Creative vs. Simplistic Parenting

Here's the question of the day, thanks to a reader of my last post:

Why is it that parents keep looking for the simple answer? Is there no room in their lives for a bit of creativity when dealing with a child?

What a great question!


And, it coincides with the posting, by a friend on Facebook, of a story of real parenting creativity:


Scott Noelle, author of The Daily Groove --a parenting newsletter available by email-- wrote a piece about sending notes to your future self (love notes, encouragement, etc.) and tucking them here and there where you'd stumble on them later. A reader commented, including a long story about his experience after finding one, while his 3 year old was having a wobbler, that said 'have fun.' 


This commentator brought creativity of the moment to a situation that many parents would have simply responded to with 'order the child around, if they fail to obey, pick them up and make them do what you want them to do...' A solution that feels simple, obvious and efficient... Does anyone have a tale about what happens when you 'just pick the child up'? or 'just order the child around'?


The problem, of course, with simple, obvious and efficient answers to complex problems (like 'how can I help this overwrought 3yo thrive while I want to accomplish anything else today?)' is that if the problems were simple, obvious and efficient there wouldn't be a problem.


Even 3 year olds are not simple, obvious or efficient. They're people, and like the rest of the people they bring complexity to the world. Of course, we want pat answers --our lives would be smoother, less challenging, less draining and who doesn't want that when we deal with everything else, all day every day?


I understand the allure of the simple answer. I love the simple answers. I want the simple answer to work --who wouldn't? What's not to love?


Well, quite simply, as Barbara Sher puts it: 

If we really wanted bliss in our lives we'd get a 6-pack and a full cable package.

We don't want bliss --ease, simplicity... we might think we do, especially when we're stressed out, but we don't. We thrive on challenges, we strive for mastery, understanding, effectiveness. It's nice if it happens to coincide with efficient, simple and obvious --but we are not energized by those experiences.

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Photo used with permission (Creative Commons, attribution license) Father Swinging Son 

PinkStock Photos! by D Sharon Pruitt

2.1 Choices --Thinking About Parenting Styles

It is with glee that I notice, once again, that I'm way over the edge over here on the coast... I wouldn't do (or recommend) doing any of the three choices given by beagreatparent.ca, as quoted in an article from St. Catharine's The Standard... click on that link if you want to read the full article, but this is the segment I'm commenting on today:

Your toddler and her friend are fighting over a doll.

When the friend pulls it away from her, your daughter punches the girl and grabs it back.

Do you:

Take the doll away and explain to the girls that they can have it back when they can share and play nicely together?

Do nothing. After all, it is your daughter's doll. Her friend can find something else to play with; kids need to sort out their own problems.

Take the doll away and tell your daughter that you're selling it in a garage sale. She can start saving her allowance if she wants it back.*

The first is 'strict' parenting, the second is 'permissive' and the third is labeled (mis-labeled, in my opinion) 'balanced.' What the third option really is, though, is just as controlling and authoritarian as the first. Different, but the same end of the spectrum. 2.1 options, not three.

 

When a child is struggling for ownership over her object --with anyone-- it just can't be a parent's job to take possession of the object. Unless what the parent really means is 'none of your stuff is actually yours.' It doesn't matter if the object is removed forever or if it can be purchased back from the thief: 

It is either the child's possession or it is not.

 

Think about this in the context of the society we actually live in: you and your neighbour have a dispute over half of a driveway that is owned by one party. Does the court step in, take it away and rent out the space to just anyone until the actual owner buys it back, with a threat to sell it if they don't pony up fast enough? 

Why are we teaching children that anyone who considers themselves an authority gets to 'own' their objects until they're satisfied that atonement has been made sufficient to the infraction?

Three things:

1. Children do not learn to share in an environment where they own or control nothing. All the energy they might have to share something with genuine generosity is spent in fighting for, confirming and protecting their ownership.
2. We do not live in a 'sharing' culture --it's a fun idea, but no one is allowed to come to your house and use whatever they want for however they want whenever they are there. Here is an example: I'm sending a friend over later to get your car... you can have it back when she's done with it, in whatever condition she happens to leave it. This is, of course, fine because you were taught to share, right? Is it different because it's a 5 year old, or is it only because their stuff is not valuable to anyone but them?
3. There is a sliding scale of extremely strict to a more balanced style of authoritarian parenting. The key is whether or not someone other than the child is seeking to control what the child does, what the child thinks or what is important to the child... the question to ask is 'what if the child still doesn't do what the parent wants?' The answer to that clears up any doubt that this is about command and control, carrot and stick parenting, whether it uses the rapport-building manipulative communication styles or straight-up ordering kids around.

