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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
ONE SIZE FITS ALL PARENTING? 2004-09-27 Usually by the time a first child reaches the age of two or three parents begin to search for a parenting system that works to reduce or manage the tantrums, stubbornness, negativity, and willfulness of their child. For the first year or two, after all, parents are more likely to need stamina and sleep than they need a good parenting strategy. But once the stage of simply meeting physical needs is past and children learn to say "no" with words or behavior, frustrated parents may sign up for a community class in parenting, or log on to Amazon to find parenting books, or run to their friends and relatives who are more experienced at understanding and managing children. Others simply tough it out, alternating between overreaction and guilt, or perhaps fall back on the strategies their parents used. When my children attended a parent participation nursery school, we payed therapists and educators to provide parenting seminars for the moms and dads who had reached that frustrated stage of parenting. Later, when I became a therapist, the school invited me back to provide pointers and inspiration to the new crop of overwhelmed parents. Every time I taught one of these seminars I sensed in the types of questions asked a desire for a "one size fits all" strategy, easy to learn, easy to apply, and extremely likely to succeed in modifying their children's behavior. As I nervously prepared to give my first parenting seminar I sought guidance from a more experienced therapist who had given many talks to parents. His advice shocked and appalled me. He indicated I didn't really need to say very much because parents knew so little about child development and discipline that almost anything would be helpful. His words and his tone were extremely condescending, not only to the parents of the preschool, but to me as the invited lecturer. One of the things he forgot was that I was a parent of three children myself, and even before I went to graduate school to become a therapist I considered myself, a stay-at-home-mom, to be quite knowledgeable about children. In fact, even today I consider many parents to be more knowledgeable about children than the so-called experts claim to be. "Experts" learn mainly from books, and a minimal amount of time observing other people's children. Parents, on the other hand, get to know their children more thoroughly, over longer spans of time, and at much deeper levels, than any therapist or child development expert ever could. In fact, as I thought about what to say to the group of parents, I drew as much from my own personal experience as I did from the books that lined my bookshelves. Perhaps that personal experience had been made more meaningful because of the knowledge I had gained in my graduate work, but to this day I believe the knowledge and experience I gained as a parent are more valuable than anything I learned in a textbook. So when I spoke in front of the parents that night, teaching them a few basic behavioral strategies for managing misbehavior, I also told them what my experience had taught me, that when it comes to being a successful parent, it is far more important to really know your child than it is to read a book or attend a lecture by an expert. In other words, there is no one parenting strategy that works with all children, all the time. A lot of your effectiveness as a parent has to do with how well you respond to the particular temperament of your child at a particular time and under particular circumstances. If you have a very sensitive child, you may respond one way, if your child is tough and aggressive in temperament, you may respond another way. And if you have more than one child, what works for one may not work for another. In addition to that, what works on Monday may not work on Wednesday. On Monday your child may have had enough sleep or just be in a good mood for some unknown reason. On Wednesday he may watch mommy play with his baby sister and feel pangs of jealousy, and then be less receptive to doing what he is asked to do. And while the parenting "experts" all stress the importance of consistency in parenting, I think there is also something to be said for being flexible. If as a parent you have spent time not just tending to your child's biological needs but also getting to know his personality and temperament, you will have a better idea of what I mean. For example, sometimes it's worth it to stand your ground and insist your child do what you tell him to do. Sometimes it's best to think before you tell him what to do, notably when he is out of sorts and the likelihood of compliance is nil. Sometimes it's okay to give choices and sometimes it's an exercise in frustration. Sometimes it's wise to reason with a child and sometimes it's better to simply say "because I said so." Sometimes it's important to fight and other times to surrender. If this seems unreasonable think about this: no adult wants to work at a job or be in a marriage where there is a one-size-fits all strategy for everything. We all like to be with those who understand that we have good days and bad days, and that we need praise as much as discipline. We'd like to believe that when we make mistakes we will be given a second chance and forgiven, not just punished. Why should our children be any different? What I can say about my own parenting is that I was most successful when I was so tuned in to my children that I developed a good sense for what might work and what would be futile in any given circumstance. Over the years I collected a lot of tools and techniques to use with problem behavior, but I chose carefully whenever I had to reach into my tool bag. It took a lot of time and effort to perfect my skills, and it required my paying a lot of attention to each of my children. Obviously, I was much better at it with my last child than I was with my first. All of this can simply be summed up in two truths. First, parenting is not something you can simply do in your spare time; you must work at it every day. And second, there is no one parenting strategy that works all the time with all children. One size definitely does not fit all. |