Feb. 6th, 2012 12:14 pm
On parenting
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textualdevianceSeeing a friend's link to this piece about French parenting got me to thinking about the rampant parentfail I see all the time.
Reposting what I commented, plus some other thoughts:
I don't have a lot of room to talk, yet, but I find many parents have one or two fatal flaws (or both): 1. They want to be their child's best friend, rather than their child's teacher. 2. They take emotional comfort from their child, rather than from the other adults in their lives.
To me, a parent has basically one core job: turning their kid into a functioning, self-sufficient adult. And refusing to set limits or let the kid learn how to be alone and self-directing is not the way to do that. Of course, very tiny babies need to be responded to quickly--it's how they learn how to trust that their needs will be met--but once they're old enough that they're whiny not because they truly need something, but because they're bored or mildly frustrated or just need a nap, it's important not to respond to their every bid for attention. So long as they know for absolutely certain that any true need will be attended to quickly and fully, they're not going to be traumatized.
This is part of why I know I'm not going to be part of the "mommy brigade." I have no desire to spend every single waking moment attached to my kid, and allowing her to become my entire world. Kids don't need to be raised by other kids, but by adults. And the less time you spend being an adult around your child, the less they learn how to be one.
Of course, people who misunderstand the purpose of early-infancy attachment parenting find such notions horrific. They imply that if you don't want to spend your entire existence minding your child, then you shouldn't be a parent in the first place. Everything from extended breastfeeding to (dear gods) non-diapering is a badge of honor for them, because they've been taught to subvert their own autonomy for the sake of mommyhood. And yet, that's pretty much the absolute worst thing you can do for your kids.
When you're on an airplane, and they do the spiel about the oxygen masks, they tell you to secure your own mask before assisting others. The reason for this is not because they don't want you to be altruistic and helpful, but because people who are incapacitated themselves are not just not very helpful to others, but can actively make things worse. The same is true for parenting: if you're not maintaining your own personal stability, identity and sense of adulthood, you're not helping your kid. You're doing her a disservice. If you truly believe in doing right by your kids, make sure you secure your own life and adulthood first. Martyrs make terrible parents.
On the flip side of this, of course, is parents who think their job boils down to keeping their kid in line. They don't establish themselves as authorities by virtue of being a grown-up who knows better, but as a means of pulling rank and maintaining control. At the end of the piece above, the author relates how she taught her son not to do something he ought not: not by physically harming him or raging over him so much that he was terrified, but merely by being firm, and setting a clear, consistent boundary.
The goal isn't to make your kid fear retribution. All that does is make them anxiety-ridden and/or sneaky about doing something forbidden when your back is turned. It's to establish yourself as someone who knows what they're talking about, and has the ability to back that up. If you're not confident in your abilities as an adult, and if you can't demonstrate those every day (say, by holding down a job, and having hobbies, friends, and a life of your own outside your kid) then your kid won't see you as an authority, and you're not going to get very far. But you're also not going to get far by rising up like an evil orc overlord and telling the puny human to keep in line or fear the lash.
Think about it this way: if your doctor wanted you to stop smoking, and did so by raging and shaming and generally making you feel like crap, you'd be more inclined to rebel, right? If the entirety of his sales pitch on this boiled down to "you're a pathetic patient, and I'm the doctor with all the status and power, so you have to listen to me," damn right you're not going to listen.
Conversely, if your doctor shows you that she knows you're mature and responsible, and respects that you're a sensible person who will do what's in the best interest of health? Chances are you're a lot more likely to comply with her instructions.
Honestly, this goes for just about everything. The trick to getting people to behave well is not to rule by fear of abuse and suffering, nor to allow such permissiveness that there's never any culpability for one's actions. Fear of starvation and death doesn't motivate people to work, so having social safety nets that ensure that the jobless aren't going to suffer like that doesn't make them lazy. But likewise, merely handing them piles of cash and not also giving them the tools they need to become self-sufficient does no good, either. There's a reason crime and poverty rates are so much lower in places that operate from this philosophy. When you teach people how to be mature and responsible, and are there to catch them if they fall through no fault of their own--rather than to punish them for failure--they become confident in their own abilities, and learn how to be self-sufficient.
The bottom line is that it's all about teaching: people with established knowledge and skill conveying that information to others with a sense of respect for their ability to learn. If you look at children, or patients, or the poor as clueless idiots who either need constant minding or the fear of god in order to make them behave, you're robbing them of their humanity, and you're not actually going to get anywhere with them.
As the proverbial wisdom goes (teaching a man to fish and all that): give him the fish, he'll never learn how to feed himself. Threaten him with starvation if he doesn't figure it out on his own? He'll just die. The happy, most-effective medium is taking responsibility for being a guide--not a crutch, not a boss--for those who have less information than you do, and showing him how to fish.
