So I read the most amazing article last week called "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy" (see the entire article here http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/8555/ ). It introduced me to the concept of the "helicopter parent" - the parent who puts 100% of herself into her children, providing them with every opportunity possible, encouraging and cheerleading their every move, and sheltering them from even the slightest bit of discomfort and disappointment. I know parents like this. Sometimes I can be this parent. Sometimes, when I fall into the trap of measuring my self worth by my children's successes, I even STRIVE to be this parent - after all, a happy and successful kid means I did my job, right? Uh, no. Not even close.
The article is written by a therapist who began to see adults in their late 20's and 30's who were coming to her for help with anxiety and depression. When she began to dig deeper into their upbringings she expected to find the textbook parenting "mistakes" - divorce, withholding of love, constant belittling, you name it. Instead she found quite the opposite. The adults sitting on her couch couldn't say enough wonderful things about their parents and all the love and opportunity that was showered on them. These patients felt all the more guilty for being depressed and unhappy. After all their parents had done for them, why were they still so lost? One psychiatrist pointed out "many parents will do anything to avoid having their kids experience even mild discomfort, anxiety, or disappointment, with the result that when, as adults, they experience the normal frustrations of life, they think something must be terribly wrong." I think this last statement hit home the hardest. Life certainly does throw curveballs at you. Career choices turn out to be wrong, jobs become mundane, friendships go down bad roads, marriages hit some rocky times, financial woes rear their ugly heads, and many other unpleasant things pop up to derail the course of our lives. Truth is, most of these curveballs are NORMAL! Not every second of marriage is rosy, not every job will make us millionaires, and our kids will not always be perfectly behaved. Do we want to raise children that expect a perfect life? What happens when reality hits them square in the face? Isn't it better to let them know that life will most definitely be a rollercoaster of ups and downs? In the midst of especially hard times or especially good times, Erik and I will often turn to each other and say a simple statement, "Peaks and valleys, huh? Peaks and valleys". We have had both good and challenging times come our way. If there is one thing we have learned, the valleys make the peaks so much more gratifying. I want my kids to have the confidence that they can overcome the rough patches in life - and they won't know that unless I let them experience it.
An even more disturbing effect of helicopter parenting is the blurring of the line between high self esteem and out and out narcissism. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the upswing of narcissism in our culture. Our need to post every minutia of our lives on facebook (guilty here), blog (guilty again), and constantly check our mail and text inboxes is a reflection of our inflated self importance. This will only get worse with our children, apparently. A professor of psychology writes, " ...parents act like their servants, shuttling them to any activity they choose and catering to their every desire. Parents are constantly telling their children how special and talented they are. This gives them an inflated view of their specialness compared to other human beings." She goes on to say that these kids grow up and have trouble working in teams, and have a hard time in unstructured environments, since they had been provided with structure for their entire lives. She says these kids grow up to be adults who believe they don't have the ability to solve problems - and they don't, because problems were always being solved for them. We've also demonized the concept of "average". God forbid we have an average child. I once attended a mom's conference where the speaker implored us to "delight in your ordinary child". Not every kid will be best and the brightest. It's easy as a parent to bask in the glows of talented children, and you are kidding yourself if you don't admit that children with no clear dominance in any one area gives us our own anxiety. Perhaps that is why we shuffle our kids from activity to activity, trying to find the thing that they shine at. Now I'm not saying it's not our job as parents to help our kids find what they are good at, but it's probably more important to stress that they find something they enjoy - even if they stink at it. I admit Jayson isn't very good at Karate, but he sure does love it.
I have to tell you, this article really hit me hard. I would like to think I"m not acting like a helicopter parent, but I know that most of us have a hard time recognizing or admitting our own failings. I've said many times that, as I near 40, I realize that the biggest part of being an adult is confessing that we don't know it all, we are sometimes (often times?) wrong, and we always have room for improvement. I think I can improve in this area of my parenting for sure. Now this doesn't mean that I'm leaving my kids to their own devices while I sit on the couch and eat bon bons (although that does sound lovely). But you can bet that I'm going to loosen the reigns a little bit. I will stop handing out advice like candy to my daughter, and start letting her figure out some issues on her own. I'm going to resist the urge to sugar coat everything. Her skating team is having a pretty rough year this year. I've been trying to play up the positives and have told her repeatedly how wonderful the team looks. Maybe the lesson she needs to learn is that no matter how hard you work and how hard you try, you won't always be top tier. At the end of the day, you have to be happy with the amount of effort you have put in, but you also need to admit when you are out of your element and decide if you can be happy doing the activity without all the accolades. I'm already researching sleep away camps so she can spend a week with complete strangers and really get a sense of who she is and who she wants to be. I'm going to try my hardest to give Jayson a little more breathing space, since he is the child my helicopter hovers over the most. I know in my heart the greatest way I can help him is to let him learn to help himself. And I'm going to (gulp) let them both fail at things. Hopefully the more they fail and rebound, the more confident they will become.
So do yourself a favor and read the article. Perhaps you will take offense, or perhaps you will deem it nonsense. I certainly don't think I have all the answers, but it's important to at least check ourselves with periodic questions. In the mean time, I have a lot of strategic letting go to do...
No comments:
Post a Comment