Consent is a practice
Chapter 15 of my book
This is Chapter 14 of my book, Expanding Consent, all about the ways we live in with our children in a consent-based way, and how this expands out into the other places we inhabit and the world at large. It is free to read for all subscribers, but please consider supporting my work by sharing or becoming a paid member.
You can catch up on previous the chapters here.
Chapter Fifteen
Consent is a practice (aka, the dynamics of consent)
It’s a practice
As I write this, we are in Sicily where my family spends the summer. I have just finished making lunch for my children, and am looking back at the way things spiraled gradually out of control this morning.
The children and I went out on the boat with my sister and her family, my parents, and another family member. It was wonderful – we all swam and paddle-boarded and had a great time. The breeze was just right, the water clear and cool.
What happened next doesn’t really matter, as much as how I reacted to it. Leo got tipped over on the paddle board and he was scared and angry – he hates feeling out of control or forced into something. He went into fight mode and almost hit his uncle with an oar, then paddled off to burn off steam. When he came back, he felt better but he was still annoyed and short with everyone. Decisions were made about how to get home and the kids and I decided my dad would row us back to shore and we’d walk home.
So off we went. Except once we had climbed up the cliff, Leo told me he’d struggled with that decision and wanted to go back to the boat. I know this was the spiral, tightening its grip on us. He started panicking that he wanted to go back. I reacted with fear and annoyance – because meanwhile, it was hot, and Phoebe and I just wanted to start walking home. I was afraid he’d put himself in danger by trying to swim back to the boat, and I wasn’t going to try to get him back there myself because I didn’t feel he’d be safe on a boat right now, without me.
This is such an ordinary dynamic (well, apart from the boating element!), and yet I just didn’t know what to do. My annoyance had been simmering all day, and it all came out. I raised my voice and told him the world didn’t revolve around him, there were others to consider, and had anyone asked me what I wanted to do?
Of course I rationally knew this was a ridiculous thing to say – I’m perfectly capable of advocating for my own needs and even if I’m not, it’s not anyone else’s job! And on I went, until he got quiet, and Phoebe started walking ahead towards the house.
I was angry. And just so you know, I held it together, overall. There has been worse screaming than this. But I recognized it came, deep down, from a sense that if I couldn’t force my child to do what I needed him to do (come home, not put himself in danger), then what else could I do? I felt powerless. If he’d been a toddler walking off a cliff, I could have grabbed him. And if he’d been trying to hurt someone else, I would have physically intervened of course. But was I going to manhandle him at the top of a rocky cliff? Nope.
And here is what I always think in these situations: we can, theoretically, use physical force, or coercion, with our children. We are literally sanctioned and encouraged by society to do so. But when they grow up and are finally free of our manipulation (physical and other), what then? How will we make them do the ‘right’ thing then? What will our relationship look like, when it was rooted in a lack of consent, when it was one-sided, and we are no longer physically stronger? When we have have no more chips to bargain?
Eventually I too started walking towards home. I hadn’t physically hurt Leo, but I had obviously hurt him with my words.
I am writing this down because sometimes, what stops us from rooting ourselves in consent is a deep, terrifying fear that we will lose control. Fear our child will come to harm, or harm others. And so instead, we hurt them.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
But also, sometimes it will be.
When we returned home, Phoebe told me she hated being in the middle of fights. And then she told me I needed to calm myself, and suggested something that worked for her. I gave Leo some space, and then I approached him where he was sitting, sat down and said, “I said some hurtful things earlier, and it wasn’t the right thing to do. I want to apologise for saying those things.”
We spoke a bit about what I could have done in that moment – and he told me he would never have put himself in danger. He was struggling, and he was doing the best he could in that moment. Berating him for being the way he is was never going to help. It never does.
This is one recent example, but I can think of a million like this throughout my over 13 years of parenting. Messing up is normal, we’re human.
