As Lanie pointed out, we’re not entitled to their respect simply by virtue of being their parent.

Of course, as Lanie said, it’s a lot harder and takes a lot more time and can be really uncomfortable to parent in a more authentic, open, and vulnerable space. But what partnership doesn’t take work, right?

Lanie’s book, Seen, Heard and Understood, Parenting and Partnering with Teens for Greater Mental Health. The title says it all – your teen just wants to be seen, heard, and understood. If you can give them that, you’re definitely winning at this parenting thing. In her book she gives you tools to help you deal with your own emotions and change your beliefs about parenting, she dispels the myths about teens by giving the psychological and developmental reasons for their behavior and helps you reframe your perspective. Lanie says to read the book and say to your teen, hey, I'm reading this book. It's about supporting teens. It's about partnership, but I've been challenged to do this internal work myself and share it with you. She says this is one way you can create spaces for connection through vulnerability and trust.

I’ll have the link to the book and for how you can connect with and see what Lanie does in Project World School, in the show notes.

That’s it for Speaking of Teens today. I hope you know how much I appreciate you being here with me and I hope I’m helping you even if just a little bit, to parent your teens in a more fulfilling way. If so, please consider hitting that share button and sending it to a friend or spread the word in a Facebook group or two.

Speaking of Facebook groups – you can join mine by scrolling to the bottom of the episode description, right there in your app.

Until next time, remember, a little change, goes a long way.