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Well, summer has come and gone, and now we’re back to the grind of school. With “back to school” being the current mantra, I thought I’d share an article about getting “back to basics” of parenting. It was written by Nicole Hoffman, who is a psychologist in Long Grove, Illinois, and is a fellow member of the North American Society of Adlerian Psychology (that’s the kind of therapy and parenting philosophy I work with). It’s a great overview of how to recognize when we’re starting to get so befuddled by parenting rules and challenges, that we can’t see the forest for the trees.
7 Principles for Getting Back to the Basics of Parenting
In my practice as a family therapist, I am often asked for the “right answer” to parenting questions involving children starting kindergarten later so that they are at the top of their class, or it is worthwhile to send children to private school or to move to a better school district so children will be at an advantage for getting into a good college, be successful, etc. These are not questions about good parenting practices but rather questions related to values about being “the best”, which permeates today’s culture. In this culture of having it all, we define ourselves by what we have and tend to compare ourselves to others’ accomplishments and possessions. These beliefs leave many parents feeling guilty that they are not giving their children enough of an advantage or the things that they “need” and miss the boat regarding what children really need from their parents. Below are 7 principles that will help us get back to the basics of raising children with internalized human worth and value. These principles place the focus on social and emotional connectedness to community rather than on achievements and material possessions as conditions for character and worth.
1. What Do You Value? Take some time alone and as a marital couple/parenting unit and ask yourselves the tough questions: “What do we value?” “What meaning do we make of our lives?” “What do we want our children to value as adults?” “What personality characteristics do we want our children to possess as an adult?” and “How do we translate these beliefs/goals into everyday living/parenting?” For every challenging parenting decision you make, take out your list and question whether your decision is consistent with your values and goals for your children. Ask yourself, if I do ____________, what message am I sending my child?
2. Community Begins at Home. Have regular family meeting to discuss and plan important aspects related to family living. Who is responsible for household chores? (Money for chores sends children the message that they are entitled to get something for their contribution to the family, not an internalized sense of cooperation and contribution). Plan regularly scheduled family fun time. Allow for time to resolve difficulties family members may be experiencing. Anchor family decision back to the values defined above and use the values to help children with decision-making.
3. Natural and Logical Consequences. Utilize these so that children learn the relatedness of their behaviours to consequences in their social every-day world. This will allow them to internalize the rules of life rather than react to rules because an authority figure is evaluating their behaviours. Remember that the word discipline means to teach or lead, not bribe and reward. Yelling and spanking model power and control in relationships. Bribing and giving children things as contingencies for positive behaviour teaches children to behave if they are given something. Consistent and firm teaching leads to socially and emotionally healthy people.
4. Actions Speak Louder than Words (or Practice What You Preach). Children do what you do, not what you say. Model in your every-day life the values and characteristics you listed as important for your family and your child to develop. If you model respect, you will get respect. If you model power (through yelling, threatening, and bribing) you will promote power struggles with your children.
5. Don’t Focus on Keeping Up with the Jones’. Like the saying goes, “If everyone else jumped in a lake, would you?” Base your parenting decisions on your values, not as a means to measure yourself or your children against others. This will teach your children that decisions are based upon internalized convictions, not as a way for them to feel better about themselves by having or doing what others do.
6. Effort versus Achievement. Children are encouraged, demonstrate greater perseverance, choose more challenging tasks, and discover internalized accomplishment when parents/teachers focus on effort (“You worked really hard in math, I’m proud of you”) versus achievement (“You received an A, I’m proud of you” or “You received an A, here is 10 dollars”).
7. Model the Importance of Relationships and Emotions. Limit the amount of passive play a child experiences through television and video games, and focus on relationship with family and friends. Allow your children to express emotion, help them label emotion, and learn to cope with emotion.
Kids like to talk on the phone. As a parent, it can be tough to get a word in edge-wise. With the proliferation of cell phones, some of this stress may have been eased…only to be replaced by a new kind of stress when the cell bill arrives.
The (almost) endless chitchatting provides an important connection to kids’ social world; until they are able to drive themselves to friends’ houses or even walk there alone, talking by phone is the next best thing to help them stay in touch. And we all know how important kids’ friends are to them.
If you’re finding that your calls aren’t getting through, or homework and other responsibilities are starting to suffer because of the amount of talk time your child is engaging in, this is a good opportunity to use the family meeting. Have a conversation at your meeting about what’s fair and reasonable use of the phone, and work together to set boundaries.
As long as all responsibilities are being met, you might not be worried about the actual number of minutes on the phone. But if not sharing or abandonment of the outside world is starting to become the norm, perhaps it’s time to voice your concerns and work as a team to come up with an acceptable plan.
You might consider call limits (such as no more than 20 minutes per call). Or perhaps there’s a “curfew”, as in no calls past 9 or 10pm. Maybe you don’t worry too much about the length or frequency of the calls, as long as you know that the call waiting is answered and calls for you are a sign to hand the phone to you.