I would rather be a human parent than a perfect one. I would rather my children knew me as entirely flawed, but trying. I would rather they heard me apologise when I make mistakes. I would rather all of this than trying to present an inscrutable, perfect façade that they would eventually, in the very near future, be able to see right through.
We’ve talked about cultures of consent, and we’ve looked at some of the ways consent means honouring our children’s sovereignty and wholeness. We’ve also looked at consent as collaboration.
But perhaps it still feels so sticky, on a day to day basis - perhaps you too, are having moments like the one I described above.
We don’t have scripts, and we don’t have models and it’s all so vague and difficult.
And partially, that’s because consent isn’t something we are or even do, it’s something we practice.
Much to everybody’s disappointment, I don’t have THE model, or script, or recipe, or parenting hack that will make everything easy and streamlined.
I don’t have it because it doesn’t exist. There is no one method that will fit everybody, and no one way that all your struggles will evaporate.
I recognize the yearning within myself, and perhaps within you too, to find a model, a method, a definitive answer that will forever guide us in how to live in relationship.
But the truth is, when people tell us they have the keys, we need to ask ourselves whether they really do, or whether they are simply preying on our feelings of loneliness, confusion and desperation.
All of that said, it’s worth looking deeper at some frameworks of consent, some ways we interact and build trust and relationship, and some of the ways that feel solid and concrete for us to relate to, talk to, partner with our children and young people. Some of the things we could incorporate into our consent practice.
Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent
Much of what we know about consent within relationships comes from educators who have worked in the field of consent between adults, specifically adults in intimate relationships or sex education.
As such, we are still very much developing a consent practice in the context of parent and child, or adult and child, and in a broader context of all relationships. This is on-going and will constantly be open to being challenged and re-conceptualised.
While some of this knowledge isn’t transferrable to adult relationships with children, some of it may work when we’re considering relationships between siblings or between one or more children.
Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent frames consent as 4 quadrants of a wheel: One half is about giving and doing, the other is about receiving and having something done-to. This framing matters when we’re talking about authentic, embodied consent, especially bodily autonomy-related consent, with our children. And it helps set the scene for the various relationships our children will have as they grow.
Martin sees each quadrant as “innate” and crucial to access in order to be in relationship with others. Each quadrant has ways it can be accessed by centering consent, and potential to be misused and to violate consent.
This Wheel is for us, not necessarily for our children. Martin breaks down the quadrants like this:
One quadrant is about doing what we want (you are taking)
One quadrant is about doing what another person wants/needs (you are serving them)
One quadrant is about the other person doing something you need/want (and you are receiving it)
One quadrant is about the other person doing what they want (and you are allowing them to).
This Wheel might be a helpful tool when we are talking to our children about their relationship to siblings, or peers, or when we’re negotiating consent between sibings or children.
Why does it matter that we break consent down in giving, receiving, taking and allowing?
In practice, it doesn’t. We can practice consent and not ever have to understand these dynamics or give them names. I have never spoken to my children about Martin’s Wheel and maybe I never will!
The way this has been useful for me, is that when interactions between my children, or perhaps even between myself and another adult, are happening – I can notice what is going on. Am I giving or receiving? If I’m receiving, am I able to ask for what I want? Am I able to say no? If I am taking, am I able to hear no from the other person? If I’m allowing someone to take from me, is this intentional or is it happening without my consent?
The more I begin to look at interactions from this lens, the more I am able to become conscious of whether I’m willingly receiving or accepting, whether I’m taking and the other person is willingly giving, or whether I’m giving and the other person is receiving something they want, or accepting something I want.
Generosity v. self-sacrifice
It highlights that when we give something we are sometimes giving it because we want to give it, and other times because the other person wants to receive it. Conversely, when we are taking something we might be taking it because we need or want it, or because we have agreed to accept it.
Not all giving, and not all receiving, has the same dynamics of consent baked in.
