Parenting
Larry Dettweiler and Joshua Dettweiler
Parenting is a very difficult task. This statement will, of course, surprise no-one who has actually tried it. In the over fifty years my wife and I have shared the title of parent, we have, like everyone else, learned gradually through trial and error what it means to be good parents. We are still learning. I sometimes wonder how parents cope with the number of books, courses and "experts” who are willing to tell them how to raise children. It must be very frustrating, especially since many of the experts seem to disagree with each other. My daughter-in-law said that when she expressed her fears about parenting to her grandmother she replied, “There are probably 100 ways to raise children and 99 of them are ok.” I spent a lot of time working with parents both as a teacher and a therapist. Here are some of the ideas I thought were important.
There are two things you can do to begin becoming a better parent. First, find some way to rediscover the memories of your own childhood. When did you feel good about yourself? When did you feel bad? What would you change about your parents and what would you leave untouched if you had your childhood to do over again? Parents who remain naive about this part of their lives are likely to re-enact the negative aspects of their own childhood in some way with their own children. Through reading, reflection, discussion or therapy you can re-parent yourself and break the cycle of abusive or ineffectual parenting that is often passed from generation to generation. Secondly, familiarize yourself with developmental psychology. Find out what needs and behaviors are normal for children in your child’s age group. Often, what may seem strange or unruly to parents is normal for children in a particular age group. In addition to these two fundamental tasks, there are a variety of parenting techniques and ideas that I have found to be very helpful which I will present in the following pages.
It seems to me that the most important thing you can do as a parent is to recognize who your child is. What is his temperament? What are her interests? What are his strengths and what are his challenges? Above all else it is important to recognize that this is her life and not yours. Children should not have to live out their parents unrealized dreams and aspirations. My friend Ron is a great example of this. Ron’s family owned a very profitable furniture store. From an early age Ron showed great ability in art and design and was a genius working with his hands. He once showed me a report card from a prestigious private boy’s school which he attended. All the grades were rather mediocre except art. He excelled at art. He also showed me a picture of a beautiful boat he had built while still in elementary school. However, Ron’s parents had other plans for him. They wanted him to become an architect and a professional of whom they could be proud. So even though his academic record was not astounding, off he went to study architecture at University. Not surprisingly, he flunked out.
Ron may have been the most introverted and shy person I have ever met in my life. Upon returning home after failing in University, his parents took him into the business and made him the director of personnel. There could not be a job on earth for which Ron was more poorly suited. Fortunately, he married a woman who was very supportive and realized he could not survive in this job. One day, after waking from a terrible nightmare, he resigned his job, sold his stock and begin a business building wooden toys for children. He would isolate himself in his garage while doing his woodwork and his wife would handle all sales from the kitchen of her house. She served as the business manager, doorkeeper and was a welcoming presence who always seemed to have something delicious to offer you while you were picking up toys. At some point they began to build a boat. After years of work it was a beautiful sight to see. Eventually they divorced and Ron moved to a local island where he now builds boats that have been commissioned by people who value his unique ability. What would his life have been like if his parents had seen this gift and nurtured it?
Knowing you want the best for your children, there are some useful tools for helping children to develop within a family and culture while still maintaining their own identity. Let’s look at the four strokes first.
A stroke is something you experience from the environment around you. A positive stroke such as a smile or praise feels good, while a negative stroke, such as criticism, a spanking or being yelled at feels bad. A stroke is said to be conditional if something has to be done by the child to receive it. On the other hand, unconditional strokes are not related to the child’s behavior. For example, if the child takes out the garbage and mother says, “Thanks a lot,” this is a conditional positive stroke. Sending a child to her room after she teased her sister is a conditional negative stroke. In both cases, the stroke was a result of some specific act. In one case the consequence, or stroke, was positive and in the other it was negative. "I love you” is an unconditional positive stroke since your love, which feels good, is not connected to anything the child has done. If you are in a lousy mood and you say to a child, “Get lost,” this is an unconditional negative stroke. This remark feels bad and is in no way related to anything she has done. What are the effects of these different strokes?
The receipt of unconditional positive strokes is absolutely essential to the formation of positive self-esteem in a child. The message conveyed is, “you are o.k. for who you are; no matter what you do I will still love you.” Many parents who were abused or neglected as children have never experienced this kind of stroke and, as a result, don’t understand the importance of letting their own child know how much they care for her. For many parents, their own unhappiness may be so great that they cannot express love or appreciation to anyone. For these kinds of parents, repairing their own self-esteem through therapy is the first step towards being able to give positive strokes to their child.
