I find one particular tension is the most complicated and difficult part of parenting. While I want the home and family to be a safe and nurturing place for Philip and Chloe, coddling them is not an option. I need to expose them to the kinds of challenges and adversities they will eventually face as adults, so that they are properly prepared for what will come. How much I protect them, how much I withdraw my protection and how much I orchestrate adversity is a delicate task.
The biggest thing I want to train them to manage well in life is relationships. With middle school coming quickly, Chloe is beginning to encounter what is probably the most difficult peer environment one ever encounters relative to one’s maturity. We’ve worked hard to ensure Chloe’s best relationships have been well maintained as well as cultivated. Patty and Holly have proven to be the best and most desirable friends among Chloe’s peers. Patty goes to school with Chloe, and Holly does not. What makes Patty and Holly stand out has been that both have proven to be extremely fun and extremely trustworthy.
The remainder of Chloe’s peers fall into what one might describe as a friendship matrix. Some are particularly fun. Some are particularly trustworthy. A few are neither. There is little correlation between the two, although some peers’ untrustworthiness is bad that it undermines how much fun they can be. We’ve worked with Chloe to help her understand the difference and to operate accordingly. Savannah, for example is extremely trustworthy. But Chloe does not have nearly as much fun with Savannah as she has with nearly all other friends. Rita’s daughter Jasmine is a lot of fun, but Chloe knows that Jasmine is not particularly trustworthy. Nonetheless, Chloe spends a lot of time with Jasmine and we are supportive of the friendship. Jasmine’s insensitivity hurts Chloe’s feelings sometimes but Jasmine’s insensitivity has also trained Chloe to set firmer boundaries with others. At this point, Chloe uses what she has learned about boundary-setting when dealing with Jasmine.
Jasmine is manipulative. A lot of kids are manipulative. She tends to remember promises made to her while forgetting promises she had made. When confronted, she tends to argue that she “really meant” or “really said” something else. While some of Jasmine’s words and actions cause Amelia and I to groan, we have not shut Jasmine out of Chloe’s life. Instead, we use the relationship to train Chloe how to manage people who are manipulative like Jasmine. When the two were deciding upon a movie, Jasmine at first claimed she didn’t want to see Insideous because it was “a bad movie” but later the same day when the two learned Patty was planning to see Insideous, Jasmine began to praise Insideous without admitting Patty’s presence was influencing her values.
Such behavior is frustrating for Chloe. She reviews Jasmine’s words and actions with me or with Amelia whenever they violate what Chloe considers the dividing line between right and wrong. But such small violations of one’s moral and ethical compass happen with regularity throughout life. Those who cannot handle the grayness of the world at large live in a state of constant frustration. Or worse, they fail to embrace a moral and ethical compass. Those who can accept and even navigate the grayness of the world at large while still living by a personal, high code are not only the strongest adults I know, they are also the most capable of finding meaning and happiness whenever a beacon of light cuts through that grayness.
With middle school now only months away for Chloe, I know the difficult behaviors she encounters and the associated hurt she experiences are going to increase in both frequency and severity. This last year before middle school is a time for her to develop the life skill of navigating through the grayness before that heavy grayness settles in for a three-year tenure. Regardless of how bad it gets at Hermes Middle School, Chloe will always have her home, her brother and her parents as a safe refuge. And backing that up, she’ll have her very fun and very trustworthy friends, Patty and Holly.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
The Toxic Allure of Tiger-Mothering (Part 4) Verbal and Social Confidence
An unfortunately over-effective means of prosecuting one’s case to the public is to present it in an “either-or” manner. Amy Chua has championed her authoritarian parenting style, Tiger-Mothering, by claiming the sole alternative is a permissive parenting style she calls “Western Parenting” – which she indeed successfully argues against. Two weeks after Chua’s essay was published, Dr. Wednesday Martin of Psychology Today debunked Chua’s “either-or” argument with solid research that favored authoritative parenting over both authoritarian parenting and permissive parenting. What is the difference between authoritative and authoritarian parenting? It is a warm relationship. An authoritative parent holds his or her children to high standards, but would never do something cold or crass like tear up a hand-made birthday card no matter how poorly the birthday card was crafted.