There is no real 'third option' in this article... just one point on the permissive end and two points on the strict/authoritarian end and one at the other end.

Which is unfortunate, because there is a third option.

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*Toddler, seriously? We're going to make a toddler 'save their allowance and buy it back'? A toddler?!

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Photo used with permission (Creative Commons license, attributed) Sharing by PlatinumBlondeLIfe

Why Not 'Let' A Child 'Try' School ... if the child wants to?

Because, in my opinion, school is not benign. School are actively damaging, particularly (but not solely) to self-esteem and natural confidence in the intrinsic rewards of learning.

If I could accompany my kids to school the whole time they were 'trying' it, I think it might be possible at all to have them experience that in a way that was neutral or even educational. But left alone in that overwhelmingly persistent and pervasively indoctrinated system... particularly at a time when they're going through major brain development and having a hard time even driving their usual lives with balance and ease. 

Going into that system alone might make it so that some of what happens there is handled beautifully --a direct conflict, say. But then there is All Of The Rest. Most of which is never handled, never addressed and is very rapidly seen as 'normal.' Or perhaps 'inevitable.'

• The seat-to-seat nastiness that the teacher sees but doesn't address (because, really, who has time, and they're sitting quietly). 
• Or all of what the teacher doesn't see. 
• There is the teacher-down bullying that is directed at the kids the teacher doesn't like (which is no biggie for the kids who are likeable...unless they're sensitive to the struggles of others).
• There is the casual and ongoing violence in the halls and grounds. 
• The tremendous energy of resistance to the system itself that is sometimes just 'forgetting' and inertia, but is often outright rebellion --where does that observation go? 
• The basic lack of civility which (it has been my observation) homeschoolers are used to and expect --how to handle that, how to see it without it affecting the collective of 'this is how I behave in the world' a child's already gained. 
• What to do about the errors in the textbook the teacher is marking based on the incorrect answer key? 
• How to approach the subject that's being taught by the teacher who doesn't understand it or visibly dislikes it?
• What about the clowning, distractions and utter disrespect for the teacher --notably more pronounced when teachers are insecure or incompetent? Do we sit quietly while the struggling teacher is being tormented? Do we laugh? Do we try to moderate it? Model more respectful approaches?

Do you stand up to the teacher about the bullying seen but not addressed? Every single instance of it or is there some scale of 'that's not bad enough to comment on'? What about the sexual assault? What about the child who is utterly ignored? What about the one getting a disproportion of the school's or teacher's attention? What do we do about the kids who are left to flail about, or sit dully until their aid comes back tomorrow? Nothing? Anything?

What about the lack of respect for the humanity, body wisdom and personal pace of everyone except the strongest willed and most confident? 

It was not lost on me in the system that affected me deeply, and for years, that I alone was allowed to wander the halls during class time, get up and leave a lecture while the teacher was speaking (without a murmur of reproach) or completely fail to hand in any portion of an assignment without it negatively affecting my grade. Somehow, I managed to import a sense that 'Linda's doing something else that's important' into teacher's heads --or I was far more trouble to deal with than I was worth-- or both, so I was respected (or at least not stomped on) when I felt the need to move around, or believed I knew enough about this subject already, or whatever provoked me to routinely leave the classroom and, say, go have a smoke. I was marked present for classes I spent at the orthodontist.


All of this, without even talking about the quality or composition of the curriuculum, its relevance in today's world, the subjectiveness of grading, the pervasive and contrived competition, the propaganda, the age-segregation and sexism inherent in the system.

Why not let a child try school, if the child wants to? Because school is not benign environment, and few adults understand the ramifications of even a short indoctrination into that system.

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photo Classroom Panorama by grampymoose, used with permission (Creative Commons, attrib/share alike)

Homeschooling as a form of child abuse

A provocative post by this same title, by a woman who describes the purpose of her blog:

"Are you doing this on purpose?" a friend writes to me. "Are you trying to provoke people's anger with your posts?"

