Want to be a better parent? Give up control!

Parenting is tough. I have 5 wonderful kids, and I’m starting to get a feel for what good parenting might look like. Not to be too blunt about it but children start out as little dictators. They have one goal – make the world satisfy their needs. A parent’s job is to socialize the little guys so they can become good members of their communities.

GOOD MEMBER OF COMMUNITY We can not all continue to act with childishly pure selfishness if we are going to live together. If you live alone on a desert island, it does not bother me one bit if you choose to drive down the middle of the road. If you live with others, please stay on the correct side. Every community has accepted standards of behavior, some enforced as laws, others just understood as common decency. Superlative behavior exhibits virtues above the minimums of legality and common decency. Higher standards are advocated by many groups from Scouting to fraternal organizations to religions to many more. When more people live to higher standards the quality of life in a community is improved.

SOCIALIZING A CHILD This is the hard part. To begin with we must give up the concept of controlling the behavior of a child. It can not be done. We have a great ability and responsibility to influence our children, but control is not available. As soon as a child can start to reason she starts to make choices. As parents we have the ability to influence those choices. We want our children to make good choices. Good choices lead to good behavior. Trying to control behavior by denying choice is disrespectful and ultimately ineffective. The choice is always there. That’s reality.

Also, keep in mind your influence is limited. Each child has a unique set of gifts that will have much to do with how they will live their lives. Each child has a unique position in the sibling birth order. Each child will be socialized by others; teachers, peers, television, internet, etc. We do have the power to limit some of the other influences, particularly for younger children. Exercise that power.

Another problem with influencing choices is we don’t get to see the choice, we see the behavior. One way around this is to discuss the choices with your child. When possible give her options that she may not see.

Choices have consequences. All adults know that (although we may occasionally live in denial). Connecting choices with logical consequences is what parents can give their kids. You give positive reinforcement for good behavior and negative for undesirable behavior. Giving in to a child pitching a fit tells her pitching a fit works. Guaranteed to get you more tantrums. Praise for the small good behaviors will also bring more of that.
It takes a lot of focus and a lot of self discipline to steadily reward the good and discourage the bad. I find it challenging. I also have noticed that it is hardest at first and gets easier as the kids start to adjust their behaviors to get the positive and avoid the negative.

Perfect Parenting Made Easy

Anyone who had a perfect childhood please raise your hand. You are excused from this reading.

A wise man once said there are only two perfect families in America but they haven’t been found yet. It’s really hard to be a good parent, impossible to be a perfect parent. We can’t even agree on how to do it much less do it.

THEORY CONFUSION The currently accepted theories tend to move the state of the art of child rearing in the same general direction but there is no consensus on the details. Is it okay to spank? Do time-outs give the right message? Are appropriate consequences effective? When is the right bedtime? Do you give incentives for grades? Do you let your kids eat what they want? There are so many theories, do you pick one and stick with it or do you take the appealing parts from several? Maybe the wide choice of authorities makes you think none is really right, so you just do what feels right.

SOLUTION: There are many right ways to parent.  Don’t get hung up worrying about which right way.

APPLICATION CHALLENGE  Even if you are a true believer in a certain approach to child rearing and you’ve read every book on the subject, been to umpteen seminars, and review your notes every week, you still have the problem of applying the rules perfectly. Good luck! If you are omniscient and can time travel, it would be less challenging. John says Tom hit him in the head with a brick, and Tom says John fell off the slide. Your teenage ballerina is restricting her eating to keep her thinness for a series of performances that may get her the full ride scholarship to the school of her dreams. Your junior school child is hanging out with the wrong crowd.

SOLUTION: Do the best you can. That is hard enough.  If you are fortunate enough to believe in God, trust God to work it all out in the long run.

Perfect parenting is a fantasy held by people who haven’t raised kids. It’s also a dangerous dream on two counts. 1) If you think there is a perfect way you may not be willing to realize how complicated and difficult the job is. You might look for simple rigid answers. 2) You will go crazy expecting your kids to be perfect. It’s not going to happen. Good kids are possible. Perfect kids are not.

