Category: Parenting

Successful on their own terms

Posted on by Suki

I once heard a brave workshop leader say something that caused multiple mom faces around the room to fall with an almost audible thunk:

“How many of you have exactly the same values and beliefs as your parents?” the workshop leader had asked. Three moms out of perhaps 50 had raised their hands.

“Well,” she said. “That’s how many of your kids are going to have the same values and beliefs as you.”

Many of the parents in the room seemed shocked that she would suggest that their children — how could this be? — had their own minds.

Personally, I appreciated her candor, because this is something I think that parents in our day and age forget all too often (and I’m including myself here!). We consult the latest research, we follow our favorite child-rearing manual faithfully, we research schools or try to have the perfect homeschool, we’re involved with our kids, we’re committed to being better parents… But we forget that in the end our kids are themselves, and all of our engineering may get them to the right schools with the right peers and the right skills for the 21st century, but it won’t get past the fact that our kids are humans, complex inside and interacting with a complex world.

Are we doing our very best to give them what they will need in life? Of course.

Will we succeed? Probably not.

That’s not to say that our kids won’t figure out how to make their lives into a success. But they will do that on their own terms, and they will often be terms that we disagree with.

I remember a young man in college who made the agonizing decision to quit ROTC and the military career his father had planned for him. This young man was taking a huge gamble: his father had set him up for success in every way he knew. But it wasn’t on his son’s terms.

I know a man who became a scientist because he was told he was good at it. One day, he threw away that career to become a potter.

I know people who stuck with spouses their families didn’t like, who live in places their parents hate to visit, and who become vegan in spite of their meat and potatoes upbringing.

I know a lot of people who have very smart kids, kids who seem destined for success. But really, do we understand how one smart kid goes on to be Steve Jobs and another ends up picking food out of trash bins? We think we have the answers, but really, all we have is the best we can do.

I think that “the best we can do” is to offer our children tools they can use to fulfill their potential. But when we give our kids tools like a good education, they may end up using them much differently than we expected. The best we can hope is that our kids are happy with their choices in the end. Banking on your kids growing up to do exactly what you prepared them to do is not a great investment. But I hope that I do a good enough job that I’d be willing to bank on my kids being successful… on their own terms.

Can we be funny anymore?

Posted on by Suki
Boneless chicken ranch
Larson's Boneless Chicken Ranch was simply the funniest thing we'd seen all year.

My family was sitting around the dinner table talking….what we usually do. Someone made a reference to the Boneless Chicken Ranch, and we all cracked up. My kids, of course, learned about the iconic Gary Larson cartoon through us, and through the fact that I treasure the Far Side books I purchased as a teen.

I can’t remember exactly when I saw it, but I do remember what it was like to see something that funny in my teens and young adult life. First of all, funny things weren’t so easily accessible. We didn’t have the Internet. We didn’t have Youtube. We didn’t have everyone’s aunt sending forwards of forwards of forwards of Jewish haiku.

Funny things were found in a few places. First of all, the funnies, of course. The funnies happened in the newspaper every day, but really, Sunday was the day you lived for if you really cared about them. Then there was TV, most of which really wasn’t funny at all. Rare episodes of Happy Days were mildly memorable; Saturday Night Live had a long run of impossibly funny stuff and then it was yawn-worthy; when we were teens, our PBS station started playing British comedy. But heck, we didn’t even have a VCR. Each week, we pored over the TV Guide, looking for something good to watch.

When we came across something funny, we wanted to share it. Somehow, when my kid said “boneless chicken ranch,” it brought me back to what we used to do: We would see something funny, and it would remind us of someone we knew, and if the person wasn’t someone we’d see in short order, we’d clip it out and mail it to them! It seems astounding now. We’d clip something from the newspaper and put it in an envelope with a stamp. (No wonder the Post Office is in such trouble now.)

So, here’s an example of something really funny: I saw that someone linked to an intriguingly titled piece on Youtube about lip-reading Mitt Romney. I clicked on it. It was pretty darn funny (and refreshingly, I bet Republicans would find it funny, too, because seeing such a stiff guy say all those outrageous things really was worth a giggle whether you’re going to vote for him or not). But aside from being funny, it was not worth clipping out, getting it into an envelope, and sending it. There’s just too much funny stuff out there. I gave it a giggle and moved on. Didn’t even bother to forward it. (Or maybe I did. Can’t remember. These things have become so inconsequential.)

But my point is that this has got to be making a huge change in our culture, and in our kids’ experiences. Everything is so easily accessible. You used to have to work to be entertained. Kids would have to ride their bikes two miles to get to the arcade, or they’d have to wait four months till the hit movie got to their town. But now funny is everywhere, shocking is everywhere, sincere is everywhere. On Facebook on any given day I see all sorts of political drivel that I agree or disagree with. 20 years ago I wasn’t assaulted by 2×3 inch posters when I had conversations with my friends.

Will our kids be very jaded about everything? Or will they be much more engaged? Will they be harder to entertain? Or is the ubiquity of entertainment lowering their standards, so that pretty much anything will entertain them?