The answer is that, of course, I am. See, I have this theory that getting people to think is akin to pushing a car down a hill. You need a significant initial effort to get people's brains to start moving. 

Oh my. Respectful? I don't think so... do you?

Pushing Kids Away, or how to create lonely empty-nesters

What with her sweet new baby (right), and all, my sister and I had been talking a lot about attachment... and by natural extension, attachment disorders, and how easily you can find examples in the wild.


She asked, rhetorically, 'why is it that the parents who spent the kid's whole childhood pushing the child away, arranging daycare and babysitters and ordering the child outdoors, or at least into distant rooms, are also the parents who complain endlessly that their adult children don't have time for them and never call or write?'


Cue the smirk.


Is that not the apparent goal of every parent who celebrates 

~ the first day of school

~ the first day back to school after any break or long weekend

~ or who laments the cost of boarding school 

~ or who threatens that social services or the police will come and take the kids away and give mum a 'break' 

Is it not clearly their goal to keep the children as far away as possible, for as long as possible? 



Does it strike anyone but me that it's a tragedy that so many 'normal' parents are working diligently toward goals they do not wish to achieve?

They accomplish this through the very simple process of mindlessly doing what all the rest of the 'normal' parents seem to be doing.

Following the advice all the 'normal' parenting experts, those warning parents to comply lest they fall prey the evils of permissiveness, cause arrested development or, horror of all horrors, 'losing themselves.'  

And daily, moment by moment, walking further from the goals they do wish to achieve.


Even way back in the dark ages (1974), when Sandy Chapin wrote the poem, which became the lyrics to Harry Chapin's Cats Cradle, at least one person recognized the path taken when the son's need for his father is dismissed for decades only to be supplanted by the father's need for the son.


Richard Carlson, author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, had a brilliant insight as a father, regarding the insidious idea of 'me-time': why would I actively avoid spending time with the people I love most in the world?


How is spending time with the people we love anything but me-time? 

And, because I'm in a noticing kind of frame of mind, I just noticed that this whole 'me-time' necessity has been created entirely by the current generation of parents and parenting experts who are bleating on about how this generation of youngsters have the most outrageous sense of entitlement ever... hmmm...

Spend a week pushing a child away because you have more important things to do, and you'll have some work to catch up on when you're free --to re-connect and reassure and just be together to establish a relationship with this child who has now had 168 hours of development without your presence. 

Spend a month 'too busy' and you find yourself facing a changed child who is no longer someone you can predict accurately, and whose cues and communication have changed from the last time you met. 

Spend a year away from a child and you will encounter a different person. Spend a child's childhood away and you will be facing a stranger, who you might remember used to like a particular colour or didn't used to want to eat a specific food, but who now you do not know at all.

From the small child's point of view, the week is a serious problem, the month is traumatic, a year is everything he can remember and his whole childhood: even if he feels a bit guilty about his natural resistance to approaching his parents, his natural resistance is based entirely in a lifetime of rejection.


Barbara Coloroso so deftly recommends: spend time with your children while they're still young and want to.

Kids are Entitled? Amy claims 'I deserve better'

Oh deary me. 

In an effort to explain, she says, that the book is her own coming of age story --a memoir of how she learned to become a better parent and to let her daughter give up the violin-- and how people don't seem to be getting the joke, she's interviewed on Friday, January 14, 2010.


During an interview with CBC, Amy Chua digs her hole just a little bit deeper:

... even a generation or two ago here, there was a lot more of a sense of like you owe your parents a sense of decency, a sense of respect, a sense of gratitude and I really don't like a lot of what I see today, which is a lot of these kids that are very pampered and very entitled and want more more more, buy me more equipment, buy me more iPhones, buy me more this ...

I find it mildly ironic that I was just looking over Alfie Kohn's review of permissive parenting research (there is none) and increasingly narcissistic children from generation to generation (there is none of that, either) or any evidence that helicopter parenting is damaging (nor any of that), and here is Amy having a bit of a rant about what is 'wrong' with all these children raised the 'wrong' way. 