So, it’s easy.  Just give up on being perfect.

Ends or Means: What’s the Right Goal?

Which is more important what we want or how we proceed to get it? Judging by the way most folks act I’d have to say that they think the ends are more important. Makes sense to me.

We learn it young. Watch kids. A willful 2 year is without much natural restraint about how he goes about getting he wants, usually something or someone to do something for him. Yelling and screaming, if rewarded by a caregiver, can become a standard mode of operating, especially in public places. He will gladly take advantage of a parent’s embarrassment to get his way.

Parents teach their kids about what are acceptable means. Lying, cheating, stealing, etc are not the right ways. Some kids get it better than others. Yet the focus of the child is still the end, just with limits to the means to get it.

As adults most folks still think the same way. We want things and we figure out how to get them. I don’t think of us really spend much time thinking why we want these or even if it makes sense to obtain them. Everyone seems to desire more money and more possessions. I presume they think those things will make them happier. But are rich people happier than those with less money? Not generally.

We are goal oriented, and we are accustomed to wanting things or people. What if we alter our goal orientation to the means instead the ends? That’s hard to imagine, but it can be done. It’s called virtuous living, and it is what religion teaches us . I’m not aware of any world religion that preaches the virtue of materialism or manipulation. They teach us how to act properly and that virtuous behavior will be rewarded.  I believe virtuous behaviour is rewarded.

The hard part is it’s challenging to stop thinking like a 2 year old. Our modern world makes it particularly difficult. There is very little money to be made on your good behavior, but there are literally billions of dollars to be made selling goods and services. Advertising tries to get us to adopt a product or service as a worthy goal for our lives. And advertising works. Practically everyone wants a nice car, a big home, and a vacation on a beautiful beach.  How many people spend much time thinking about they could be more honest, not appearing more honest but being more honest even if no one else knows about it?

Maybe as people get older they start to realize the false promise of advertising and start to shift their focus to the rewards of good behavior.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could stop acting like kids when we turn 3 instead of 70.  How do we teach our kids that good behaviour can lead to happiness better than that new toy?  Tough job.

Can you teach algebra to a german shepard?

Can you teach algebra to a german shepard? No, the dog’s brain is incapable of understanding advanced mathematics. Our brains are way more capable, but do we have similar limits? Is there knowledge and understanding that our brains are incapable of even imagining?

What if there are things going on that our sense organs cannot sense and we cannot imagine sensing? We now understand a bat’s radar, but what else is out there we are missing?

Some people believe that humans are in the process of figuring out everything. I have a hard time believing that. Are we close to gaining scientific knowledge about what happens after we die? Along with quite a few folks around the world, I believe that some mental processing, like prayer, has a real effect on what happens. Cann’t explain that. Ever seen the movie “What the Bleap Do We Know?” It will blow your mind to see how much there is we can not explain with conventional thinking.

We seem to have a strong need to explain everything. Maybe that’s why we have learned so much. We feel very uncomfortable with the unknown. Like fear of the dark.

Do the gods create lightning to show dissatisfaction with us? We’ve long rejected that explanation as primitive, but I’m sure some such explanation was absolutely believed by many intelligent people. Do you really think that some of our current “Knowledge” won’t be rejected as curiously primitive a couple hundred years in the future?

Can we live without knowing everything? Sure. It’s actually easier not having to be a know-it-all. And our friends will enjoy us more if we’re not.

The Wizdom of Oz

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” the Wizard of Oz frantically commanded.

The wizard didn’t want anyone to know who he really was, that he was not as grand and powerful as he appeared. Sounds normal, maybe a bit more theatrically overblown, but a normal mode of operating.

We all do it, and we don’t think twice about. It’s called keeping up appearances. Is it wrong? Not really. But, like most things, it’s a matter of degree.

We live in a critical world where sometimes people actively look for flaws in others. It is not a nice thing, yet it is part of our reality. The nadir of critical comes in the form of the “social X-ray,” those scary, intimidating people who try to see right through your protective curtain to discover your imperfections. Enter the Wicked Witch who abuses the insecurities of Scarecrow, Tinman, and Lion.