And frankly, if you can't be arsed to do that? If you think you should micromanage your kid or only teach her how to obey you? You really shouldn't be a parent.
Reposting what I commented, plus some other thoughts:
I don't have a lot of room to talk, yet, but I find many parents have one or two fatal flaws (or both): 1. They want to be their child's best friend, rather than their child's teacher. 2. They take emotional comfort from their child, rather than from the other adults in their lives.
To me, a parent has basically one core job: turning their kid into a functioning, self-sufficient adult. And refusing to set limits or let the kid learn how to be alone and self-directing is not the way to do that. Of course, very tiny babies need to be responded to quickly--it's how they learn how to trust that their needs will be met--but once they're old enough that they're whiny not because they truly need something, but because they're bored or mildly frustrated or just need a nap, it's important not to respond to their every bid for attention. So long as they know for absolutely certain that any true need will be attended to quickly and fully, they're not going to be traumatized.
This is part of why I know I'm not going to be part of the "mommy brigade." I have no desire to spend every single waking moment attached to my kid, and allowing her to become my entire world. Kids don't need to be raised by other kids, but by adults. And the less time you spend being an adult around your child, the less they learn how to be one.
Of course, people who misunderstand the purpose of early-infancy attachment parenting find such notions horrific. They imply that if you don't want to spend your entire existence minding your child, then you shouldn't be a parent in the first place. Everything from extended breastfeeding to (dear gods) non-diapering is a badge of honor for them, because they've been taught to subvert their own autonomy for the sake of mommyhood. And yet, that's pretty much the absolute worst thing you can do for your kids.
When you're on an airplane, and they do the spiel about the oxygen masks, they tell you to secure your own mask before assisting others. The reason for this is not because they don't want you to be altruistic and helpful, but because people who are incapacitated themselves are not just not very helpful to others, but can actively make things worse. The same is true for parenting: if you're not maintaining your own personal stability, identity and sense of adulthood, you're not helping your kid. You're doing her a disservice. If you truly believe in doing right by your kids, make sure you secure your own life and adulthood first. Martyrs make terrible parents.
On the flip side of this, of course, is parents who think their job boils down to keeping their kid in line. They don't establish themselves as authorities by virtue of being a grown-up who knows better, but as a means of pulling rank and maintaining control. At the end of the piece above, the author relates how she taught her son not to do something he ought not: not by physically harming him or raging over him so much that he was terrified, but merely by being firm, and setting a clear, consistent boundary.
The goal isn't to make your kid fear retribution. All that does is make them anxiety-ridden and/or sneaky about doing something forbidden when your back is turned. It's to establish yourself as someone who knows what they're talking about, and has the ability to back that up. If you're not confident in your abilities as an adult, and if you can't demonstrate those every day (say, by holding down a job, and having hobbies, friends, and a life of your own outside your kid) then your kid won't see you as an authority, and you're not going to get very far. But you're also not going to get far by rising up like an evil orc overlord and telling the puny human to keep in line or fear the lash.
Think about it this way: if your doctor wanted you to stop smoking, and did so by raging and shaming and generally making you feel like crap, you'd be more inclined to rebel, right? If the entirety of his sales pitch on this boiled down to "you're a pathetic patient, and I'm the doctor with all the status and power, so you have to listen to me," damn right you're not going to listen.
Conversely, if your doctor shows you that she knows you're mature and responsible, and respects that you're a sensible person who will do what's in the best interest of health? Chances are you're a lot more likely to comply with her instructions.
Honestly, this goes for just about everything. The trick to getting people to behave well is not to rule by fear of abuse and suffering, nor to allow such permissiveness that there's never any culpability for one's actions. Fear of starvation and death doesn't motivate people to work, so having social safety nets that ensure that the jobless aren't going to suffer like that doesn't make them lazy. But likewise, merely handing them piles of cash and not also giving them the tools they need to become self-sufficient does no good, either. There's a reason crime and poverty rates are so much lower in places that operate from this philosophy. When you teach people how to be mature and responsible, and are there to catch them if they fall through no fault of their own--rather than to punish them for failure--they become confident in their own abilities, and learn how to be self-sufficient.
The bottom line is that it's all about teaching: people with established knowledge and skill conveying that information to others with a sense of respect for their ability to learn. If you look at children, or patients, or the poor as clueless idiots who either need constant minding or the fear of god in order to make them behave, you're robbing them of their humanity, and you're not actually going to get anywhere with them.
As the proverbial wisdom goes (teaching a man to fish and all that): give him the fish, he'll never learn how to feed himself. Threaten him with starvation if he doesn't figure it out on his own? He'll just die. The happy, most-effective medium is taking responsibility for being a guide--not a crutch, not a boss--for those who have less information than you do, and showing him how to fish.
And frankly, if you can't be arsed to do that? If you think you should micromanage your kid or only teach her how to obey you? You really shouldn't be a parent.
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