The New Mom Connection
PARENTING NIRVANA: YOU CAN GET THERE FROM HERE
By Ann DouglasIt’s the great modern-day parenting paradox: we know more about parenting than any previous generation of parents, but most of us have this awful sinking feeling that we're in way over our heads.
Not only are we painfully aware of the gap between what the current generation of parenting gurus tell us we should be doing, and what we mere mortals are actually able to pull off on the parenting front, we find ourselves faced with a brave new world of parenting challenges that our parents and grandparents never could have even envisioned.
And yet we want to be good parents. Great parents, even. (I mean why settle for good if you can pull off great?)
If, like most modern day moms and dads, you’ve got your heart set on reaching parenting nirvana, but you seem to have momentarily misplaced your roadmap, this article is for you. Here are seven things you can do to be a calmer and more effective parent and—with a little luck—end up achieving some of your parenting goals to boot.
1. Develop your own sense of style—parenting style, that is. Don't force yourself to fit into someone else's off-the-rack ideas about what it means to be a good parent. Develop your own unique parenting style; one that feels right and fits you like a glove.
For some reason, we have a tendency to allow ourselves to be conned by parenting experts who pretend to have all the answers—you know, the ever-present smiley-faced gurus who serve up perfect sound-bites of parenting advice on TV talk shows, seemingly oblivious to the fact that their one-size-fits-all parenting advice tends to fit most kids about as well as one-size-fits-all jeans.
We would be far better off passing on the one-size-fits-all parenting advice and relying more on our parenting intuition. Most of us have, after all, read at least ten times as many parenting books as our parents ever did—and, of course, we’re amply tapped into parenting courses, parenting magazine subscriptions, and other parenting sources galore.
It’s all well and good when the experts see eye-to-eye on a particular issue, but it’s hard not to get a sinking feeling in your stomach when expert A tells you that the problem with kids today is that they’re not getting enough discipline and expert B tells you that the problem with kids today is that they’re being disciplined too punitively. What’s a poor, confused parent to do?
What you need to do to keep yourself from being pulled under by a tidal wave of conflicting information is to make it your policy to run everything you see, hear, or read about child-rearing through your own personal parenting filter. If you use that filter to get rid of any advice that doesn’t ring true for you, you’ll save yourself and your kids a lot of needless aggravation. Besides, the experts will be long-gone by the time their wacky advice plays out. You’ll be the one left forking over the cash for your child’s therapy bills!
2. Switch into power conservation mode. Understand where your true power as a parent comes from—the powerful bond between you and your child—and do whatever you can do to safeguard that power source.
Parents spend a lot of time worrying about how their children behave. (In fact, according to a study conducted by the National Family and Parenting Institute, the only thing parents worry more about is the possibility that their children will develop drug or alcohol problems.) But, what a lot of parents don’t seem to realize is that less can be more when it comes to managing your child’s behaviour.
While it may seem counterintuitive, a less controlling parenting style can actually serve to boost your power as a parent, because your child may feel less of a need to challenge your authority every step of the way. It’s when you go into control freak mode yourself that you set yourself up for the Mother of All Power Struggles between yourself and your child—a battle you’re doomed to lose, by the way. Your three-year-old can focus her full attention on winning this round, while you, on the other hand, have to worry about moving money between bank accounts, picking up a birthday gift for your mother, and the 1001 other things that are part and parcel of being a grown up. So save yourself a lot of aggravation by drawing upon the only source of power that counts in the parent-child tug-of-war: the emotional bond that makes her want to earn your approval.
Besides, a controlling parenting style won’t work forever. A Edinburgh University of more than 4000 12- and 13-year-olds, found that the teens who were less likely to get into trouble were those with the least autocratic parents. So unless you want to set yourself up for a mutiny during the preteen and teen years, you might want to switch into power conservation mode, sooner rather than later.
3. Refuse to set the parenting bar impossibly high for yourself. When you demand perfection of yourself, you simply increase the odds that you're going to take a rather unceremonious tumble and land flat on your face. So save yourself the impromptu swan dive by setting a realistic parenting code of conduct for yourself—not one for saints or for sinners either, but one that's perfectly suited to a gloriously imperfect parent like you.
Besides, where is it written in the parenting job description that perfection is required? Nowhere, that I’ve ever seen. So vow to be at least as forgiving of yourself as you are of your kids when they make mistakes, and accept the fact that the odd fall from grace is inevitable. Hey, you’re only human.
4. Give yourself a reality check when it comes to your kids too. Make sure that your expectations of your children are firmly grounded in reality—that you aren't asking more of them than they are able to deliver. It's fine to try to motivate and inspire your kids by setting high standards for them, but overly high standards will only leave them feeling discouraged and defeated—not exactly a guaranteed way to build up their self-esteem!
