Blog Entries

How to Avoid Passing Our Childhood “Baggage” on to Our Kids

Parents pass on aspects of themselves to their children. For better or worse (hopefully more of the former than the latter), we project our prior life experiences on to our kids. Since no one makes it out of childhood completely unscathed, we are right to expect less than perfect parenting from ourselves. And that is okay, because to expect perfection would be unrealistic and a lead us down a path toward misperceived failure. As I discuss at length in Help From the Principal’s Office , sometimes, parents just need to be good enough. I have worked with parents who were in my opinion, too hard on themselves, taking blame for all of their children’s struggles. Yes, there is always room for improvement for the parent seeking out ways in which to best prepare their son or daughter for adolescence and adulthood. The idea, as I see it, is to never be satisfied with the quality of our parenting while simultaneously keeping in mind that our kids are benefitting from our guidance and support.

One of the primary goals of parenting is to meet the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of our children as best we can. And that is what we do: the best that we can. Our personal ‘best’ is influenced by the degree to which we have worked through our own childhood challenges. A question we may want to ask ourselves is To what extent are we aware of unresolved childhood issues adversely impacting us as adults? This is an important question to ask. Reason being, unresolved childhood issues tend to impact our approach to parenting. The impact can be ‘positive’ or ‘negative’, but our experiences from early life are relevant either way. To illustrate this point, I will provide a low stakes example of how this phenomenon can unfold for us as adults.

Let’s say when your were 8-years-old, you really wanted to learn how to play the piano. You begged your parents to sign you up for piano lessons, so they did. After taking a couple of lessons with an instructor, your interest and motivation to learn and practice began to dissipate. The learning tasks became increasingly complex and demanding of your time and effort. So, you told your parents that you no longer wanted to take lessons; and essentially quit.

Fast forward 25 years.

You are now the parent of an 8-year-old daughter, and for a reason you can’t quite explain, you have this strong inclination to have your daughter learn how to play the piano. Although she has not expressed any interest in this endeavor, after broaching the subject with her, she reluctantly agrees to take piano lessons. Although your daughter isn’t particularly interested in learning to play the piano, she wants to please you and make you proud so she gives it a go. A few lessons are taken and you sense that she is not enjoying the process. You therefore try to talk it up by telling her how great it will be once she learns how to play and that she will be grateful later in life for having learned. The only problem is, she is only going along with the lessons because it is apparent to her how important the lessons are to you. You are now faced with a difficult parental decision. You can either continue to strongly encourage your daughter to persist with the lessons, in hopes that she will eventually enjoy doing so. Or, you can let her stop taking lessons just as your parents allowed you to stop taking lessons 25 years ago.

The gist of the lesson from the piano example is more common than some may realize. Perhaps the trickiest part of breaking this parental tendency is becoming consciously aware of what we are doing. It may take someone explicitly pointing the matter out to you, but that would require another adult identify this subconscious process playing out AND having the courage to bring it your attention. After all, no one (that I know of) enjoys having psychologically repressed material pointed out to them. Therefore, our best bet is taking an honest look at ourselves to consider why we feel as strongly as we do about certain aspects of our parenting. This is not an easy task. Reflecting on our approach to parenting will make us feel vulnerable, and vulnerability often leads to a sense of being placed at risk. I would then pose the following question: What or who exactly is at risk? There are a couple of answers to that question.

For one, honest self-reflection of how we are doing as parents puts us at risk for coming to unfavorable conclusions about our parenting abilities. So, we are taking the chance of identifying areas in which there is room for parental improvement. Secondly, by NOT honestly assessing why we parent the way we do, there’s an inherent risk that our own unresolved childhood issues will be passed down to our kids. Sometimes, parents attempt to vicariously live out their youthful aspirations through their own children; without realizing they’re attempting to do so. It takes a conscious effort on our part to not pass our childhood “baggage” on to our children. Being a parent forces us take brutally honest stock of ourselves. There is little room to hide when all eyes are on us as we model for our sons and daughters how to be functioning adults in the world.

