On (Over/Helicopter/Judgements of) Parenting These Days

Earlier today, I took the kids to the pool where the rules are so insanely many that I find it depressing. You cannot even approach a diving board until the previous diver is back out of the pool. You cannot swim under lane ropes. You cannot skip. You must get out for a safety break every 45 minutes. You cannot wear goggles on the water slide or diving board. And on and on. My god, how did my sister and I make it out of our childhood community pool alive??

While at the pool, I took a couple minutes during one infernal break to read a story shared on Facebook by a good friend. Written by an acquaintance of mine, it relayed the true tale of a mother leaving her 8- and 9-year-old kids at home alone while she ran out to pick up some take-out food. The family was staying in a Delaware beach vacation rental, and it appears that their dogs ran outside and the children followed in order to retrieve their pets.

While outside, the dogs ran into the street in front of a car. The driver stopped and ended up asking the kids where their mother was. “Out getting food,” they replied.

The driver called the police, and the mother “was arrested, charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of her children, and released on $500 unsecured bail.”

There are so many things wrong with this that I remain furious many hours after first reading this story. Sadly, it’s not remotely the first time I’ve heard of parents –actually, it’s almost always the mother- being arrested for leaving their children alone for some period of time.

Remember the single mother who worked at McDonald’s and let her 9-year-old daughter play in the nearby park while she worked her shift because she had no childcare alternative? Their house was a six-minute walk away and the girl had a key and a cellphone. The mother was arrested and jailed, and her daughter was remanded to state custody.

Recall the mother who left her 4-year-old playing on an iPad in the car on a cool day while she ran into a store quickly? A stranger photographed her license plate, called the police to report her, and she was charged with a crime. She spent a full year dealing with the after-effects.

Remember the Maryland parents who, after practicing the walk and all safety instructions, let their 6- and 10-year-old kids walk to a local park alone? People called Child Protective Services on them, and the police coerced the children into a patrol car and held them for three hours before telling their parents where the kids were. They were later reported again and are terrified to let their children do anything remotely independently. They were called Free Range as if it were worse than being a cannibalistic, satanist puppy killer.

Do you know what I think the real crimes are?

1.     Traumatizing children and parents unnecessarily. Some parents need to be called on by strangers, by the police, by CPS, but do you know who doesn’t? People who trust their children and have thought about things and made the decision to let them play outside unattended, to walk to and play in a park. People who trust their children and leave them home while running out for some mealtime food or to drop the pet at the vet or to attend an exercise class. People who trust their children and want to increasingly allow them independent moments in which they can show and prove their responsibility.

2.     Teaching children that they are incapable of keeping themselves safe and so must rely on their parents/mother to be with them all the time. Not only does this suggest to children that terrifying horrors are everywhere, around every corner but also that they are absolutely powerless without a parent around. Forget personal strength and ability. Forget any effort to learn independent problem solving and agency and resiliency. Forget feeling safe in the world.

3.     Demonizing parents/mothers who reject the belief that the only way to be a good mother is to be on call and at your children’s sides all day long. I know many good mothers with many different philosophies about time spent with their children. Having disparate beliefs about how to be a good parent should be OK. And that’s not being relativistic. There are some terrible-ass parents out there, people who should NOT be parents. But most of us are doing our bests, and constant judgment from others, from everything from nursing to thumb sucking to when a kid reads or is potty-trained to what he wears or what she eats, helps nothing. Not least our children.

4.     Not supporting lower-income mothers enough with good and safe subsidized childcare. What are they to do if they will lose their jobs if they don’t show up, can’t support their families if they don’t work, but rarely or never have childcare? That is further demonization of non-stay-at-home mothers and of poor people. What does such lack of support teach our kids about how mothers are valued and which ones are more valued?

Don’t we see how too much of these behaviors actually infantilize our kids? Don’t we see how this excessive helicoptering is playing out?

The parents who call teachers and principals and other parents every single time their kid has a bad day on the playground? They’re not helping their children understand the real world. They’re not helping their children figure out coping strategies, and what a real friend is, and how to stand up for themselves. Just like not all adults are nice, not all kids are nice. That is nothing more than fact.

Those parents who do their kid’s homework? They’re not teaching their children anything but laziness. Good luck in college, kiddos. Oh but wait, maybe you can still call upon your parent to help (we’ve all heard of the parents who get apartments in the same town as is their child’s college. Just in case.) Do we really want to teach this sort of work ethic? No! Hard work is a critical skill and should be something we expect and support. We cannot stand in the way of our kids working hard simply because we care for them. Precisely because we love them is why we should let them fail, learn from failure, succeed, learn from success, and work hard.

Read: Former Stanford Dean Explains Why Helicopter Parenting Is Ruining a Generation of Children. 

Those parents who swoop in to fix everything? They’re not teaching any resilience whatsoever. What these parents are teaching is that their children can’t really cut the umbilical cord. They shouldn’t because then what would they do? Rely on themselves? Egads! Do we want to undermine our children’s sense of agency? Their trust in themselves? No!

