Parenting Blog

"Appreciation and self-love are the most important tools that you could ever nurture. Appreciation of others, and the appreciation of yourself, is the closest vibrational match to your Source Energy of anything that we've ever witnessed anywhere in the universe." -- Abraham-Hicks

What do you do well as a parent?  Make a list. In writing, if you can.  But at least in your mind, right now.  Keep going until you have at least ten things.  Better yet, 20. 

Now give yourself credit for that list. I know, you're not perfect. Join the club.  But just for this minute, give yourself total appreciation for all the things you do right as a parent.  All those things no one else ever even notices. Savor that feeling. 

Now, for the rest of the day, every time you see yourself acting toward your child in a way that makes you feel good about yourself, give yourself an internal hug or a high five.

The times you don't feel so good about?  Let them go and move on to better interactions.

I guarantee you'll feel better and better throughout the day.  And so will your kids.

"Children learn what they live." --Dorothy Law Nolte

Today we're exploring the fourth commitment of "10 Commitments that Will Make You a More Inspired Parent -- and a Happier Person!"  (You can find details on the earlier commitments on my blog.)

 Commit to role-modeling RESPECT.

Want to raise kids who are considerate and respectful, right through the teen years?  Take a deep breath, and speak to them respectfully.  Not always easy when you’re angry, so remember the cardinal rules of managing your emotions with kids:  You’re the role model, don’t take it personally, and this too shall pass!

Should you strategically ignore mouthy behavior, from a toddler or a tween? Never.  But that doesn't mean you "crack down" with discipline, either, because that erodes your relationship with your child and makes disrespectful behavior even more likely. 

What's effective is to calmly and kindly re-establish the standard for respect, while offering the understanding that your child is obviously upset to speak like this, and as always you're there to support him.  Here's the three step strategy.

1. Monitor your own language and model respect and kindness in every interaction with your child.  If you find yourself criticizing or yelling, bite your tongue. If you need to set limits, wait until you can speak calmly and respectfully.

2. Strengthen your relationship with your child by looking for every opportunity to positively connect.  Kids think twice about hurting the feelings of parents they feel connected to.  Be sure you spend at least 15 minutes alone with each child every day, giving him your focused, positive attention. If your child lashes out at you, that's a symptom of pain that you want to address.

3. When your child speaks disrespectfully, calmly confront the behavior and re-set a clear expectation for respectful behavior while staying warmly connected to your child. Say in the kindest voice you can manage:  "Wow, your tone of voice hurts. You must be very upset to speak to me that way. That's not like you. You know I don't speak to you in that tone.  Want to tell me what's upsetting you?"  Or, if you know already, "I'm hearing that you're very angry at me right now.  I hear how much you wish I would say yes to what you're wanting. Let's talk about this when we're both more calm."

Of course, if you've been speaking to your child in a disrespectul tone (and yes, that includes yelling), this only works if you resolve now to stop.  Just start catching yourself in the middle of yelling, and closing your mouth.  Walk out of the room if you need to ("I'm sorry I'm yelling.  I don't want us to speak to each other this way.  I need to take a few minutes to calm down and then we'll try again.")

Notice that we're teaching kids how to be in relationship with another person.  If we ignore their disrespect, we teach them it's ok to treat others that way.  If we react disrespectfully to their rudeness, we role model disrespectful behavior and insure that it will continue. 

If, instead, we greet their upset with kindness and caring, it immediately de-escalates the situation and highlights their rudeness as inappropriate.  Once kids get used to being treated this way, they usually calm down quickly and offer an unprompted apology.

Sound hard? Yes. This is the hardest stuff there is -- managing our own unruly emotions so that we can coach our kids on how to handle theirs.  But my experience is that any parent can make this transition and change the tone in their house to one of respect and warmth. And that's a miracle worth creating.

My Aha! Parenting moment this week happened when a reporter asked me about the four different parenting styles that psychologists say describe most parents.  These were originally developed by Diana Baumrind about fifty years ago, and are accepted by most child development specialists today.

The four styles are:

1. Authoritarian- These are parents who have high expectations of their kids, which is a good thing, research shows.  That’s how kids get good grades, learn to manage themselves responsibly, and stay out of trouble.  The problem with these parents is that they don’t offer their kids much support.  It’s pull up your socks, straighten up and fly right, my way or the highway.  These parents were usually parented this way themselves, and think they came out fine, but research shows their kids end up rebellious – and looking for love in all the wrong places, like the peer group.

2. Permissive- These are parents who offer their kids lots of support. Nothing wrong with that at all.  The problem with these parents is that they don’t have high expectations.  Some of them believe that’s a good thing – they wouldn’t want to get in the way of their child’s natural development.  Others just can’t bear to have their child face something difficult even for a moment, so they make a lot of excuses for their kid.  Most of these parents are trying hard not to repeat their own parents’ tough-love parenting style, so they go overboard in the other direction.  Don’t get me wrong – you can never offer your child too much respect and empathy.  But you can certainly prevent them from learning responsibility and developing confidence in themselves by always rescuing them.  And if you let your child walk all over you or other people, what are you teaching him about relationships?  These kids are often self-centered and spoiled.  Worse yet, they’re often miserable and insecure because they haven’t been helped to learn internal discipline to accomplish anything.

