Owning Your Identity | Episode 32
Episode 32: From Autism Diagnosis to College Freshman
Owning Your Identity.
This episode continues the archival interviews I conducted with my son while writing Raising Superman as he approached the end of his Young Tree stage and prepared for the transition into college and emerging adulthood.
In Episode 32, we discuss the evolution of the identity I originally gave him and what happened when he began deciding for himself who he was.
But listening to this conversation now through the lens of the Village Engagement Matrix™, I hear something else.
I hear the progression of my parenting across developmental phases.
During the Explorer Phase, when children are between 2–4 years old, my job was to study my child.
And I did.
I observed his interests, preferences, attachments, strengths, sensitivities, communication, and the unique way he experienced the world.
As I tell him in this interview:
“You were my favorite thing to study.”
What I learned during the Explorer Phase gave me information I could use as I moved into Architect Phase I, where part of my work was intentionally supporting his social-emotional development and helping him build a strong sense of identity.
That’s where Super Kid mattered.
As a young child, my son had to work extremely hard to develop certain skills.
I called each new skill a “superpower” and gave him an identity rooted in strength:
Super Kid.
But eventually, Super Kid wasn’t enough for him.
He decided he was Super Duper Kid because, in his words, it “sounds a lot stronger inside.”
Then “epic” became one of his favorite words, so he changed his identity again:
Super Duper Epic Kid.
And he was serious about it.
If someone called him by an earlier name, he corrected them.
I had given him language for his identity.
Now he was taking ownership of it.
As we moved into Architect Phase II, the interests, preferences, and strengths I had spent years observing became information I could use to help him further develop his abilities and begin considering how his interests might eventually help him establish his place in the world.
That is one of the things I appreciate most about the Village Engagement Matrix™:
The phases build upon one another.
I studied the child in front of me.
I used what I learned to help build his identity.
Then I used what I knew about his identity, interests, and strengths to help create opportunities for him to develop.
Today, as an Oak Tree, the ownership that began all those years ago is firmly established.
No one gets to tell my son who he is.
He knows exactly who he is.
He determines his identity, what matters to him, what he values, what he needs, and how he wants to move through the world.
And I absolutely love that about him.
Through the lens of the Village Engagement Matrix™, I can see the developmental progression clearly:
Explorer Phase: I learned him.
Architect Phase I: I helped him build.
Architect Phase II: I helped him develop what he discovered about himself.
Oak Tree: He owns it.
I gave him language for his identity.
He made the meaning his own.
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