LoveDub: Over-Nurturing
By Jed Wolpaw
Last month, I witnessed an interaction between a mother and two-year-old daughter that made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. The mother was trying to get her daughter to drink some milk out of a sippy cup and the girl was refusing. Actually, she wasn’t just refusing, she was throwing a temper tantrum, crying and banging her hands on the table.
We were on a ferry boat in the crowded main cabin, so this was drawing a bit of attention. The mother tried feebly to calm the girl down but quickly gave up and gave the girl what she wanted. Coke. That’s right. Coca-Cola Classic. It does a body good.
So the girl got her Coke and I got a little bit of vomit. Doesn’t strike me as all that fair of a trade. But c’est la vie.
There’s no question, with this particular incident, that the girl was being spoiled by her mother.
But what about things that parents do that are considered good, progressive parenting? Is it possible that these things are just as bad for kids as filling their bottles with Coke?
Terry Gross, on NPR’s program Fresh Air, recently interviewed Po Bronson who, in addition to having a pretty awesome first name, is the author of NurtureShock, New Thinking About Children. And, according to Po, there are a lot of things we are doing with the best of intentions that are actually hurting our children.
By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, no one here at Love Dub International Headquarters is receiving, or has received, any free lunches, pens, pencils, scratch paper, crayons, or anything else edible or used for writing purposes from Po Bronson or from NPR.
OK, now that we’re morally cleansed, on with the column. One of the most interesting arguments that Po makes is that it is bad for children when parents don’t fight in front of them.
Huh? That’s right. When parents “go upstairs” or in some other way separate themselves from their children when the parents are arguing, kids suffer. Kids know their parents are fighting, no matter how hard parents try to hide it. But what happens when they go into another room is that kids don’t get to see the conflict worked through and resolved. Kids are left with an uneasy feeling that something isn’t right and this affects them as they develop socially.
But on the other hand, if kids see their parents argue AND resolve the argument, it helps them build important interpersonal skills that will benefit them throughout their lives. I’ve argued for a long time that being comfortable with conflict is essential to a healthy relationship. Now it seems it’s also important to raising healthy kids.
In fact, I’ll go one step further and hypothesize that children who never see their parents fight (and resolve the fight) openly never get comfortable with conflict. And they become the adults who can’t deal with fighting in relationships. They are the people who panic at the first sign of conflict rather than working on a good process for working through that conflict when it arises.
Po goes on, in the interview and in the book, to talk about how we underestimate the importance of sleep for kids. “A” students average 30 minutes more sleep per night than “B” students, who average 30 minutes more than “C” students. And yet we, as a society, think that high school should start at 7 a.m. and parents too often let their kids stay up watching television until much too late. Parents figure that as long as kids are able to get up in time for school they’re getting enough sleep. But not so, it would seem.
He also talks about how we are hurting our kids when we praise their intelligence. Instead we should be praising their effort. Intelligent kids who are told how smart they are all the time tend to only be willing to attempt things that come easily whereas kids who are praised for working hard will apply their intelligence to things that come easily and things that don’t.
If a child does well on a test and is then told he or she is very smart, that child goes on to think that they are smart because they did well. So if they are faced with something that appears difficult and that they may not be able to perform well on, they panic, thinking they will not be seen as smart anymore.
On the other hand, a child who is praised for how hard they worked on the test will work even harder on something that seems difficult because they have learned that working hard is what is important and valued.
There’s a lot more interesting stuff in there but I’ll have to let you listen and read for yourself. I’ve got to go start working on my new idea for a company. I’m calling it Traveling Conflict. And the slogan: “We fight for you.” For a small fee I will send a couple to your house to fight in front of your children. And don’t worry, under no circumstances will we fill their cup with Coke or tell them how smart they are.
Questions/Comments: lifeaccordingtojed@gmail.com, www.lifeaccordingtojed.blogspot.com
This article appeared in the October 15, 2009 issue of Synapse.