3. Uninvolved- There have always been parents who can’t give their kids the love and attention they need, either because of alcoholism, narcissism, or just external pressures like needing to work two jobs to support the family.  But these parents seem to me to be even more prevalent today, at least in some communities, where we rationalize thrusting kids into daycare at ever earlier ages for ever-longer hours, and then as they grow up we push them into the arms of their peer group, so that we have little or no influence on them by the time they’re teenagers.  These parents sometimes vanish into drug addiction or abandon the family, but there are plenty of seemingly normal families where the parents are too focused on their own work or social lives to engage deeply with their kids.  It’s not unusual to see these parents lavish money on their kids instead of attention.  This is always a message to the child that he isn’t worth loving, and if both parents are uninvolved, you can pretty much count on the kid having substance abuse or other major issues.

4. The final parenting style, is, of course, the one Baumrind’s research showed raises the best-adjusted kids. The Authoritative parents offer their kids lots of love and support, like the permissive parents.  But they also hold high expectations, like the authoritarian parents.  Age-appropriate expectations, of course – they aren’t expecting a three year old to clean up her room by herself.  But they may well be working with that three year old to help her clean up, over and over and over, so that by six she really can clean up her room herself.  These parents are involved -- even demanding.  They expect family dinners, lots of discussion straight through high school, good grades, responsible behavior.  But they also offer their kids complete support to learn how to achieve these expectations.  Their kids, not surprisingly, stay close to them – they often describe one of their parents as the person they would most trust to talk to about a problem.  These kids are usually high achievers in school, and they’re also the ones that teachers describe as responsible and well-liked, simply nice, considerate kids who are a pleasure to have around.

Where’s the Aha! Moment in this?  Well, the reporter asked me to describe how each style of parent would handle a couple of specific incidents.  For instance, what do you do when your child brings home a bad report card?

Authoritative- Yells at kid, and without any discussion grounds them until next report card, which had better have improved grades. End of discussion. Maybe a tutor is hired, which is presented as a punishment, and maybe substituted for an activity the kid loved, like playing basketball.  The kid is left de-motivated, angry, and has to figure any improvement out for himself.

Permissive- Listens empathically. Accepts child’s excuse that it’s all the teacher’s fault, and asks the child to please try to do better next time.  She may tell the child she believes in him, or even make a suggestion about working harder – but she doesn’t give him any real help in figuring out how to change things, in the form of new structure so he can actually accomplish real change.

Uninvolved- What report card?  Or, if they do see it, they don’t notice that it’s a Xerox and some of the grades have been changed.  Don’t laugh – some of my son’s friends did this routinely in high school.

Authoritative- Asks child whether he’s surprised by the report card, and lots of other questions about what happened. Listens empathically.  Asks child what he thinks he can do to learn the material and bring his grades up. Agrees on a plan with the child: No more texting, chatting, listening to music, web-surfing or tv while doing homework. (Most kids can’t handle these distractions; they’re a privilege, not a right.)  No more TV during the week to allow extra study time for catching up with the work. 

Homework will be done at dining room table next to the parent, who will be doing her own paperwork, (or if it’s done before the parent gets home, it will be explained to the parent, because the best way to learn is to teach.)  The parent will make these study sessions an opportunity for fun and connection, with some nice moments of humor and maybe a nightly snack.  The parent will also help the child study for every test and will give a final read to every paper.  The parent may need to help the child learn to structure his time, keep track of assignments, and stay organized. 

Weekend homework will get done on Saturday mornings rather than Sunday nights. Naturally, the child is unhappy about this new regimen, and the parent commiserates: “I know, it’s a big change.  You liked things the old way.  But it wasn’t fair to you – it wasn’t helping you learn the material and do well in school.”  Notice there’s no punishment, no blame, nothing punitive at all. 

The parent also reassures the child: “I am committed to you learning this material and doing well in school.  I know this seems hard, but I promise you that in a month you will feel so much better about school.  You will be understanding what is going on in class and showing your teachers how smart you really are.  You have all the brains you need to do this work. You just need some help to learn to organize yourself and keep up with the work.  That’s hard for most kids.  But I’m here to help.  And at the end of the month, when we hear from your teachers how much progress you’ve made, you ‘re going to be so proud of yourself -- and you and I will celebrate together.”

Now, here’s the Aha Moment.  The reporter responded, “But isn’t that authoritarian? Making them give up TV?  I thought authoritative was a middle ground, so you would give some punishment – maybe ground them for a shorter time.”

And that was my Aha!. Most parents think the best parenting course is the middle ground, the compromise.  But they still think in terms of punishment, so they’re always looking for the appropriate discipline for a given infraction.  So it ends up being a  middle ground of discipline, with some punishment – but they also settle for a middle ground of reduced expectations.

