Positive Parenting

I keep hearing about how parents are failing their children.

Everyone seems to forget that parenting is a complex and consuming task, and pretty difficult to maintain in this era. The external pressures on parents are enormous. Much of this comes from change (in Life, Work, Society, the World) - which seems to be the only true constant.  Or is it? And if change will continue to occur into the foreseeable future, making us less and less certain of our lives, are there key elements in parenting which can be stable in any circumstance, anywhere, at any time?

I recently read an article drawn from the work of Dr. Tim Elmore, a best-selling author with loads of acclaimed parenting books under his belt – many more than I will ever write. He is an acclaimed leadership expert. Well, he may be, but I was affronted by the list of negatives in the article, and the paucity of solutions (except by implication). I thought I might unpick some of his comments.

So, who am I to enter into this debate? Well, we have three grown up children who seem to be pretty successful, and there are 6 grandchildren who seem to be managing their lives. More than that, I have been a psychiatrist for 40 years, and focused on child psychiatry and family therapy approaches for the last 35 years. I have seen change for the better occur in some of the most difficult, complex and traumatised families. I think I can perceive some basic principles which may help us all. So, let me weigh in....

The article was entitled: ‘7 damaging parenting behaviors that keep children from becoming leaders’. So there are a couple of problems to begin with. We are expected to believe that a) all children can become leaders, and b) that it is all the fault of us as parents, if they don’t.

What a lot of rubbish! Can you imagine a world in which everyone is a leader? Who would they be leading, if everyone else was trying to be a leader as well? Can you imagine the chaos of trying to develop any team culture where everyone thought they were a leader? Or the chaos of governing a country with everyone being the President or the Prime Minister? What a nonsense!

The fact is that we all have ‘potential’. Probably more correctly, we all have a number of potentials in differing areas of our lives, and we have the opportunity to reach some or all of these, partly or in total. These make up the complexity of the adult person we become. It is probably trite (given everyone knows this) to say that our genetics, our early experience, our intellect, our physical capacities, our family circumstances, our educational opportunities, our friends, all go some way to decide whether we reach our potentials. There are a multiplicity of influences on the path our life takes. Blaming parents for the fact we are not able to reach our potentials is a monumental oversimplification – plain dumb!

 So let us examine these so called ‘damaging parenting behaviours’ one by one.

According to Dr. Elmore:

“1. We don’t let our children experience risk

We live in a world that warns us of danger at every turn. The ‘safety first’ preoccupation enforces our fear of losing our kids, so we do everything we can to protect them. It’s our job after all, but we have insulated them from healthy risk-taking behavior and it’s had an adverse effect. Psychologists in Europe have discovered that if a child doesn’t play outside and is never allowed to experience a skinned knee, they frequently have phobias as adults. Kids need to fall a few times to learn it’s normal; teens likely need to break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend to appreciate the emotional maturity that lasting relationships require. If parents remove risk from children’s lives, we will likely experience high arrogance and low self-esteem in our growing leaders.”

OK, parents should be aware of life’s risks, and take some precautions. If there are sharks in the sea, it makes sense to allow your children to swim between the safety flags, knowing there is a lifeguard patrol, and a shark net out to sea to reduce the risks. We have to actively teach them about risks, but probably more importantly we have to teach our children how they can make reasonable assumptions about risks; this is a key learning of childhood. Most parents take great joy in going in the sea with their children – partly to share the possible risks, partly to have fun with their children, partly to provide some protection, partly to guide any risk-taking behaviour. This ‘sharing with the child’ is critical to their learning process, but also critical to ongoing development of child –parent relationships, and their security.

‘ Psychologists in Europe have discovered that if a child doesn’t play outside and is never allowed to experience a skinned knee, they frequently have phobias as adults.’ Wow, I never heard about that as a cause of phobias! Never seen a case of phobia based in a prohibition to go out and play, either!

‘Kids need to fall a few times to learn it’s normal; teens likely need to break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend to appreciate the emotional maturity that lasting relationships require.’ I remember Dr. James Robertson from the Tavistock Clinic in London addressing this issue back in the 70’s. He asked whether a small child should be encouraged to come downstairs on their own, and repeatedly fall down the stairs? The assumption is that after several times, the child may learn not to fall. Of course (he pointed out) the child may have had several fractures, and have been quite traumatised in the process. The suggestion (of course) was that we share the experience with the child. We take one step at a time and, holding the child’s hand we show them how to step down in a safe environment. We grade the experience to the child’s needs and to their physical status and emotional maturity, all the time encouraging and supporting them.

When something adverse happens – like falling and scraping a knee – we help, we cuddle, we clean up, we apply a ‘band aid’, all the time talking through the child’s pain and fright.  It is stupid to say the child ’needs’ to fall. The truth is that children fall. As parents we sort out the consequences, and provide a bit of guidance for the future about cleanliness after the fact.

‘If parents remove risk from children’s lives, we will likely experience high arrogance and low self-esteem in our growing leaders.’

I am actually unclear what this means. I am not sure the second part follows the first. Arrogance comes from being given everything you want immediately. Arrogance comes from believing you are special, and deserving of the best, without having to care or give in return. Low self-esteem comes from repeatedly being told you are stupid and will never achieve anything. It comes from being neglected, abused or sexually abused in childhood. I know of no connection between parents removing risk from children’s lives and low self-esteem.

We will examine another of the 7 damaging parenting behaviors, tomorrow.