One of the most meaningful ways you can deliver unconditional positive strokes to your child is to spend time doing what she likes to do. This may be swimming, reading a book, going for bike rides, preparing a meal together or just hanging out. Children invest their parents with a lot of power. You are very important to your child. Spending time with a child doing what she likes to do gives the child the message that you consider her needs important and that you like her. This is a message that enhances her self-esteem. Of the four strokes, this is the most important for children to receive from their parents and is, unfortunately, the least common. Unconditional positive strokes by themselves are not enough however. This does not prepare a child for a world in which there are limits and can lead to an inflated sense of self, sometimes termed omnipotence or narcissism.
Conditional positive strokes, while they also enhance self-esteem in the child, act as reinforcement of behavior that is considered acceptable, appropriate or pleasing by the parents. For example, when you say to your child, “You did a good job,” or “I really appreciate you taking your dishes to the sink,” or “Thank you for picking up your clothes,” it not only gives her a feeling of accomplishment and self-worth, but also serves to increase the behavior that earned the stroke. We will talk more about this later.
The conditional negative stroke, or punishment, as it is more commonly known, is, unfortunately, the most common tool parents use to try to influence their children’s behavior. Parents tend to use punishment because it is fast and easy and often puts an immediate end to an unacceptable behavior. However, in the long run, punishment often does not work. While punishment teaches a child what kind of behavior is considered inappropriate, it does not necessarily teach her what is appropriate. For instance, if you punish a child for whining, she doesn’t really learn another more constructive way to ask for things she wants. In the end she probably will whine because it occasionally pays off, making the punishment worth suffering. Punishment also has the effect of arousing a child emotionally and she may get upset, angry, or fearful. Stirring up these intense negative emotions does nothing to help a child learn appropriate behavior and, when the child begins to associate these feelings with the punisher, she may form a negative image of the parent in her mind. The child learns to fear, avoid and lie to her parent. Furthermore, punishment, especially physical punishment (e.g., hitting or spanking), models negative behavior. If a child is hit every time she does something a parent doesn’t like, the message is: “If you don’t like what someone is doing, hit her.” Punishment is also likely to result in revenge. The punished child may see herself at the losing end of a power struggle and try to find a way of getting even, often by repeating the behavior she was punished for in the first place. Prolonged or severe punishment will result in the formation of a negative self-image as the child incorporates the belief that she is bad. Punishment may sometimes be deemed necessary by a parent, but is often overused in our culture. We will discuss some alternatives later.
Because of our own inability to deal with a child or because of problems in our own lives, we may feel compelled to deal out unconditional negative strokes to our children. Sarcasm, critical remarks about a child’s character (“You are a bad child.”) or the use of undeserved negative strokes of any kind is abuse. This is devastating to the self-esteem of the child who receives it. Since the negative stroke is in no way related to the child’s behavior, the message to the child is “you are not worthwhile no matter what you do.” Many parents will recognize this kind of stroke from their own childhood, and should eliminate it from their own parenting. Unlike punishment, which may be unavoidable, abuse is never appropriate.
Knowing that negative strokes are to be avoided, how can we as parents deal with misbehavior? There are essentially three options we have open to us in these situations.
The first option is for a parent to change herself or her attitudes toward her child’s behavior. It is important for parents to realize that their thoughts about how children should behave are based mostly on their own specific experience in a family and in a culture. Sometimes, these expectations are not realistic and behavior that you consider inappropriate may be entirely normal for a child of a given age. This is why it is important to have some knowledge of developmental psychology. Find out what is normal for children the same age as your own. For example, if your two year old daughter is constantly saying “no!” is getting into everything and is generally driving you crazy, you may have to give up trying to control her every move through constant punishment and accept this as normal for a child of her age. This doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be consequences for her behavior, but it is extremely important to remember that, in most cases, what you are seeing is not deviant nor aimed at you personally. This is particularly important to keep in mind when dealing with adolescents who have a natural bent toward independence and question all forms of authority. I have found pediatricians, day-care supervisors, parenting courses and other parents to be helpful sources of information about normal, age-appropriate behavior.
Changing yourself or your attitudes will not always be the right choice and may lead the child to an unrealistic belief that the world will change to meet her demands. If this is the case, one of the other two options will be more appropriate. However, examining your own behavior and attitudes is always a good place to start.
The second option involves changing the environment. To return to the example of the two year old, this approach would involve accepting her curiosity as normal and moving everything breakable or dangerous in the house above the child’s reach. Eventually she will lose interest in these objects and also learn what she can and can’t touch. Sometimes children are in classrooms or schools that are not suited to them. This is another situation in which you might like to change the environment. Again, this may not be the best approach. In some cases it may be best for her to learn to cope with less than perfect situations and realize that the world will not always accommodate to her.