If Mother Nature happened to deal you an extra challenging hand on the parenting front by blessing you with an extra-challenging kid, you’ll want to make a point of comparing notes with other parents who understand what you’re dealing with, and who can let you know whether your behavioural expectations are pretty much on the mark, or whether you’re dreaming in technicolour!
You’ll be more likely to find support and understanding if you turn to the parents of the extra-challenging kids, than if you raid the ranks of the parents who ended up with the “easy kids.” As Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., notes in her book The Mother Dance, the parents of the “easy kids” are sometimes guilty of giving themselves too much credit for what basically amounts to biological good luck—something which can lead them to be rather judgmental of parents who are facing much bigger parenting challenges. “Such a mother sincerely believes that you can easily get your frisky, attentionally challenged, rebellious, and colourful offspring ‘under control’ if you just take charge in the appropriate manner,” she explains.
5. Love the one you're with. This bit of advice doesn't merely apply to the world of romance. It also applies to the world of parenting. Instead of wasting your time wishing that your child was a little less intense, a little more cooperative, or a little less stubborn, your energies would be better spent trying to appreciate your child for who she is—you know, the completely raw, unedited version!
Sometimes this means accepting the fact that you and your child are two entirely different people. Like it or not, she's not just a mini you, and no matter how hard you try to get her hooked on auto-racing, or astronomy, or gourmet cooking—whatever it is in this world that makes your heart pump a little faster—you’re wasting your breath if she’s drawn to the world of earthworms and other creepy crawlies. You’re also likely to frustrate yourself to no end, and to aggravate your beloved offspring in equal measure, if you try to sell your in-house Curious George on the merits of sitting still for hours at a time—or if you try to convince your painfully shy child that it’s “fun” to spend a day hobnobbing with strange, loud, boisterous children at your company’s annual family picnic. (Fun. Wow.)
So rather than attempting to do battle with your child’s in-born temperament, why not learn to appreciate her for the one-of-a-kind miracle that she is, and zero in on a parenting style that will bring out the best, rather than the worst in her? That kind of creative thinking is, after all, what parenting is all about.
6. Handpick your parenting role models and mentors. Better yet, put together your own informal parenting board of directors—a group of parents that you like and respect and that you can turn to by phone, e-mail, or over a pot of tea, the next time the going gets rough (as it inevitably will!)
And don't be afraid to send yourself back to Parenthood U for a bit of academic upgrading if the situation warrants it. Read books, takes courses, talk to other parents; do whatever it takes to pull together the ultimate professional development program for yourself, so that you can stay one step ahead of the parenting game.
Parenthood is, after all, the ultimate personal growth experience—an opportunity to stretch yourself in all kinds of new and unforeseen ways (and, no, I’m not talking stretch marks here). Just when you’ve got the hang of caring for a baby, your child morphs into a toddler, forcing you to hone your patience skills to such a degree that you figure you’re pretty much a shoe-in for sainthood. And so it goes from one stage to the next; you no sooner master one set off skills when you’re called upon to master another. That’s what makes this parenting so interesting and so much fun: you never have the chance to get stuck in a rut.
Of course, parenthood can be exhausting and frustrating, too. There may be days when you swear you’ve been conned into appearing as a contestant on the most gruelling reality television show ever invented—Parent TV. Those are the days when you need to pick up the phone and call up a friend who is one step ahead of you in the parenting trenches—who can reassure you that whatever it is about your child that happens to be pushing your buttons right now, is a limited time offer. Before you know it, your child will have moved on to another challenging stage that will be pushing your buttons in entirely new and different ways. And that’s good news in a personal growth experience kind of way, now isn’t it? Isn’t it?
7. Hold fast to faith and optimism. Having faith and optimism as your anchors can help you to weather whatever storms you encounter as you navigate the sometimes tumultuous seas of parenthood. They can also prevent you from losing sight of the fact that raising a child is one of life's greatest joys. For despite the inevitable rough stuff that we have to muddle through on the Very Bad Days of parenthood (those days when you swear your patience has been pushed to the limit and beyond—and it’s not even 8:00 a.m.), there are just enough magical moments to keep you going.
And, more often than not, it’s the stuff of daily living that manages to unexpectedly catapult us to parenting nirvana: the giggles and squirms of a freshly bathed toddler who seems hell bent on getting dirty all over again, or the heart-stealing first-smile-ever of a bright-eyed, cooing baby.
These moments of connection between parent and child are nothing short of pure magic—the very essence of what it means to love and be loved. And as any parent who has had that privilege can tell you, life doesn't get any better than this.
Ann Douglas is the author of The Mother of All Pregnancy Books (John Wiley and Sons, 2002).