There are many ways in which unresolved issues from one’s childhood can influence how we raise our children. Here are a few examples:

• The boy who wasn’t allowed to eat sugary cereal is now a father who allows his son to eat as much Lucky Charms as the youngster wants (probably to the chagrin of his spouse).

• The girl whose parents were overly strict about what she was allowed to watch on T.V. is now a mom to children who are allowed nearly free reign with Netflix (again, probably to the chagrin of her spouse).

• The child who grew up with emotionally absent parents has turned into a “helicopter parent”.         *Check out my previous blog entry entry on this topic

• The kid who did not have many friends growing up is now a parent who’s incessant about his or her children making as many friends as possible.

The above examples illustrate how adults can often veer in the opposite direction of what they experienced when they were young. There is an element of overcompensating involved with these and similar examples of how we try to right the wrongs from our past. Of course, this does not work, and is inevitably impossible. The next best solution, as concocted by our subconscious minds? Have our own kids right our previous wrongs! Except, this doesn’t help anyone. In fact, once adults realize what they are doing, it is easy to become embarrassed. Plus, we cause confusion and uncertainty with our children since they do not know what the heck is going on.

The solution? Work on our own psychological baggage as best we can so as not to pass our psychological it down to our kid. Again, this is hard work, but the benefits are twofold.

For one, confronting lingering frustrations from our childhood will improve the quality of our current relationships. Below the surface, that which continues to plague us from decades ago interferes with our present day functioning. Often, these interferences are so deeply ingrained that we do not even notice they exist. But that doesn’t mean the interfering memories don’t exist – they do.

Secondly, when kids observe their parents genuinely attempting to improve themselves, this has a lasting, positive effect. The perceptive child will then intuit that self-improvement doesn’t end during adulthood, rather, continues for the rest of one’s life. If children sense complacency from their parents, they will grow up to be complacent adults. If children observe their parents taking steps toward self-betterment, they will grow up to be adults focused on bettering themselves. Please know that I am not casting judgment here, rather, pointing out just how influential we are on the maturation of our young children.

I hope that the main points from this article has helped shed some light on what was previously below your level of your awareness. Look, we have all made many parenting mistakes, and will make plenty more before all is said and done. As covered in Help From the Principal’s Office , sometimes we need to cut ourselves some slack. Doing so allows for the natural qualities and strengths of our kids to propel them toward greater heights. Our children do not need us to be perfect. Our children need us to be authentic. They need to see how we are comprised of both strengths and weaknesses so they do not think something is wrong with them once they mature into imperfect adults.

I hope you found this first blog entry of mine helpful. Please let me know your thoughts on my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages. Also, if you have suggestions for future blog entry topics, please share them with me so that I can maximize my ability to help you.

Scott

Should We Allow Our Kids to Struggle?

“Helicopter parenting” is an approach to raising children. This particular approach is often carried out by adoring and (overly) attentive parents. As caring as those who take on this parenting style may be, their children are probably going to be negatively impacted by this form of parenting. You may be wondering how and why this is the case. It turns out that children who are overly monitored, and whose parents are quick to intervene when even the slightest inkling of trouble arises, tend to struggle with independently managing their lives when they are older. That happens as a result of not having had enough opportunities to struggle and persevere when there wasn’t too much on the line, or there was very little at stake.

The truth is, we’ve all been in situations watching our young children struggle to navigate their way out of a tricky situation. Our instinct is to step in and solve the problem for them. Yes, this type of action is a sign of a caring parent. And kids need to be shown they are cared for. Despite those admirable parenting aspirations, there is a downside to solving all or most of the challenging situations your son or daughter finds themselves in.