It’s possible that we who are parents will never know, but it seems obvious that this change is fundamental. Almost as earth-shaking as the day I opened the Sunday funnies to see the Boneless Chicken Ranch for the first time.

A boy at 13

Posted on by Suki

The big news in our town recently was that a thirteen-year-old boy was shot and killed in his neighborhood. Police say the boy had gang ties, though his mother and a counselor who worked with him said he’d been turning his life around. My son is thirteen. It’s hard to look at lives like his next to lives like my son’s and make sense of it.

It sounds like the adults in his life were trying to do the right thing. But when I read the headline, with its emphasis on gangs and police, it made me think of how little sense our systems make when you compare them to what we know about brain development. I was blown away some months ago when I read the book Inspiring Middle School Minds by Judy Willis. Willis has the impressive creds of being a pediatric neurologist who changed careers to be a middle school teacher. Not only does she get kids’ brains, she gets kids.

What I learned from Willis and from other people studying and writing about brain development is that we have it all wrong when it comes to how we’re dealing with teenagers. Somewhere along the way, someone suggested that if we get harsher with them, if we push them harder, lock them up, treat them tougher, somehow this will fix the problems that teenagers cause.

This is, of course, ridiculous. Willis talks about how teens learn everything through the emotional centers of their brains. When they are experiencing pleasure, they learn. When they are experiencing negative emotions, they turn off. So when their gang friends tell them how cool they are, how grown up and tough, they feel great. They learn exactly what their gang friends want them to learn. When the police and the juvenile justice system slam them down and lecture them, lock them up and treat them as if they should view life just like a 30-year-old does, they shut off. They literally don’t learn.

On top of that, every single piece of scientific evidence about the development of the human brain points to decision-making as the very last piece that settles into the puzzle. The average person’s decision-making capability is in place by the age of 25—this means that some people take longer than that to attain their full capacity to make rational decisions. So what does that say about how we deal with teens? Our entire approach is just dead wrong. We can’t treat them more like adults—we need to treat them more like children.

My son has never had to deal with the juvenile justice system, but like all kids, he has done wrong things. When he makes a mistake, we tell him. But at the same time, he almost always hears loving words, accepting words, and he always gets a hug, a shoulder squeezed, a smile. And our son doesn’t have to make life-changing decisions yet. Hopefully, he’ll trust us enough to consult us, just as we did our parents, well into his 20’s when making important decisions.

But many 13-year-old boys are put into situations where they have to resist the pull of gang life, which makes them feel validated and important, and where they have to make life-or-death decisions on a daily basis. I know there’s no way to solve this problem for everyone—life is, at its core, not fair. But there is a way for us to make more rational decisions about how to deal with teens in our social systems. When I read about the juvenile justice system, about the way the police and social workers deal with teens, about how families deal with their difficult teens, I wish over and over that we would trust more in what our scientists are telling us.

Teens are still kids. Yes, it’s true that we shouldn’t treat them like babies. But no, we shouldn’t expect them to have the capabilities of adults. They don’t, and no matter how we treat them like adults, they won’t. They’re still kids, and they need love, support, and encouragement from adults who care about them.

I’m so sorry that a family lost their 13-year-old boy. I hope it reminds all of us to hug our teens, love them, and remember that they can’t be anything more than their biology lets them be.

The Power of Habit: Clean at last!

Posted on by Suki

I have a weakness for books that take brain research and attempt to apply it to our everyday lives. I think this is one of the most fascinating aspects of the time we’re living in: We’re amassing all this new information about how our brains work… so what do we do with it?

My husband knows my weakness, and recently passed on a book he was reading, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. It’s a quick read, and not necessarily life-changing. Duhigg offers brain research and lots of anecdotes to back up what I think most of us instinctively know: Habits are easy to form and usually hard to break. Except sometimes, when we seem to drop a habit as easily as a smoker drops a cigarette butt.

You can read the book to get the particulars about the research and the real life anecdotes. But what interests me after reading this is thinking, How does this apply to parenting? And that’s where the point of the book becomes very interesting to me.

I’m sure your kids are a lot like mine. My husband and I have a joke that we have to think about every thing we ever allow our kids to do, because one time sets a precedent, and then suddenly one time becomes habit. One day you break down and let the kids drink a soda at Grandma’s friend’s house, and then suddenly kids who have lived their entire lives without touching soda are begging you every time you pass a convenience store.

Duhigg explains this phenomenon as a “habit loop”: You get a cue (passing a store that sells sodas), it clicks into a routine (one time when you begged and made puppy-eyes, mama said yes to a soda), and then you get your reward (the soda, sugar, caffeine, yay!). He shows that it takes a shockingly short time for our brains to develop habits, and then even if we suffer extreme brain trauma to the point that we can’t remember what someone just said to us, we still can remember—and perform—our habits.