But what best serves our kids, what is often called Authoritative, doesn’t have any discipline.  It has just as high expectations as Authoritarian.  There’s no permissiveness, no compromise, no middle ground, in our expectations. But there’s also no need for discipline, which just alienates kids.  Instead, these kids get tremendous empathy, and all the help they need in learning to manage themselves, from their parents.

The difference between authoritarian and authoritative is the understanding and respect offered to the child. The difference between permissive and authoritative is the high expectations.  And the difference in parental involvement should be obvious – the authoritative parents are the most involved of any of the parenting styles.  Which is probably why they’re happier parents.

So there’s no middle ground here, no compromise in giving our kids what they need. High expectations, high support.

That’s an Aha! Parenting moment. And one of the biggest secrets of happy parents.

"Choosing to have a child is choosing a life of service." — Peg Tyre

Last week a friend said to me, "This isn't what I signed on for."  I understand.  Sometimes, in the face of illness and death, I feel the same way.

But my friend was talking about her child.  She hadn't expected parenting to be so hard.

That rosy picture we have before our first child is so indistinct.  It doesn't seem to include teething, tantrums, or the teen years.  We ourselves never seem to get angry, or even to age.  And special needs?  Not what most of us sign on for.

Deciding to have a child is choosing a life of service, at least while they're young. Committing to address someone else's needs above our own.  Dedicating ourselves to love and generosity, no matter how petty or needy we ourselves might feel in the moment.  Stepping into a crucible that transforms us.

Sometimes I think if we could see ahead on the road of our lives we might never start the journey.  But not knowing what we're signing on for is a good thing, if it starts us down the path.  Because if we stay committed to loving our children through thick and thin along the way, parenting always transforms us for the better.

Besides, think how much love you'd have missed along the way.

My Aha! Parenting moment this week is about letting our kids take the lead.  As I mentioned last week, my son's at college for the first time.  We email back and forth several times a week about logistical stuff – "Mom, will you mail me something I forgot?"-- so we’re in touch, but he doesn’t seem to want to chat on the phone. He never calls us. When I call him, he handles the logistical part of the discussion well, but when I ask “What are you doing tonight?” or “Who are you hanging out with?” or even “What’s your first paper on?”  he tells me he’s too busy to talk. 

Often, it’s because I’ve caught him in the dining hall or on the way to class, but sometimes he’s just reading in his dorm room. I’m missing him, of course, so I'd love to hear what's going on in his life.  I tell myself that talking to me may make him miss us more, and that he really is caught up in a whirlwind of new experiences. And I can hear in his voice that he's happy, which consoles me.

Last Friday evening I found myself on the subway train my son took to school for six years.  I reminisced about how he would call me every day as he got off the train, to let me know he would be home in ten minutes.  He started this at age 12, but continued right through until he left for college.  If it was after midnight, he would text. I wondered how he felt now, on campus, on his way home to his dorm room, with no one to call.  Did it make him feel alone, abandoned?  I decided he probably felt liberated.

Until that night at 2:30 in the morning, when the phone rang.  "Eli?  Are you ok?"  “I’m fine, Mom.  I was just on my way home from hanging with my friends, and I thought I would call to tell you guys I love you.”

He didn’t seem to realize there was anything inappropriate about calling at 2am.  But I didn’t care.  I was so happy for that call.  I don’t expect him to repeat it often, but anytime he wants to call us at 2am it’s fine with me.  I’ll even try to wake up enough to chat for a bit if he wants to.

When Eli was a baby, I let him take the lead on separations.  If he seemed comfortable, I let someone else hold him.  If he reached out for me, I took him back. When he wanted to “do it myself” as a toddler and climb to the top of the monkey bars, I let him, just spotting in case he fell (which he never did.)  I’ve been following his lead ever since, letting him start sleepovers at 5, commute on the subway for an hour each way at 12, go to Spain for a month at 16, come home without a defined curfew in the wee hours of the morning at 17.  

I think navigating these separations is always harder for the parent.  Kids need to exercise their wings, but it’s hard for parents not to take it personally.  I suspect this is at the heart of much of the dramatic fallout that often happens between teens and their parents.

Because the truth is, letting go of our kids is really hard.  As my child, he’s central to me, to my life.  But as his parent, I’m peripheral to him.  It doesn’t mean they don’t love us.   It’s not something to take personally, or be offended by.  But it can be a wrenching realization – even though we all know that as much as we may love our parents, they’re not usually central to our lives after we leave home.

You know that Kahil Gibran poem?  I don’t think I ever really understood it until now.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

So we’re supposed to raise our kids to move into the future without us, in gladness.  To the bow, the arrow is it’s purpose.  To the arrow, the bow is just a launching pad.  

Of course, that's a basic truth of life, that all parents eventually accept.  And I guess I will too.  It’s just that it happens so fast. When they’re born, it seems like they’ll be waking up at night forever.  And then, before we know it, we’re peripheral to their lives.

Except, if we let them take the lead in navigating separations, and we’re lucky. Then we might just get that occasional 2am phone call, just to tell us they love us.