Before we dive further into this topic, please know I am not suggesting anyone should ever sit back and watch as their five-year-old daughter begins to lose her balance on a playscape, or their eight-year-old son is riding his bike fast without a helmet. To the best of our abilities, we absolutely need to protect our kids from accidental physical harm. Those are risky situations, with the potential for unsafe outcomes (if we don’t intervene). Yet young children ultimately benefit from being allowed to navigate their way out of dilemmas which don’t pose any real threat or risk.

It’s important to allow our kids to persevere through challenges early in life. Reason being, the stakes are low. By “stakes are low”, I mean there is very little or no chance of harm if they fail at what they’re attempting. If you are the parent of a teenager, you know all too well how the stakes don’t remain that low forever. The stakes rise as the child ages and progresses through grade levels. By providing our kids with opportunities to solve their own problems, while their age is still within the single digits, they will be better equipped to handle more complex challenges during adolescence, and eventually adulthood.

Kids build their self-confidence through achieving, and then acknowledging those achievements; no matter how small the feat may appear to everyone else.

Take learning how to ride a bike.

As a toddler, your child may have learned to ride a tricycle around the age of three. At first try, the gross motor coordination needed with the lower body may have felt a bit awkward, but with some practice, they probably got the hang of it without too much difficulty (there are of course exceptions due to developmental delays, medical conditions, etc.). Perhaps at age four, your son or daughter was ready to transition from a tricycle to a bike with training wheels. Having already conquered the whole tricycle riding ordeal, they were able to summon courage from the memory of that past accomplishment, and channel that courage into learning how to ride a bike with training wheels. Around age six, it’s often time to give it a go without training wheels. This can be the scariest and most difficult of the bike riding stages to master. They may fall, lose their balance, and experience an overall sense of frustration. However, once mastered, he or she will then have two levels of mastery to draw upon. They will be able to persevere despite the unprecedented level of difficulty of learning to ride without training wheels. Before you know it, they are riding up and down the sidewalk as if they’ve been doing so for years.

And to think, none of that would have been possible if the three-year-old wasn’t willing to sit on a tricycle seat!

As I cite in my BOOK , as a parent and educator, I try to consider what is best for kids in both the short-term as well as the long-term. If the average life expectancy is, say, eighty years, then our children are only considered to be non-adults for 22.5 percent of their lives. We are raising our kids knowing that they’ll live over three-quarters of their lifespan as an adult. That is a sizable percentage, and lends credence to placing a high value on the influence our child rearing will have on them as adults. This can feel like a lot of pressure for parents. But if approached with a sense of balance, we can do right by our kids with both their current and future interests in mind. This can be accomplished by gently nudging them to push just past the boundaries of their comfort zone, but not to the point of causing them excessive frustration.

A degree of frustration is okay. Kids build their tolerance for frustration by not allowing feelings of frustration to overwhelm them. The next time they have to work through a similar situation, they’ll encounter less difficulty. That is how kids develop resilience. The child who can habitually persevere through struggles is on the trajectory toward developing into a resilient adult. And as we all know, adults need to be resilient in order to meet the demands placed upon them from all angles. You may be wondering, How much is too much struggle to allow? Generally, we don’t want to push our kids beyond the point of tears. When a child cries with tears out of frustration, anger, or fear, they are past the point of being able to apply logic to the distressing situation. And they need to be able to think logically in order to figure out how to solve the presenting dilemma. Whether they are being asked to clean their room, apologize to a sibling, or get started on their homework, it’s important to remember that as your child’s emotional escalation increases, his or her ability to act logically decreases. As unpleasant feelings escalate, problem solving abilities lessen.

In Help from the Principal’s Office , I delve into detail about how persevering through childhood challenges impacts us as adults; more than some people may realize. We remain impacted not just by the degree to which we were successful in attempting to overcome challenges. We are also impacted later in life by our childhood willingness to try. In fact, I would argue that a kid’s willingness to try is just as, if not more important than their success rate. It is important to know that kids are taking a risk by attempting a task they know is going to be challenging for them. Kids are less likely to fear failure when they know their parents or other caregivers will be there to “catch them when they fall”. With supportive parents, they can’t fail, as no real harm will come to them (while the stakes are still low)

Humor me, if you will.