I believe that a huge part of parenting is helping our kids set up healthy habits. Depending on each family, healthy changes its definition. In our house, we limited screen time because we thought too much was unhealthy. We emphasized filling yourself with healthy food before thinking about sweet, fatty, salty snacks. We set up the habit of reading just by doing it so much it became natural to our kids. We do the work we need to do no matter how much we’d rather do other, unnecessary things because that’s the habit that leads to a more successful life. And conversely, we’re willing to throw practical concerns to the wind if we are taken with a fun, creative idea, and we think that’s another habit worth cultivating.

But in reading this book I wondered, first, whether it is possible to be conscious about the habits you develop. Will our constant reminders ever help our kids remember to become good tooth brushers, have a neat house, or know where their jackets are? None of that seems to be catching on at all. In fact, Duhigg’s model is consistent with this: If we make a habit of reminding our kids to do things, will they just develop the habit of waiting to be reminded before they do the thing?

And that leads me to wonder, second, whether there is a better way for parents to help kids develop good habits. Should we ask them to consciously dissect their habits and decide whether they are healthy ones? Should we have them go through the process of doing things the right way, just for practice, so that it gets ingrained in them? How can we help them develop the healthy habits without inserting our own presence into the habit formation?

Lots of interesting questions here. From what I see, our successes and failures have been scattershot. On the one hand, we have a kid who would never consider leaving the house without brushing her teeth. (One time she forgot and she asked if we drive back home so she could do it. I gave her a stick of gum and hopefully didn’t set a bad habit in motion!) On the other hand, we have a kid who has never remembered, no matter what method we have used, to pick up his dirty clothing from the bathroom floor after his shower. Yes, we’ve tried it all, and still, the wrong habit persists.

Finally, Duhigg mentions the phenomenon of changing a “keystone habit” to create a larger change in life habits. In his example, a woman who decided only to give up smoking actually ended up changing every aspect of her life which was heading in the wrong direction. Is it possible that what we really need to do is—who knows?—change the way our son gets to his bathroom for the shower, or take away a picture he always looks at on the way to the shower, or…?

This sounds a bit too much like the kids I knew whose mom was getting a degree in psychology. She practiced everything she was learning on them, and drove them—not surprisingly—a little bit crazy. I don’t want to do that to my kids, but this has definitely given me some food for thought.

Ask me again in six months, and perhaps the floor of that bathroom will be clean at last.

 

All children are gifts

Posted on by Suki

Children are a gift. They’re the most special kind of gift. They’re not the gift certificate type of gift, where you get to go shopping for something you want. They’re not a birthday gift, where you get it because the giver thinks you’re special. They’re not the sort of gift well-meaning mothers-in-law give when they notice that your tablecloths are all really shabby.

Children are the sort of gift we can’t ask for. Children are gifts that come to us in good times and bad. They come to us whole or damaged. They come to us perfect or deformed. They come to us with the complexity of their biological parents’ genes twisted together. They come to us with the epigenetic memory of our forefathers etched into the fibers of their being. They come to us full of promise and full of mystery. They come to us as wholly imperfect beings. They come to us with brains hungry for learning.

Children are never what we expect them to be. Perhaps they have his nose and your hair, or her way of talking but your way of hugging. But the rest is going to be a mystery. How did she develop that passion? How did he develop that fear? Where did that stubborn will come from? I am perfectly sure I never screamed like that as a child. I can’t believe I was ever this smart.

Children can fulfill our expectations for good and for bad. We expect that they’ll do well in school like we did, and they do. We expect that they’ll not make it through the family reunion without a tantrum, and they don’t. We expect that they’ll like spicy Thai food like we do, and they do. We expect that they won’t like any unusual food, and they don’t.

Children are always the children we need. When childless friends remark how our lives have changed, we agree, and we notice how incomplete our pre-parenting lives seem. When we desperately need someone to love us unquestioningly, they are there. When we need a friend, an ally, someone who really looks us in the eye, there they are. When we need someone to remind us we are all human and make mistakes, they are happy to oblige. When we need someone to challenge us, they are always willing to be the challenge we need.

You can quit a job, stop seeing a friend, even divorce your spouse. But the challenge your child offers you is the hardest to back away from. They are the toughest coach you ever had, who makes you keep going when you’re sure you have nothing left. They are the hardest exam you’ll ever take, because the consequences of failure are so vast, you know that you can’t fail.

Your child is a gift you can’t sum up in words. That twisted DNA. That history of shared laughter, breath, home, learning, sustenance. Those emotions deeper and more violent than any others. What your child gives you is more than language can handle.

Your child changes daily, and you do as well. Your relationship twines upward, each twist new in its own way. When your child goes her separate way, you are still standing on the foundation you built together. You can see your own parents down there, feel the strange mystery of grandparents you loved or didn’t know, hear the distant sounds of places your DNA has been, feel the twining of shared lives that defies genetic inheritance.

And you know, from being a parent, that your child will never truly be away from you. Your shared experiences are part of the ground you stand on. The space between phone calls, the years you don’t see each other, or the unthinkable time when a child passes on before his parents—parents are never alone.

Having had a child, you have a child within you still.

All children are gifts, the sort of gift we can’t ask for.

Now available