When I ask my child if they want to help me fold laundry, am I asking them to do it as a gift to me? Or am I asking them to do it because they actually want to do it? Either way, the laundry gets folded – but the texture of the action changes radically. It’s either for me, and I am willingly receiving it. Or it’s for my child, and they are doing it because they truly wanted to do it, not as a gift to me. Which am I more comfortable with? Probably the latter. Which is it though, mostly? I’ll wager that many times it is the former.
This matters because although the action (folding laundry) looks exactly the same, the motivation, and the way the action lands and impacts them and me, is different.
Marcia Baczynski writes about generosity and self-sacrifice, and how the two things can sometimes be confused even though the dynamic is very different. I talk about and hopefully model to my children the ways in which being generous can be beautiful, because it comes from a place of feeling good, of wholeness. Self-sacrifice, on the other hand, can be about ignoring our own needs and can ultimately feed anger and resentment; self-sacrifice is also necessary though, at times, and I think it’s a really sticky thing that doesn’t fit within a binary of good/bad as easily as we might think.
Saying no and Hearing no
While humans are wired to connect, many of us are also wired to rebel, to speak out, to see injustice and to resist.
Consent-based culture not only makes space for rebellion and dissent, but actively encourages it. This is hard. It takes courage on everyone’s part. It is also viable to different degrees based on the sort of environment you find yourself in and the kind of privilege you hold. This might work well in a family setting, and less well in a school one. But I still believe it’s an important element and cannot be left out of an understanding of consent culture.
Encouraging speaking out reinforces our commitment to consent as a choice made without fear of repercussions of any kind. It demonstrates to our children that we truly mean it when we say there will be no consequences, that they can show up as their authentic selves. It also creates an environment where hierarchies of power are held loosely, and are more likely to be disrupted, questioned, and shifted.
Mutuality is at the core of dissent, because if we want our young people to feel comfortable saying no, we need to be able to receive no. Our children’s no is often framed as ‘bad behavior,’ when in fact it is often simply an expression of unmet needs, and sometimes an outright act of resistance to a situation that feels oppressive.
Our children’s rebellion is them saying, I deserve to be an equal partner. I also deserve respect.
We need to be ready to hear this as an act of courageous resistance, rather than willful disobedience. Erica Scott talks about how “hearing no graciously”, and being okay with it, is a practice – it can feel really confronting initially, but it gets easier as we keep trying. And knowing we can hear no and be okay with it, also encourages people to say no, and to learn to ask for what they DO want. It is crucial in nurturing the mutuality and partnership aspect of our relationships.
Showing our children we can accept no graciously, also sets them up to recognize a no when they see or hear one from a sibling or peer, and accept it. It sets them up to say no and stand up for themselves, and to respect when others do too.
Asking for what we want
Many of us were not socialised to ask for what we need or want – we were perhaps raised believing that we needed to go with the flow, not make waves, not speak up, not rock the boat. That expressing who we are would make people feel uncomfortable. Or perhaps we grew up believing all manner of things about what we deserve, about what we are allowed to ask for, about how we should be treated.
As someone who masked for decades, I can relate to this. For neurodivergent folk, unmasking might be a part of this process of disruption of what is considered the “norm” for behavior.
For many of us, especially those socialised as women, it is incredibly hard if not terrifying to ask for what we want. After all, mothers aren’t supposed to want things! We’re supposed to find endless joy and satisfaction in the act of mothering, we aren’t supposed to want or ask for more.
Learning to ask for what we need or desire is part of practicing consent, and it’s most definitely a learned skill. It is something we can model for our children, and support them in doing first with us at home, and then with others.
The window of tolerance & consent
Many of us grew up not knowing we could say no, but blaming ourselves for the ways our nervous system reacted to feeling unsafe when our bodies were telling us no, but we weren’t either able to, or willing to, say no.
Understanding nervous system responses to the ways we interact with others and practice consent, is really crucial.