Can you recall a time from your childhood in which you were asked to push beyond your emotional comfort zone? If so, can you see a connection with how you are now a more resilient adult due to that childhood experience? Don’t sell yourself short here. That particular childhood memory of yours may seem minor in significance at the present moment, but it was probably a big deal for you, decades ago. Years from now, our own kids will similarly reflect upon their own childhood memories. Although your son or daughter does not yet have the perspective to appreciate just how much they are maturing, make no mistake: growth is taking place as they learn to navigate the trials and tribulations of childhood.

It’s not easy to watch our children encounter difficulty when attempting to accomplish a goal. It’s not easy for them either. But if we can slowly, incrementally build our own tolerance for allowing them a chance to problem solve on their own, our kids will benefit in the long run. It’s important to know there will likely be an element of trial and error involved. We want to strive for a healthy balance of gently nudging them past their current comfort zone while not pushing them too far. I would encourage you not to be too hard on yourself if the results you’re hoping for aren’t visible right away. As I cover in Help from the Principal’s Office , we as parents are in this for the long haul. Parenthood is a marathon, not a sprint.

I hope you found this blog entry helpful. Please let me know your thoughts on my Twitter , Facebook, and LinkedIn pages. Also, if you have suggestions for future blog entry topics, please share them with me so that I can maximize my ability to help you.

Scott

Mask Wearing in School

Beginning next week, most school districts in Connecticut will be lifting mask wearing mandates for students and staff in school. This will be the first time in nearly two years that kids attend in-person schooling without a requirement to wear masks. A major development for reasons in which I will begin to explore here in my first blog entry. Please know that I am making a conscious effort to stay away from any of the political ramifications associated with mask wearing. I instead will focus solely on the perspective of the K-5 child, and what it has been like for them to wear masks in school, as well as what we can expect as a result of no longer needing to wear masks.

For most, if not all kids, this has not been easy. But what I’ve noticed, both with my own two children, their friends, and my students, is how well they have adapted to being required to wear masks. In fact, they have adapted so well that not having to wear masks is likely going to bring about a whole new adjustment period. Granted, with the option of wearing masks, some parents of children (and staff) will opt to continue wearing them. But most won’t, and that may not be as seamless of a transition as one may initially think. I say this because many kids have grown increasingly reliant on masks as a mechanism of self-protection. I’m not referring to the medical science involved in prevention of viral transmission, rather, the psychological aspects of perceived protection against potential physical harm coming their way.

In my newly published book, Help from the Principal’s Office, I write in extensive detail about how more than anything, kids want and need to feel physically safe in the world. This multiyear pandemic has shaken the confidence of many kids’ belief that they are unequivocally safe. As difficult as that notion may be for us as parents and educators to reconcile, it’s important that we factor this dynamic into our approach with our children, especially those who’ve been adversely impacted. Your child may be one of the fortunate ones who has not been adversely impacted. If that is the case, then great news. You can disregard what I am saying here. But I would argue that you and your child are much closer to the exception than the norm.

This pandemic has instilled a sense of fear in most of us adults. How could it not, given the horrific death tolls and endless stories of tragedy? As I delve into within my book, our kids follow our lead. Not just in the way in which we carry out our actions, but the manner in which we emotionally respond to the circumstances of our lives. With a keen eye, our sons and daughters take their cues from us. Now, if you are thinking to yourself, My child is too young to pick up on what I am thinking or feeling, so he/she can’t possibly be impacted by my internal experience, I would respectfully urge you to reconsider. Kids can be incredibly perceptive to our emotional states and they feed off of us. I am mentioning this to promote awareness of how impacted our kids have been; particularly when it comes to COVID precautions.

