Good parents

What do our children really need from us?

There are 2 kinds of parents: the ones who think their job is to make their child be the person they (the parent) want them to be, and the ones who think their job is to help their child become the person they (the child) want to be

When people decide to become a parent, they usually believe they will have a large capacity to mold and direct their child. They are often radical environmentalists on the order of the behaviorist John B. Watson who boasted (in 1930):

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select — doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.

By the time their child reaches adolescence, most parents have lost much of their initial optimism and confidence in their ability to direct and control their offspring. If they have more than one child, they can usually see how different their children are from each other despite similar upbringing and environments. They will likely recognize that each child has their own distinct personality and temperament early in life and maintains a certain continuity and consistency (albeit with change) over time.

Some writers argue that parents have very little impact on a child’s growth and development, which is the other extreme from the behaviorist/environmentalist perspective above. If we adopt a more centrist view that balances the innate and environmental influences on child development, then what is the role of the parent? What makes for a “good” parent?

Based on my professional (behavioral scientist) and personal (two children) experience, as well as observations of friends and their children, here is what I believe are the six best parenting practices:

PROTECTING

The world is a dangerous place, and children are naive about those threats and how to handle them for many years. Parents have a duty to preserve the life and safety of their children, and the threats they face will change over time so parents need to shift the focus and form of their vigilance. So we should not too easily assign the “over-protective” label to parents until we have more evidence-based parameters and strategies for optimal protection aligned with each child’s age and ambient risks.

UNDERSTANDING

One of our core human needs is to be heard/seen, understood and accepted by others. That reflecting and mirroring helps us see ourselves more clearly and to feel less alone. It is the heart of the very best friendships and loving relationships.

The relationship advice to “First seek to understand, then to be understood” is very applicable to good parenting. If we want our children to feel safe and secure with us and to listen to us, the foundation step is to make sure they feel listened to by us.

When children are upset or struggling, many parents feel pressure to “fix” the problem by coming up with advice and solutions. But if a child does not first feel understood and heard and accepted, they will not be of a mind to consider what anyone else thinks or says. Arguments and conflict and eventually relationship breakdown will ensue.

MODELING

Forget about “Do as I say, not as I do”. Children learn more from observing their parents (which they do constantly) than by listening (not so much) to them, so good parenting includes an important demonstration function. If parents are interested in “teaching” their children about life, they should focus more on their own behavior than verbal messaging and instruction.

This will require parents to invest time and energy on paying attention to how they manage their own emotions and behavior. If we want to teach our children about things like kindness, self-control/discipline and other desired traits, we should first practice those behaviors to mastery in ourselves.

SUPPORTING

The world is a difficult and often unpleasant place, a fact about which parents can do little. So one opportunity we have to be good parents is to do whatever we can to make our children’s lives a bit less difficult and more pleasant. This is a happy duty that involves all manner of providing gratification and resources for our children whenever possible. It involves finding an “excuse” to do something nice and helpful for your child just because it’s … Tuesday.

Our culture often warns parents about “spoiling” their children and making them “entitled”, but that is a completely different matter. Your child will either be grateful and appreciative of your efforts or not, depending on their nature. So be generous with a kind word, a smile, a treat, an assist with a difficult task, a friendly note, a gift, some financial help. It’s a very good way to be a good parent.

ADVISING

We love our children, but the perfect child has not yet been born (except for your children and mine, of course!). While parents have fairly limited levers for influencing their children’s behavior (NB: so-called “discipline” creates more avoidance/mistrust than real learning), that doesn’t mean they should simply turn a blind eye to actions that are self-defeating or hurtful to the child or others. It’s a matter of how, not whether, to intervene.

The most effective strategy for offering advice and counsel is to align it with the child’s own self-interest. Rather than simply framing behavior as bad or wrong, parents can and should point out how certain actions will interfere with the child getting what they want. The common “bad” acts that trigger a disciplinary response (aggressiveness, selfishness, lack of responsibility and self-control, etc.) will inevitably interfere with the child’s desire for love, fame and fortune, and that fact can be pointed out from a position of concern and interest. This form of input is the most likely to be heard and, in some cases, followed.

LETTING GO

You don’t need to cut your child’s kite string to let them fly … but you do need to let it play out as far as it wants to go

Beginning in early adolescence and continuing on from there, one of the most common complaints from children is about their parents’ being intrusive, over-involved and controlling. Children have a natural healthy drive toward autonomy (“I did it all by myself!”) and independence. If a child remained totally dependent on their parents for their whole life, they would die when their parents die (the ultimate “letting go”) which would defeat the whole purpose of generational renewal.

So in a sense, the whole parenting enterprise is about preparing children to live without their parents, and good parents do this through a series of hundreds of little separations and leavings and letting go’s. This turns out to be difficult for many parents for a number of good reasons:

• Good parents spend their child’s first months and years literally keeping their vulnerable offspring alive. This period of intense “holding” (physical and emotional) can easily become a reflex norm that is never questioned, even when it begins to outlive its usefulness in its original form.

• Separations (think: first steps, first day of kindergarten, leaving home for college or work, getting married etc.) can trigger anxiety in children which can be experienced by parents through empathy or their own separation anxieties. The reflex reaction is to hold on tight(er), even if the right response is a combination of understanding, non-intrusive availability and respectful letting go (even if sadly).

• While children never become less important to good parents, it’s part of the evolutionary program for parents to become less central to their growing children over time. This growing imbalance and asynchrony can become especially glaring during the child’s adolescence/young adulthood. It can also crop up again during the parent’s later life as they lose their work and other roles and sense of purpose/importance. Parents can be tempted then to turn to their now adult children to fill those empty spaces at a time when their children are fully engaged in managing their own busy lives. This will usually be experienced by the adult child as an intrusion and burden, and managed with either guilty submission or angry rejection and their painful aftermath. Good parents can remain alert to these two periods of growing imbalance, and allow their independent children to increasingly take the lead in initiating time together (even if the parent wants “more”).

If you would keep them, let them go.

Summary

Good parenting is easy to define (as in an essay like this!) and very very hard to perform in real life. Hopefully defining some of its key functions can lead to some productive reflection and effective action.

The best parenting practices I know of include:

• Protecting

• Understanding

• Modeling

• Supporting

• Advising

• Letting Go

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