The final option, the one which parents most frequently turn to, is to try to change the child, usually in the form of punishment. While this particular response is relatively easy and quick, it is not very effective and has, as we have already seen, many negative side effects. As an alternative to punishment, there are several ways we can modify behavior. Let’s look at them.
As a preventative measure, I would suggest that the most important thing a parent can do is to provide a good role model for the child. Behave as you would like the child to behave. Children learn best by modeling. If they see violent, negative behavior, that is what they will model. All the parenting skills combined cannot undo bad models.
It is also important to state limits clearly. Often children will misbehave just to find out what the limits are, their thinking being, “How far can I go before she will react?” Limits must also be consistent. If, for example, it is o.k. to throw toys on one day, but a punishable offence on the next, the child learns that the world is an unsafe and unpredictable place and will probably act out her anxiety in some way that you will find unpleasant. This is not to say that limits can’t change. When you realize that a limit is unrealistic or unfair, it is time to change it. When dealing with older children, for example, good parents will listen and try to come to some mutual agreement about fair limits.
The most effective way of changing behavior is through conditional positive strokes or positive reinforcement. Many children misbehave in order to get attention. The theory behind positive reinforcement is to grant children the attention they desire when they are behaving appropriately and to deny it when they are misbehaving. In other words, reinforce appropriate behavior, ignore negative behavior. A former student of mine who taught dance to school-age children told me about a child who was a constant source of disruption in her class, He would stand in the back row of the class gyrating and making strange sounds. At first, she would stop the class and admonish him, but this had no effect. This behavior became more frequent and disruptive as the class progressed. Finally, at the end of her wits and having turned into a screaming banshee, she decided he had to go. As a last resort, however, she decided to try positive reinforcement. She completely ignored him when he acted up in class and paid attention to him only when he was acting appropriately. Amazingly, within about two weeks he was one of the best members of her class. The secret to her success was a process called shaping. When we shape a behavior, we begin by reinforcing any small approach to the expected behavior. In this case, she began by reinforcing him when he was standing still and paying attention. When the initial task is learned, the child is reinforced for gradual improvements and failure or negative behavior is ignored until the final goal is reached. Thus the child experiences positive strokes for attempting to change rather than experiencing punishment and failure.
Changing a child’s behavior is seldom as easy as was described in the above example. One of the problems with children who misbehave for attention is that they have learned that the only way they will get attention is to misbehave. Often, a child will decide that a negative stroke is better than no stroke at all. In these cases, the continued negative responses she receives lead to the development of low self-esteem. Furthermore, children with very poor self-esteem sometimes reach the point where negative responses from others take on the role of positive reinforcements. In other words, the child’s attitude is, “I only feel good when someone is treating me badly.” Life for these children becomes one attempt after another to get someone to yell at them, hit them or otherwise respond negatively. Parents, not knowing any other response, deliver negative strokes thinking they are punishing the child when they are, in fact, reinforcing negative behavior and solidifying low self-esteem.
People with poor self-esteem are destructive to themselves and to others. When I worked in a residential treatment center in the early 70’s, we admitted a boy who was the angriest, meanest six-year-old I had ever met. His favorite pastimes were setting cats on fire and smearing dog feces inside little girl’s mouths. He was the product of a violent and alcoholic home and his whole life seemed to be dedicated to enraging adults to the point where they would become abusive with him. I decided to implement a plan which consisted of completely ignoring him until he did something positive. This plan was to be carried out by all staff members at the center. About five minutes into the plan, he broke a window. He was ignored and, to his amazement, no one responded. Realizing something was amiss, he found the smallest, most defenseless girl in the center and began pounding her mercilessly in the face. Obviously we had to immediately stop him and find some consequence for his behavior. I’ll never forget the grin on his face as I marched him away to his room. He had won.
There are two factors which contributed to this boy’s behavior. The first is the need for attention which we have already discussed. Children must feel they can affect the people around them. If they cannot affect you in a way that results in you giving them positive strokes, they will find out how to produce negative strokes. The second is the need for power. Children who feel powerless in their lives will attempt to gain power by acting in ways that are destructive to themselves and to others. How can we as parents ensure that our children have a feeling of power over their lives? With young children, this can be as simple as letting them pick out their own clothes, or which bedtime story to read. As they get older, you might let them set their own bedtime and decide which TV shows they want to watch. Responsible parenting allows you to gradually give a child more and more control over her own life. Children who know you respect and trust them will respond in kind. A child who receives your trust will be trustworthy herself.