When school begins next week here in Connecticut, I think it will be fascinating, in districts that lifted the mandate, to see how students do or don’t react to this significant change in their lives. While two years may not constitute a large percentage of our adult lives, two years is certainly a substantial percentage of the life of an 8-year-old (25%). To put in context, this percentage would equate to the last ten years of life for a 40-year-old. I am 42-years-old. In thinking in terms of the magnitude of what this change will feel like for my 8-year-old daughter, I would need to imagine myself having needed to wear a mask since my late twenties. That is a LONG time, and it probably feels just as long of a time for my third grade daughter. Fortunately, kids are resilient. Over and over again I have been inspired by just how much adversity children are capable of overcoming. I have the utmost confidence that our kids will continue to persevere as this next phase of the pandemic is ushered upon us. Even so, they will continue to need our support and proactive emotional encouragement.

Our children will follow our lead, for better or for worse. It is therefore in their best interest that we model calm and confidence as the ways in which we are impacted by the pandemic continue to evolve. That should always be the starting point, whether the situation involves masks, our political landscape, or another topic of great magnitude. Importantly, as I explore in Help from the Principal’s Office, kids often experience contradictory emotions simultaneously. When looking through the lens of the impending mask mandate being lifted, don’t be surprised if your child is both excited and nervous at the same time. In fact, I would venture to guess that such a complex emotional reaction to this change will be common. And that is okay, because we too as adults are complex beings with opposing emotions attempting to take hold of our psyches. You may be wondering to yourself, What can I do to help my child deal with these complex feelings? I’m happy to say that the answer to that question is “plenty”.

First and foremost, consider letting your son or daughter know, explicitly, that it is normal and expected for them to be both excited and nervous, happy and afraid, relieved and worried. Both ends of the emotional spectrum can coexist together. The key is for your child not to perceive themselves as flawed, or that something is wrong with them for feeling such a way. I believe that the pandemic, being experienced by young children, is forcing them to emotionally mature at a quicker pace than they otherwise would. The good news is, they will benefit from this accelerated maturity later in life during their preadolescent and adolescent years. If you are interested in learning more about how overcoming adversity early in life will help your son or daughter persevere when the stakes are raised later in life, I dedicated a portion of my book to this very topic. As parents, educators, and caregivers, it is critically important that we not only avoid invalidating our kids’ psychological responses to stressors; we are tasked with making a concerted effort to validate their internal experiences.

Once kids can relax in the knowingness that they are physically safe, they can relax emotionally as well. From that place, they can thrive academically, socially, and in other areas of their lives. If you choose to have your child continue to wear a mask in school despite the new option, that is fine too. If this is the stance you wish to take, I would just encourage you to be ready to have the conversation about why you have made this decision. Be as honest as you can, with consideration of your child’s developmental level and capacity for understanding complicated situations. The common thread is this, regardless of whether you choose to continue having your son or daughter wear a mask once it is optional: Kids need to feel physically safe in school. The content of the words we say, the actions we do or don’t take, and the emotional sentiment we convey combine to form the overarching message we send to our kids. If you are nervous about your child returning to school without the mask mandate in place, that does not mean he or she is doomed to inherit and exhibit your nervousness. It just means that you may want to exert a bit of extra care in speaking with your child about why this change has taken place, and reassure them that school staff members are taking the necessary measures to keep all students safe in school.

There is one last point I want to make here. Please, give yourself permission to not have the “perfect” answer to all of the questions posed by your son or daughter. As I discuss at length in Help from the Principal’s Office , we as parents cannot save our kids from 100% of their emotional distress. However, we can help to alleviate their worry and fear by instilling our unconditional regard for them on an ongoing basis. And that is a task that you are not only up for, but one in which you can excel at.

I hope you found this first blog entry of mine helpful. Please let me know your thoughts on my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages. Also, if you have suggestions for future blog entry topics, please share them with me so that I can maximize my ability to help you.