Excuse me while I quote someone else on the subject for a moment:

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint.*

It is, as Kohn points out, an item of faith that children are more narcissistic than ever before, that helicopter parenting is problematic and that permissive parenting is fruitless and creates unsuccessful children. Except the research simply does not exist. In fact, the research that does exist:

... published in Pediatrics, discovered that there is indeed a parental practice associated with children who later become demanding and easily frustrated.  But it’s not groovy, indulgent parenting.  It’s spanking.

But I want to give Amy a shovel, so she can really dig in. The hypocrisy between what she states as her values and her own attitude: oh my! From fairly late in the interview, as she really gets to chatting (referring to the child's making of a birthday card):

I think that you can do better and I think that you owe me a little bit more, and I think that people balk at that, too: 'oh my god, she wants more'

Sorry, could I just highlight that? Maybe bold and italics: I think you owe ME a little bit more. 

This, in the midst of a thought-free rant about the sense of entitlement in children. I wonder 'are you looking in a mirror, here?'


From earlier in the interview, regarding the same anecdote:

Nope, this is not good enough. You know, when it's your birthday, I spend my whole salary hiring a magician and baking you a cake and having big parties and buying all these party favours and getting waterslides and I deserve better than this...

Okay. First, this is a four-year-old she is talking to. The 4yo is the reason she spends buckets of money on lavish parties? Who is running this household? Seriously... 


And, to be pedantic about her point, let me once more pick out the phrase that I believe --were it said by someone, 4, 14 or even 24, would be gilded and plastered onto a Youth Entitlement Wall of Shame somewhere:

I deserve better than this.

Do I have to say anything at all here?

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*quoted from Hesiod, 8th century BC

Does parenting the popular way have to oppress kids?

An astute friend on an email list reminded me: 

Ever tried re-framing a parenting decision by imagining whether it would be okay to do to your spouse or another adult?

Imagine an alternate version of Chua's book giving relationship advice: "[insert group/racial descriptor] Marriages are Superior" containing descriptions of the dominant spouse treating their powerless spouse in the way that Chua treats her children....

... and imagine
that throughout they are touting themselves as the ideal that other's should strive to achieve.

I doubt very much that any publisher would dare publish a book like that.

I do like to think of parenting decisions in that way, which is more or less just the Golden Rule: Would you like to be treated that way?

Amy Chua's tempest-in-a-teacup book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother seems to be the whole opposite: treating children in a way that she absolutely refuses to be treated: with contempt, superiority, intolerance and raging entitlement. For more about that, see this post: Why One Chinese Mom is NOT Superior...


Would you keep a job after your boss called you 'garbage' or refused to allow you to use the washroom or eat until you'd performed a task the way s/he wanted you to?

Isn't this more or less why people are not allowed to own people?

I am reminded of Alfie Kohn, and his ever-so-insightful ideas, from Unconditional Parenting: 

Why should an adult's preference win?

Sheerly on the basis that it is an adult's preference?

This is where I stopped, when my children were really, really little: if it's only my idea of what's the right thing for them to do right now, not some real need or real emergency, why is it supposed to matter to my kids? 

More to the point, relating to Chua and her controlling and demanding schedule: is it really supposed to matter to me to the tune of a 4 hour power struggle?

To me, it's obvious that dinner time is arbitrary. Sure, whole swaths of the population will agree that dinner time is 5pm or 6pm or 7:30pm or 8pm. What's that got to do with anyone's hunger? 

What's it got to do with any child? 

As I have said ever since Ford came up with it as a slogan: a million people can absolutely be wrong, and why not? What possible force in the world can stop a million independent people from making the same erroneous choice, even if it's buying a Ford, driving drunk, or arguing in favour of head-shots in hockey.


So what if, ostensibly, a billion Chinese agree that the 'right' way to raise children is to decide for them what is their art, which school subjects matter the most to them (or their future), what they are allowed to do, what is valuable for them to do with their free time --if they are even deemed to have any?

Even if a billion Chinese people do agree (and I would expect that at least four probably don't) with Amy Chua, that doesn't make her (or them) right. It just means they agree. 

Perhaps they've been swayed by similar arguments. 

Perhaps they have been told, one way or another, for their whole lives that they must. 

Perhaps they haven't really thought about it and have never felt any pressing reason to think about it.


Or perhaps it doesn't matter, really, to any child growing up anywhere, who else agrees with Amy Chua...maybe because she's wrong.