While children reared in authoritarian households often display many impressive competencies as adults, the most obviously missing competencies are verbal and social confidence. Chua asks us to look at the “stereotypical” Chinese child or adult raised by a tiger mother. She expects us to be impressed with the stereotype. Instead, most of us cringe. The most obvious missing element is relationship skills. As I look at my adult peers in the professional world, I see no shortage of “smart” people. But what is woefully lacking is true leadership skills. Leadership is the most challenging of all relationship skills.
Chua forbids play-dates, summer camp and acting in school plays. She doesn’t necessarily explain why each is forbidden. School plays seem to be forbidden because there is no way to quantify success and Ms. Chua is only interested in success that can be quantified. She has no means to measure the value of the verbal confidence that is built participating in a school play. In the cases of play-dates and summer camp, her problem seems to be a less-than-authoritarian training atmosphere.
In our home, we put large amounts of effort into ensuring Chloe and Philip develop healthy relationships—not merely so they can have fun—but so they can develop those ever so important relationship skills. Amelia and I invest a large amount of time talking to Philip and Chloe about their peers and their peers’ parents and how individual and group interactions play out in both individual situations as well as overall. From time to time a peer has dysfunctional relationship skills. Occasionally, the dysfunction is biological. But normally the dysfunction can be traced to the parents who are too authoritarian, too permissive or simply dysfunctional themselves. This makes for important teaching moments as we review the stories Chloe and Philip bring home. Alternatively, we sometimes encounter a child with a biological handicap whose parents invest heavily and patiently to help the child manage his or her handicap, and the results are often very impressive. These situations become converse teaching moments in which Chloe and Philip can learn about the power of overcoming one’s own weaknesses.
Admittedly, Chua’s authoritarian approach to social development is in many ways superior to what permissive parents do. Permissive parents merely let everything happen. They do not steer their kids toward emotionally healthy peers and away from the emotionally unhealthy ones. Under Chua’s roof, her kids learn to interact with adults, whereas under a permissive parenting model, kids mainly socialize with other kids. Permissive parents wonder why their kids shun their parents and other adults in favor of their peers at progressively earlier ages. I am not merely speaking about a teenager’s natural need to establish his or her personal life independently from the family of origin. The age old complaint “what is wrong with kids these days?” can be directly attributed to permissiveness in the social realm.
Still, I see Chua and her Tiger-Mothering model as lazy. Chua merely shuts the door on meaningful peer interaction. An authoritative parent manages the interactions and provides very meaningful direction whereas an authoritarian Tiger-Mother, simply forbids interactions that have the potential to promote permissiveness.
With Chloe, for example, we’ve had to teach her to accept the fact that not all her peers or peers’ families will operate according to the values we are teaching her. It can be frustrating for Chloe at times, but I believe it is going a long way toward Chloe being able to operate as a successful adult. She needs to develop the skill of managing which peers she can trust and which peers she cannot trust. And she is discovering that the trustworthiness of a peer does not always correlate with how much fun the peer is. The children of authoritarian parents and permissive parents normally don’t learn this important lesson until much later in life.
With all that said, Chloe’s experience navigating the awkward world of tween girl relationships relative to others deserves its own post without the necessity to rebut Amy Chua’s arguments in the process. In the meantime, I trust four posts in responding to Ms. Chua’s alluring arguments have been sufficient to get any reader thinking intelligently without succumbing to any kind of either-or trap. With that, I am pleased to move onward to new topics.