Parents sometimes allow children too much power. Children should not be allowed the freedom to decide to stop brushing their teeth, eat unhealthily, verbally or physically abuse others, miss sleep or participate in dangerous activities. This is neglect and can result in omnipotent children who have little regard for others and believe life should meet all of their expectations. The proper balance of autonomy allowed and limits imposed is something we all have struggled with as parents. Children need power over some aspects of their lives, but they also need to feel safe in the hands of a parent who is in control of herself and the welfare of the child.
I would like to make one last comment about power. Beware of power struggles. Try to avoid them by planning ahead and seeing what difficulties will arise in situations you face. Don’t get into battles you can’t win. Decide what rules and limits are really important. Be really clear about them and don’t back down. Everything else should be negotiable or flexible, depending on the situation. Although children understand and respect strength in parents, they also place great value on fairness. It is wise to avoid power struggles but we all eventually find ourselves in these battles which constitute the worst (and sometimes the funniest) memories of our parenting lives. Try to have a sense of humor.
Another alternative to punishment is the use of consequences. Consequences can be natural or logical. A natural consequence is a consequence that occurs directly as a result of a child’s behavior and without the parent’s intervention. If you go out in the rain without rain gear you will get wet and cold. If you do not eat dinner you get hungry. I do not recommend the following technique but it was an interesting example of learning as a result of natural consequences. When my son was about nine or ten months old, I was trying to teach him to stay away from hot things. I would point to the stove and say, “Hot!” He would put his hand on a cold burner and say “Hot!” very pleased with himself. I used lots of different objects to try and teach this, all to no avail, since nothing was ever really hot. One day I was sitting drinking a cup of coffee and he walked up to me. I pointed to the coffee and said “Hot!” Before I could stop him he stuck his finger into the coffee, immediately withdrew it and yelled, “HOT!” From that point on he always avoided anything I told him was hot. Again, I do not recommend this procedure, but it does exemplify the principle of natural consequences.
Often behaviors do not have natural consequences, or the consequences are so awful you cannot let a child experience them. For example, you do not teach children about not going in the street by allowing them to be hit by cars. You can, however, apply logical consequences in these situations. Logical consequences are consequences which make sense to the child and are linked in some logical way to the behavior. Spanking, for example, is not logically related to any behavior, nor is being sent to your room without dinner because you swore. Not getting desert because you did not eat your meal, however, is a logical consequence because the consequence is related to the behavior, eating your meal. When I was trying to teach my one-year-old son not to go in the street I used logical consequences. I would hold his hand, walk with him to the curb and say, “No street.” He would look at me like I was crazy and say “No street.” I would then let go and if he walked into the street I would pick him up, say “No!” firmly and take him into the house. He would protest but we would stay inside for a while just to make the point. Going inside is a logical consequence to not behaving safely outside. I repeated this each day, each time moving farther away as he reached the curb, turned around, smiled and said “No street.” When I felt that he had learned not to go in the street, I let him wander while I sat on the porch and watched. One day he began to walk toward the corner about a half a block away. My wife started after him but I said, “Let’s see what happens.” When he got to the corner he turned his head, smiled, said “No,no,no!” and came back. Needless to say, he got a lot of positive strokes for that decision.
In the end, you may have to resort to punishment, but it should be your last option. If you do resort to punishment, make sure it is being carried out for the child’s good and not yours. In other words, the punishment should teach the child about limits or consequences and not be just the result of your frustration or anger. Avoid physical punishment. This is bad modeling and is not necessary. Lastly, it is important to separate the behavior from the child; make sure the child understands that, though you may not like what she is doing, you still love her. Improving a child’s behavior at the expense of her self-esteem is a hollow victory.
It is important to not confuse reinforcement or positive strokes with bribery or natural and logical consequences with threatening. Reinforcement is spontaneous or part of a contract. For example, we may reinforce a child who has just brought home a great report card or a child may earn a certain amount of money by completing tasks for which she is responsible. We may spontaneously reinforce a child because she has done something that we have decided is appropriate or more mature than we previously accepted. For example, a child may begin to baby-sit her younger sister when you go out. These are all things that are good for the child. On the other hand, bribery is a calculated way to get a child to do something for you, usually after the child has started misbehaving. For example, a child starts to scream in the store and we say, “Be quiet and I’ll get you a chocolate bar.” The child learns, “If I misbehave long enough I will eventually get what I want.” If we are going to reward a child for good behavior, it should be spontaneous or agreed upon before you go in the store. If the child misbehaves, no reward will be forthcoming.