Do you like to be criticized? Nope. But we are all imperfect humans, so what can we do? We pull the curtain in front of us. The curtain is a dern good protection in some situations, like with Wicked Witches.

The problem with curtains is that we can get so accustomed to the protection that we forget to pull it back when we don’t need the protection. If we stop pulling it back altogether, we might start to think that a wall would really be a better protection. Now no one gets to see the real you. Doesn’t sound good.

I realize that, as a parent, I can have a major influence on whether my kids learn how to use their curtains in a health manner. The solution is love, uncritical love. I can show my children that it is safe to pull back the curtain and be loved for their true selves. It’s not always easy to do, but the rewards are great.

Kids aren’t born with curtains, they construct them over time. Let’s help them know when to close them and when to open them.

Honest with Yourself?

Am I? Nope. Do I want to be? Not really.

Have you ever noticed that even the biggest jerks think they are good people. Maybe that’s why they are such jerks; because they aren’t aware of how negative their behaviors are.

Are you and I any different from the jerks? Not really. It’s just a matter of degree. There is one good reason why we are unaware of our bad behaviors; we don’t want to know.

To regulate anything there must be knowledge and rules. Self regulation or self control is no different. We have the rules. Don’t lie. Don’t cheat. Don’t steal. etc. etc. Knowledge about ourselves and how we affect our world is harder to obtain, but it is available. So why don’t we do a perfect job of self regulating. I see three reasons: 1) fuzzy rules, 2) fuzzy knowledge, and 3) keeping the rules separate from the knowledge.

FUZZY RULES We all know about lying to someone to keep from hurting their feelings. That makes the lying prohibition fuzzy. How fuzzy is it? Is lying to your boss okay so you keep your job? Is lying to your partner a good way to preserve a relationship? I’m a lawyer. There are millions of pages of law that try to make our rules about lying less fuzzy. It difficult to be precise about right and wrong in specific circumstances. That difficulty allows us to rationalize the fuzziness to our favor. Unlike Supreme Court cases we don’t have the benefit of thousands of hours of analysis for every moral issue in our lives. We tend to rationalize within the fuzzy zone and keep on moving.

FUZZY KNOWLEDGE We can be pretty limited in out knowledge of both ourselves and our affect on our worlds. Looking for both types of knowledge takes work that we normally don’t do. Why? Maybe we are too busy. Maybe we don’t see the need. Maybe we are afraid to look because we might not feel comfortable with what we see.

RULES separate from KNOWLEDGE Rules must be applied to knowledge to discover if behaviour needs to be regulated. For any of us who are avoiding self regulation (and we all do to some degree) the solution is simple. Just don’t think about it. And if you cannot manage to keep the two separate in your brain find something else to occupy or even shut down your thinking. TV does a good job of letting the brain escape to la la land. Sadly, intoxicants work quite effectively too.

OK, that’s too much honesty. Is there a ball game on?

Escape the Drama Triangle trap

Ever heard of the Drama Triangle? Stephen Karpman thought it up nearly 4 decades ago. It describes how we get caught in pattern of changing roles when relating to people. Imagine a triangle with the roles of Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer at each corner. The rules of this unfortunately real game is that we start at one corner and move around the Triangle changing roles as we relate to others.

Example: After a long day at work your spouse is having trouble managing the cooking of your birthday dinner. As Rescuer you volunteer to help. Your spouse burns a finger in spagetti water and leaves to nurse it. You, now feeling like the Victim, are left to cook the meal. You start wondering why your spouse hasn’t returned to help. As time passes you get angry about having to cook your own birthday dinner. When your spouse finally returns you, the Persecutor, snap in an ugly tone, “It’s about time.” Now your spouse is feeling the Victim of both the burn and your scalding jab and feels justified Persecuting you with, “I don’t care about your stupid birthday anyway.” An escalation to nuclear war over cooking a meal. Wow!

I find myself assuming one of these roles and moving around the Triangle all the time. It’s scary. The first step to escaping is realizing I’m in the Triangle.