I love the graphic below by Katherine Yeagel because it incorporates the window of tolerance idea, popularised by psychiatrist and author Dan Siegel, AND an understanding of consent practice.
We can talk to our children about their nervous system reactions, how it feels to be in the comfort zone, how we expand our window of tolerance by practicing moving into the learning zone, and when and how we know we’re about to go over the edge. I talk to my children about how when we are in our comfort zone it’s easy to say yes, and also that moving outside of our comfort zones might often feel like maybe territory, but has the potential to also become a yes (or a no, depending).
Maybe means maybe
In a culture that loves a good binary, maybe is often not considered a full sentence. Except that it is. Sometimes that is precisely what we want to convey – we don’t know, we’re not sure, maybe.
A lot of mainstream consent education teaches that maybe means no - and while I understand why this is taught, and I recognise that sometimes maybe does mean no, I think we should assume that maybe means exactly what the person said: maybe.
Consent practice doesn’t always mean taking a stand in one way or another. It can also mean that we don’t have an opinion, that we’re still forming one, that we don’t feel we can say either yes or no in that moment.
Messing up and making it right
Apologies and making things are crucial to living in consent-based-ness, because it’s hard, and you WILL mess up.
In our family we don’t force apologies, but we do listen to needs and we do talk about how important it is to make things right. Making it right might look like asking the person who was hurt what they need to feel better. There was a point in time when my children would say, “I need you to not do it again!” to each other. And while this is valid, we talked about how it’s unrealistic to expect someone to never make the same mistake again, while it might be more realistic to expect them to show signs they are practicing ways to avoid hurting them again.
It’s such a sticky place because on the one hand, making it right often holds several things: the intention to make the person we have hurt feel okay again (which isn’t always possible), as well as the expectation by that person that we will work to not repeat the same harm again and again.
This is so hard when one or both of our children are not able to change something about them - and so, for us, it has involved a lot of conversations around boundaries, what we are willing to accept in the other person, and what feels reasonable to expect from them, as well as ways we can preserve our own personhood without controlling others.
Apologising
We also talk about what an apology looks like, should anyone want to give one. Apologising to my children is almost a spiritual practice for me, and trust me, as much as I’d like to be I’m not particularly spiritual!
Saying I’m sorry, and how can I do better, is me showing up for my children as my full, human, flawed self, admitting that I don’t always do the right thing, and that I am trying. It is some of the most vulnerable moments I’ve experienced.
Harriet Lerner writes extensively about apologising, and one thing she says that stuck with me is: Get your but out of your apology.
In other words, a heartfelt apology does not sound like, “I’m sorry I shouted, but (insert explanation/justification of why you shouted.”
It’s not that I don’t explain myself - I do, if it feels relevant. But in the moment of apologising, I try to focus on my child and on expressing my regret. At a later moment, or perhaps immediately after if my child wants to talk more, I might offer an explanation of why things went south.
I love this advice because it means that the person being apologised too is centred, and doesn’t have to take on whatever you might have been going through, even if it’s totally valid. In that moment, it’s irrelevant.
Changing your mind and receiving no
Some time ago, when we lived in a walkable neighbourhood, some children came round to ask Leo if he wanted to play. He wasn’t home and his sister said he would come play later.
When Leo got back, Phoebe told him what had happened and he said he would go play after lunch. Lunch done with, Leo decided he didn’t want to go play.
Phoebe reminded him he said he would do it, and Leo said, “I changed my mind,” and then we chatted a bit about why it is absolutely okay to say you will do a thing, and then later, even shortly after, change your mind. It is SO okay. That is what autonomy can look like, and it works both ways.
Understanding this, and accepting it, is a practice we could all engage with.
In parallel, we talk about the sort of effect that changing your mind might have, when perhaps you’ve committed to helping someone out, or made an important commitment of some kind. There are lots of flavours of changing our minds, and while it is always okay, we also need to be willing to face any potential consequences.