Threats are not very effective because, like bribes, they are usually made after the negative behavior begins. In addition, threats are often seen as a challenge by the child, who may think to herself, “Let’s just see if she means this.” Also, parents often threaten consequences that cannot be carried out, or that hurt the parent more than the child. If I want to go shopping and tell my toddler that she will be taken home if she misbehaves, I am actually giving her a wonderful way to avoid shopping and setting myself up for a disappointing day or an opportunity to go back on my word. Before getting into potentially troublesome situations, be really clear with your children what you expect of them and what will happen if they do or do not meet your expectations. Do not make the child wait too long for positive consequences and if you resort to a negative consequence, it should be clear why this is happening.
This reminds me of an experience I had with my youngest son. Threats are almost always a bad idea with children. Threats you can’t carry out are even worse. It was Halloween and we were going to take the boys to a party at our oldest son’s school after dinner. We were having shrimp salad and my youngest son refused to eat any. So at first I told him we wouldn’t go until he ate two bites. He refused. Now I had really set myself up here in a power struggle I could not win. We were going no matter what. So I backed down to one bite. Still no agreement. So I picked up a shrimp, stuffed it in his mouth, picked him up and loaded him into the car. At the party he ate candy, bobbed for apples, played games and generally had a great time. When we came home we put them to bed and he was so exhausted he was sound asleep before I could even kiss him goodnight. As I leaned over to kiss him, his mouth opened and there on his lower gum was the shrimp.
Parents ask a lot of questions about discipline. Instead of thinking of discipline as punishment, it is helpful to think of it as teaching children how to govern their own behavior. The child who has experienced unconditional love, conditional positive strokes, limits, good models and a minimum of negativity is not going to need to misbehave for attention or to prove her own power. However, all children (and adults) misbehave. What is important is our reaction to that behavior.
We said earlier that there were three ways to respond to misbehavior: Change yourself, change the environment or change the child. All three approaches are appropriate in different situations. It is important to decide which one is best in the particular situation in which you find yourself. Elizabeth Creary, in her book Beyond Spanking and Spoiling, says that the best way to answer the question, “What should I do?” is to ask yourself another question: “How can the needs of the child and my(our) needs get satisfied in this situation?” Considering only your own needs produces a child who feels unloved and unseen, while considering only the child’s produces a spoiled child who does not understand how to get along with others. The goal is to work toward a compromise which will lead to a situation in which both your needs and the child’s needs can be met. To do this you may have to change yourself or your expectations, change the child’s environment, or you may have to change the child.
Children are not machines–you cannot learn how to “fix” them in courses or books. Although these sources of information are helpful, you cannot apply pat, simple solutions to complex problems. Bruno Bettleheim, in his book, The Good Enough Parent, says the key to being a good enough parent is to first understand why the child is doing what she is doing. He maintains that, based on the child’s experience and level of understanding, everything a child does makes sense to her at the time. According to Bettleheim, the first step in dealing with a problem is to understand the child’s perspective. Why is the child doing what she is doing? Is she scared? Is she desperate for attention or power in her life? Is she just acting like a normal four-year-old? This approach requires us to listen to children. Although I have not addressed this topic here, it is extremely important and entire books have been written on the subject. I enthusiastically recommend learning how to listen to your children if you have trouble in this area. Secondly, he advises us to try and remember what it was like to be a child, to try to imagine what our own responses might have to the situations that cause problems for our children.
Closely related to this idea is the concept of mirroring. Mirroring entails recognizing what your child is feeling or thinking and reflecting it back. This process begins with comforting an unhappy baby, returning her smiles and gazes and engaging in loving conversations with the cooing and babbling infant. Later we can show children that we understand why they are unhappy or angry even though we may not alter our limits or environment to satisfy the child’s desires. A friend of mine once told me of an experience with her two-year-old granddaughter who was staying with her while her mother was delivering her second child. At one point during the week the toddler picked up a doll and started banging its head against the table while repeating over and over, “No want baby!” My friend said, “I know you are angry and it is ok to be angry about having to share mommy, but it is not ok to hit the baby. Mommy and Grandma will love you just as much now as we did before the baby came.” This process of mirroring tells the child her feelings and perceptions are valid even if her behavior is not acceptable. It tells the child she matters and is worthy of existence in this world. Mirroring helps to form a sense of self which will help a child to make healthy decisions later in life.
If we are able to do these two things, understand the child’s motives and feel what the child feels, we will most likely make the right decisions. Trust in your own intuition and your ability to become better at this very difficult task of childrearing. Integrate the information you feel is helpful with what you know in your heart is right for you and your child. Remember that, no matter what else happens, if your child leaves childhood knowing you love her and will always love her and has been given the tools necessary to negotiate the perils of life, you have been successful. She will accept herself, will be able to love others and pass this gift to her own children.