While children reared in authoritarian households often display many impressive competencies as adults, the most obviously missing competencies are verbal and social confidence. Chua asks us to look at the “stereotypical” Chinese child or adult raised by a tiger mother. She expects us to be impressed with the stereotype. Instead, most of us cringe. The most obvious missing element is relationship skills. As I look at my adult peers in the professional world, I see no shortage of “smart” people. But what is woefully lacking is true leadership skills. Leadership is the most challenging of all relationship skills.
Chua forbids play-dates, summer camp and acting in school plays. She doesn’t necessarily explain why each is forbidden. School plays seem to be forbidden because there is no way to quantify success and Ms. Chua is only interested in success that can be quantified. She has no means to measure the value of the verbal confidence that is built participating in a school play. In the cases of play-dates and summer camp, her problem seems to be a less-than-authoritarian training atmosphere.
In our home, we put large amounts of effort into ensuring Chloe and Philip develop healthy relationships—not merely so they can have fun—but so they can develop those ever so important relationship skills. Amelia and I invest a large amount of time talking to Philip and Chloe about their peers and their peers’ parents and how individual and group interactions play out in both individual situations as well as overall. From time to time a peer has dysfunctional relationship skills. Occasionally, the dysfunction is biological. But normally the dysfunction can be traced to the parents who are too authoritarian, too permissive or simply dysfunctional themselves. This makes for important teaching moments as we review the stories Chloe and Philip bring home. Alternatively, we sometimes encounter a child with a biological handicap whose parents invest heavily and patiently to help the child manage his or her handicap, and the results are often very impressive. These situations become converse teaching moments in which Chloe and Philip can learn about the power of overcoming one’s own weaknesses.
Admittedly, Chua’s authoritarian approach to social development is in many ways superior to what permissive parents do. Permissive parents merely let everything happen. They do not steer their kids toward emotionally healthy peers and away from the emotionally unhealthy ones. Under Chua’s roof, her kids learn to interact with adults, whereas under a permissive parenting model, kids mainly socialize with other kids. Permissive parents wonder why their kids shun their parents and other adults in favor of their peers at progressively earlier ages. I am not merely speaking about a teenager’s natural need to establish his or her personal life independently from the family of origin. The age old complaint “what is wrong with kids these days?” can be directly attributed to permissiveness in the social realm.
Still, I see Chua and her Tiger-Mothering model as lazy. Chua merely shuts the door on meaningful peer interaction. An authoritative parent manages the interactions and provides very meaningful direction whereas an authoritarian Tiger-Mother, simply forbids interactions that have the potential to promote permissiveness.
With Chloe, for example, we’ve had to teach her to accept the fact that not all her peers or peers’ families will operate according to the values we are teaching her. It can be frustrating for Chloe at times, but I believe it is going a long way toward Chloe being able to operate as a successful adult. She needs to develop the skill of managing which peers she can trust and which peers she cannot trust. And she is discovering that the trustworthiness of a peer does not always correlate with how much fun the peer is. The children of authoritarian parents and permissive parents normally don’t learn this important lesson until much later in life.
With all that said, Chloe’s experience navigating the awkward world of tween girl relationships relative to others deserves its own post without the necessity to rebut Amy Chua’s arguments in the process. In the meantime, I trust four posts in responding to Ms. Chua’s alluring arguments have been sufficient to get any reader thinking intelligently without succumbing to any kind of either-or trap. With that, I am pleased to move onward to new topics.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Prom: A Guy Needs to Ask with Style
October 4, 2005 is a day that probably almost nobody remembers as special. But its impact on high school prom season is starting to hold out against the test of time. On that day MTV first aired the Our Last Prom episode of their popular series, Laguna Beach. During the first half of the episode, one after another the high school girls from Laguna Beach enjoyed the surprise of being asked to prom in unique and creative ways. In theory it should have been another fun episode for fans to watch. But instead it had a cascading effect. According to Unhooked author, Laura Sessions Stepp, high school girls suddenly had raised expectations about how they would be asked to prom. By the 2006 prom season some six months later, high school boys in upscale, middle class and even economically depressed communities were either going the extra mile or they were being rebuffed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)