This is a great opportunity to teach kids about respect and community living, as well as problem solving. If everyone in the house has a right to use the phone, then it’s important that the right be respected by finding a solution everyone can live with.
Sometimes kids’ bodies grow faster than their brain is equipped to handle it. You may have noticed your young teen seems more gangly and uncoordinated lately, especially following a growth spurt. It can take the brain a little while to catch up to the new bigger, stronger body, and in the meantime, tripping, spilling, and bumping are all too common.
Encourage your child not to give up on physical tasks (like a new sport) too easily, not to throw in the towel because of feeling awkward and uncoordinated. This is usually a phase kids pass through within a year or two, so the perseverance they show now will reward them soon.
When the milk gets knocked off the dinner table for the eighth night in a row, it can be tough to maintain your sense of humour. Point out what’s going on without anger or an attempt to humiliate or shame: "Slow down and think about what you’re doing." Help them to think through what they’re doing and plan their actions so that they’re more in control of their bodies and their behaviour.
And try not to lose your cool as that third picture gets knocked off the wall by the shoulder of a teen rushing by. Remember, he’s not doing it on purpose…and it’s ok to gently remind him to put it back up and fix it himself.
Have you noticed that your teen doesn’t seem to notice — or care — too much about you?
You’re struggling up the driveway with an armful of groceries, and she sails right by without a word. You’re drowning in laundry, and he starts rooting through the pile for a particular shirt, grumbles when it isn’t clean, then saunters out of the room without a backward glance.
Day in and day out, there seem to be examples of your teen’s total lack of interest in the work you’re doing to keep the household running, and in your feelings and desires in general. How exactly are they able to disregard our needs completely (and then still have the nerve to ask for a favour)? This is a time of self-discover and new identities for kids, and if that weren’t egocentric enough, there is also compelling evidence that certain parts of their brains (namely, the ones involved in planning ahead and goal setting) are still maturing. While this process may be extremely aggravating for you, there are things you can do, that don’t involve grinning and bearing it until they reach the age of 18.
Think of this opportunity as a teachable moment, and use it to gently point out that you would really appreciate some help with the groceries or the laundry. Acknowledge when they do things that are thoughtful and helpful ("catch them being good"), and work together to find solutions for those things that are likely to turn you into a nag. Family meetings, along with natural and logical consequences, are still the best ways to go for handling these little blips on the "thoughtfulness" radar.
The reality is, a lot of us will have to deal with an ex of our own. When we share children with this ex, things can get pretty dicey.
It is critical as a parent that you remember that your child has an attachment to both of you. Bad-mouthing your ex, subtly (or not so) suggesting that your ex is not living up to his or her end of the separation bargain, bad-mouthing an ex’s new partner…all of these things may give us a momentary satisfaction, but in the long run they only add up to one thing: bad karma. What goes around comes around, and while today you may be the one scoring points for your insightful comments on your ex’s less desirable traits, it won’t be too long before your kids mature enough to realize that you don’t look so insightful anymore simply because you are the kind of person who tries to drag your kids into the middle of your relationship with their other parent.
I implore you: resist the urge.
If you’re finding this incredibly difficult to do, take a look at the book Ex-Etiquette for Parents: Good Behaviour After a Divorce or Separation by Jann Blackstone-Ford and Sharyl Jupe. Wondering what makes them experts? Jann is married to Sharyl’s ex-husband; despite starting out with some of the standard challenges co-parents face, these ladies started talking, and even eventually became friends. (Jann also has a PsyD and is a divorce and step-family mediator.) I’m not saying you need to go that far in your own relationship with your ex’s partner, but obviously they know what they’re talking about.
Here are their 10 Commandments for getting along after a divorce (love their term "bonusparent" instead of step-parent!):
Sometimes, your ex just won’t play ball, and although you may not be contributing to the badmouthing and spite, you’re still on the receiving end of it. Take a deep breath. It’s lousy, but at the end of the day, the only person’s behaviour you can control is your own, and you’ll feel better about your role in the situation if you handle yourself with integrity. And you’ll also know that you’re setting a more positive example for your kids in how to handle adversity and difficult people. Don’t stoop to your ex’s level; you’ll be glad you did.
I took my goddaughter to see the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants movie back in 05 when it came out (she was 10 at the time), and I have to say, it was all right. Obviously not geared toward me, but I still enjoyed it, in the spirit in which it was created.
So, I’m thinking of sneaking away for a few hours sometime in the next week and catching the second instalment. Purely for research purposes, of course.
How about you? Any plans to see it yourself? Maybe take your daughter (assuming she’s willing to be seen in public with you, of course…)?
Not familiar with this term? I had heard it in passing before, but there was an interesting article by Amanda Robb in the July 2008 issue of O Magazine about this style of parenting. The term was coined by former school principle Jim Fay and psychiatrist Foster Cline, MD, to describe mothers and fathers who “hover over their children”. The article begins with the story of a Missouri mom who created a fictitious boy named Josh on MySpace to “cyber-torment” her teen daughter’s former best friend. After “Josh” lead the friend along, he abruptly told her she was a bad person, everybody hated her, and that the world would be a better place without her. A few hours later, this girl hanged herself and died the next day.