The problem with FRIES
FRIES is an acronym that is commonly used around consent, particularly in the context of bodily autonomy and intimate relationships. It stands for Freely given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic, Specific.
There is some merit in this model, but in the context of living in consent-based relationship with our young people, I think it falls short and is flawed.
For one, it doesn’t openly consider consent as an agreement betweent two or more people, and it frames consent as fundamentally transactional, or as giving permission.
In addition, we’ve discussed the way that ‘informed’ can be very subjective and there’s no one way to define it. We may assume that children cannot be informed, but that assumption might be rooted in adultism and flawed conceptions of children. We’ve also see how consent is not always enthusiastic.
People might say “well negative consent isn’t really consent”. And sure, it doesn’t come across as consent, initially. But I do think that in practice, this is how we conduct ourselves much of the time. You stand in line at the post office not because you love it, but because it’s an expectation and a rule and you want to be able to post your letter, and you care about fairness in general, and so you consent to it.
Children’s right to silence
We are so consumed by this image of giving children a voice (which has something decidedly savioury about it), and of eliciting children’s active participation, that we tend to forget that children also have a right to silence.
As parents and educators, we tend to encourage our children to speak up, express themselves, “use words”to show us what they feel, need and want. The focus is increasingly on verbal communication, talking, expressing.
As people who care about children’s rights, we also over-focus on children’s right to take verbal action of some sort. We talk about children being ‘silenced’ and needing to break out of this. And for sure, children have historically been “seen and not heard.”
In her paper, Caroline Bligh looks at how to interpret children’s rights from a perspective of the right to silence. She focuses on things like non-verbal communication, which in some cultures and for some groups of people is more relevant than verbal communication.
Bligh makes the point that often the focus of educators on verbal communication transforms this from a right to be heard, to something children must learn how to do. No longer is speaking up a right, and a choice - it is now often a top-down demand.
Silence, Bligh remarks, is increasingly seen as a negative thing. A silent child needs cajoling, pushing, changing. In her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a world that can’t stop talking, Susan Caine writes: “The truth is that many schools are designed for extroverts,” and that often silence or quietness is seen as a lack of some sort, something that parents and teachers need to help a child overcome or grow out of.
Some of this is a problem with Western culture. We tend to see silence as a problem, or a sign something is wrong, when in many other cultures listening is praised above speaking, and silence is not perceived as awkward or a failure of expression (Tobin et al, 1989; Asa & Barnlund, 1998). Rather than being an absence, silence can be seen as a space to think, dream, ponder and create space for emotions.
Bligh asks, “Has the child who exercises their UNCRC right to be silent been neglected?”
This has led me to see my children’s choice to be silent from a different lens. Less as a lack of communication, and more as their fundamental choice and right. As another way of communicating something - and an invitation to become more attuned to what it is they are communicating.
It has also allowed me to make space for silence in our daily lives. This isn’t hard for me - I’m totally an introvert! But it has lessened the guilt I’ve sometimes felt around not always engaging with my children, and helped me see that our comfortable silences, are full of joy and meaning.
You don’t actually have to say “consent”
Sarah Casper talks about how the word “consent” can be unhelpful when modeling or talking about consent practices, because practicing consent is not just one thing – it is many.
And so, we really don’t ever need to use the word with our children! In fact in some cases it might just be confusing and unhelpful. I don’t actually use the word consent much. As my children grow, we’ve explored what the word might mean, but for a long while we talked in very practical terms about the actual dynamics of consent-based-ness without every saying the word ‘consent’.
Next chapter, I’m going to go a bit deeper into some of the processes we have used to make consent-based decision-making. These might be helpful between siblings or in small groups of young people, as well as at home with your family.
Thank you for reading!
Any questions, pop them below.
Fran x
References
Bligh, Caroline (2011) Rights in Early Years Settings and a Young Child’s Right to Silence.
Scott, E. & Baczynski, M. Creating Consent Culture.
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