There are lots of schemes that have been devised to escape the Triangle that can be found on the web. Basically we have to define a new response and a new role that isn’t part of the Triangle pattern. I find the victim role the most dangerous place to be in the Triangle. It seems like seeing one’s self as a victim sets up rationalizing bad behavior. Without the justification for persecution self restraint is a lot easier.

None of the Triangle’s roles are healthy. Even the high minded Rescuer tends tpward co-dependenccy. It’s a challenge to define and live with healthy roles and appropriate responses.
What are your ideas about escaping he Triangle?

Who are you working on?

I could spend all day analyzing other people. It’s easy and it’s fun. I get to be critical and that makes me feel better about myself. I can even get together with friends and talk about people we know who are not present. Rarely is admiration the feeling that is expressed about others. Sounds sick doesn’t it, but it’s the way we all operate.

It’s a heck of a lot easier than analyzing myself . A few minutes of honest self evaluation and I’m ready to move on to something more comfortable. Other than a few maniacs I’ve never met anyone who says they don’t want to change something about themselves. On the other hand I’ve met very few people who make the effort to learn about themselves enough to make significant changes.

If you want to tune an engine, you’ve got to know how it works. Why don’t we know more about how we work? For me there are 2 fundamental reasons: habit and fear.

HABIT We grow up observing our world and trying to fit into it. As infants we are aware of the world before we are even aware that we exist in it. Our senses dominate our thinking, and our senses are all about what is happening outside of us. We focus on figuring out the world around us and making it work to our benefit. When I observe my 3 year old I don’t see much difference in approach to life than the 40 year old in the office next door. There is just more sophistication in the older one.

FEAR Fear is the most powerful motivator in most people’s lives. Fear can be subtle or intense. Fear can create appropriate responses to real danger or it can create anxiety about things that will never happen. Fear is occasionally a blessing but most often a curse. Without it you probably would not be alive to read this; with it life can sometimes be miserable.

I’m not in the habit of looking inward and trying to figure out what makes me tick. I’m doing better at it because I know it will help me. Fear holds me back. I’m afraid of what I will find, that part of what I see will be incompatible with my self image and unlovable.

I’m working to both overcome my habit and suppress the unjustified fear. That’s progress at least.

What’s Love got to do with it?

The “experts” generally find several normal stages of love in a couples relationship. They can be simplified to UP, DOWN, and REALITY.

UP is the initial fun part. Romance, Infatuation, Sex, Sex, and more Sex. We are crazy in love. Our partner is our soul mate. It’s destiny. No one understands us. In other words it’s everything we ever wanted. This stage usually lasts a matter of months.

DOWN always comes next. Things are not going as well. There are disagreements. We tend to think our partner was fooling us (couldn’t possibly be that we were fooling ourselves). Things get a little rocky, but if we have some maturity, we don’t give up hope for the relationship formerly known as “the match made in heaven.” Can last for years.

REALITY is the lifetime (hopefully) of working on a true loving relationship. And it is work. Sometimes painful work. Oddly, it’s not so much the work on the relationship as it is our own work to resolve our personal issues so we can bring a healthy person to the relationship. It seems to be human nature that we will try to change the world (including our partner) to fit our expectations when actually the only thing we can effectively change is ourselves.

Recommended Resources: Imago Relationship Advice has a pretty cool program for relationships. I found reading about co-dependency to be helpful. When your partner is out of control (alcohol, drugs, whatever) try Al-Anon for your own sanity. Beware of pop psychology promoting simple programs (to make money). They remind me of my favorite saying, “For every complex problem, there is a simple solution….that doesn’t work.”

I wish you peace and love.

Love at Home

Some houses are special. The design or site may really be impressive. But it doesn’t take a special house to make a special home. It takes people who share love, and sometimes that is easier said than done. We always have the capacity to share more love within our homes. Most of us parents love our kids with all our hearts. That’s not hard to do. Showing it day in and day out as we deal with the demands and stresses of life is a lot harder. Love for a spouse can also be easy to hold but harder to give.

This blog is dedicated to improving life and love in our homes with our families. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.