Although this tragic story may be on the extreme end of the spectrum, overly-involved parents are apparently quite common: the article quotes a study done by Patricia Somers, PhD, who found that in the 60 American universities and colleges studied, “40 to 60 percent of parents engage in some type of helicoptering, such as helping with academic assignments, and as many as 10 percent actually write their children’s papers for them”.
Yikes! How’s that for preparing our kids for the real world?
Unless you want to be doing your kids’ laundry forever – which, let’s be honest, is an option you can choose – now is the time to arm them with the tools they’ll need to be a success, regardless of their age. There is a balance to be found between helicoptering and leaving our kids twisting in the wind. While a helicoptering parent prepares resumes and cover letters for her children, a democratic parent provides feedback and guidance, suggests where to look for resources to create a resume, and offers to role play interview questions. She does not call the recruiter or interviewer personally, and insist on an interview for her child.
We all want our kids to succeed. We don’t realize, though, that sometimes our best efforts undermine this success. Some helicopter parents do what they do because they feel the pressures of modern life are too much. That may be true – as the article points out, entry level wages for college grads dropped between 2001 and 2005, and the average (American) student’s debt is out of control. The problem with picking up too much of the slack for them is that then they never learn how to adjust to the realities of their life. It may not be ideal, but it’s the life and the society and the pressures we’re all dealing with now; how does protecting our kids from all of that, well into adulthood, really help them? Are these moms going to be calling their children’s employers to negotiate salaries when the “kids” are in their 50’s? When does it stop? Or does it?
Watching our children grow can be hard on parents. But we really do them a disservice if we insist on continuing to treat them as incapable children. Alfred Adler would say that pampering a child was worse than neglecting him, something helicopter parents would do well to reflect on. Instead of sending the message, “I have confidence in you – I’m here if you need me, but I know you can do it”, over-involvement may inadvertently send the message, “You can’t function without my help – you aren’t capable of running your life on your own”. Not only is it not a particularly empowering, confidence-boosting message, it doesn’t provide kids with the opportunities to experiment, practice, and learn so that they may go on to be healthy, productive adults. As parents, we can certainly recognize that life is not without its trials; are we truly preparing our kids to withstand them, or better yet, flourish in the face of them?
One important caveat is the finding by researcher George Kuh, PhD, who conducts the annual National Survey of Student Engagement. His findings demonstrate that students with involved parents “study more, have more frequent contacts with faculty, report greater gains in critical thinking during college, write more clearly, and talk to their peers more often about substantive issues than students with less involved parents.” So clearly, parents do matter.
Striking a balance doesn’t have to be difficult. The litmus test is simply: Is my child capable of handling this challenge/situation/task on her own? If she is capable but unprepared, then education is the only missing component (i.e. being capable of doing her own laundry, but simply lacking in instruction on how to actually do it). If she is not capable, the balance parents need to strike is determining how to act as a coach or consultant to help guide and provide her with important learning opportunities without taking over and furthering a reliance on someone else doing the hard stuff for her. The world of bosses, mortgages, and adult relationships is not always kind.
But it doesn’t have to be one or the other. There is a middle ground between helicoptering and neglecting, and it’s the best of both worlds for parents and children. Involved, caring, respectful, encouraging, and well aware of when to step back and let the kids do the work for themselves: the balance for great (and effective) parenting.
If you missed the article in today’s National Post about the new documentary American Teen, you might want to check it out here, and pass on the information to your kids. It’s an award-winning, Sundance favourite film following the lives of five teens from middle America. It sounds interesting…although it may hit a little too close to home for some of us!
It’s being positioned as something of a current, non-fiction version of The Breakfast Club; check out this poster:
How’s that for bringing back memories!
You can check out the trailer at the American Teen web site. Let me know your thoughts if you go to see it.
We’re all familiar with the raging hormones of teenagers, but what if you child isn’t quite a teen yet? Can we chalk up the moodiness, the irritability, the irrationality, and the emotional roller coaster to hormones?
There’s a good chance that you’re noticing some of this typically "teen" behaviour with your pre-teens. One of the things that can be affected by these hormones is sleep regulation, so not only do you have a kid who’s hormones are running rampant, but he or she may also be a bit sleep-deprived, making the whole process significantly harder to handle. For both of you.
The best thing for parents to do at this time is to remind themselves to be patient, tolerant, but not to forget about the healthy boundaries. While you may want to pick your battles, hormones is not an excuse for poor behaviour with no consequences. Physical activity has been shown to be amazingly helpful in regulating moods, so make sure that your little tempest is getting enough exercise.
How do you know when it’s more than just run-of-the-mill hormones? Consider the duration; if the moodiness and sullen behaviour has been continuing for most of the time for the better part of two weeks, you might want to consider this is more than just hormones. If your child is complaining about symptoms that seem to be particularly distressing and are beginning to impact his functioning, consider talking to a mental health professional.