It’s like the older our kids get, the more we baby and coddle them. We pressure little kids to be reading at 5 and mastering an instrument or sport by 10 and we don’t let them do anything that doesn’t have a “point,” like simply walk to the park and play with sticks because those things are entirely too dangerous, don’t get you into Best College, and we’re learning that we’ll probably get arrested, or at least reported, for being so negligent.

But then we’re surprised that our children are anxious? That they can’t figure out how to live on their own? That they surround themselves with people who think just like they do instead of folks with a diversity of beliefs and ways of thinking? 

This is not a good way forward, y’all. I beseech this country to calm down, chill out, try to worry a bit less, and let our children grow up. They are so capable and cool, and most of them really will be fine.

Teach them about safe sex, and the perils of smoking, and that they must NEVER drink and drive or even text and drive. Teach them about being part of a community and looking out for each other with smart trust and love. Teach them how to respect, love, and stand up for themselves. Show them that they can work hard and accomplish great things, that you will support them and love them but you won't strip them of agency or the hard times during which they'll learn about grit and work and what success from failure feels like. Show them how to ask for help when they need it and how they can also dig deep and find strength within. Help them become the kind of adults you'd want to know and work with and love.

Another very valuable article: Why Do We Judge Parents For Putting Kids at Perceived But Unreal Risk? 

Raising children, raising adults

I mentioned to y'all that while in New York a couple weeks back, Shawn and I went to hear a former colleague of his, Julie Lythcott-Haims, present her new book, How to Raise an Adult. Julie is an impressive woman in many respects -Stanford undergrad, Stanford Law, lawyer, Dean of Freshman at Stanford, Obama for America volunteer, writer, TedX speaker. I really enjoyed her straightforward, warm personality, and have continued to think deeply about all she discussed.

Julie wrote this book after witnessing, during her professional tenure at Stanford, what can only be called a devolution: teenagers who arrived at college not as young adults but as kids; people more impressive on paper than in person; people who seemed less attuned to any budding sense of self than to their parents mapping their paths for them.

This was at Stanford, one of the most elite and competitive universities in the world. Arguably, these kids were those who’d most successfully navigated and completed the college admissions gauntlet our educational system presents: be the best at every turn, from the earliest age, and maybe you’ll be rewarded with a spot at a top-tier school.

And yet, what few until recently have stopped to ask is: At what cost?

In Julie's words, "when I spoke to the freshmen, they could tell me what they'd done but not why they'd done it...Chronologically, they were adults but they were largely incapable of fending for themselves...I began to wonder why childhoods were no longer preparing kids to be grown-ups. And what is getting in the way of people becoming who they really are?"

Let me be clear that Julie’s tone was not one of judgment but of concern. And, as a mother who’d found herself cutting her ten-year-old’s meat for him at dinner one night, also one of understanding. Too, as you probably suspect and as she stated, this is largely a middle- and upper-middle class phenomenon.

Julie noticed a dramatic increase over time of parents who brought their kids to college, helped them move in and settle, but then stayed -literally or virtually. And the kids were grateful. They didn’t want their parents to leave.

She recalled advising sessions during which students’ phones would ring multiple times, regularly they’d glance at the screen, say “Oh, it’s my Mom, do you mind if I take this?” and sometimes conference the parent in.

She described walking around campus and hearing students talking to their parents, often for the second or third or fourth time that day.

She started to see that helicopter parenting wasn’t just producing overly-scheduled, highly-accomplished people but also somewhat stunted kids who didn’t seem to know how to be their own selves, how to discover what made them tick, how to move through life independently.

Julie’s overarching concern is, as she said, “for humans:” for people who know who they are and can live authentically; who are tapped into their own minds and souls; who can embrace life as individuals rather than somewhat fearful automatons.

We have gotten to this “existentially impotent” state not out of neglect or lack of concern but because we parents are all trying so hard to do so right by our kids: “It’s part of the evolution of our love from umbilicus to our arms, from our breast to our early applause.”

But again, the questions: At what cost? To our kids? To ourselves?

*****

I still so clearly remember Jack’s first foray into team sports. He was almost three, and Oliver was a newborn. I signed Jack up for tot soccer, despite his protestations, because I thought it’d be nice for all of us to spend some time outdoors and for him to experience a group activity.

We gussied him in tiny shin guards and a cap (I did draw the line at cleats; no expensive cleats for two-year old soccer!) and bought a small, shiny ball pumped just so. Like Ferdinand under his cork tree, Jack proceeded to spend every practice in the backfield, picking flowers and identifying weeds instead of running laps and doing drills. I’m not sure he ever kicked his pretty ball.

I happened to find this all extremely dear and, never much of an athlete myself, didn’t care that he was not cottoning to soccer. He had tried to tell me that he wasn’t interested, yes?

When the “season” ended and the team leaders wanted to order trophies for the kids, I declined. The response, a subtle sucking-in of the breath, a vague grimace, surprised eyes, made me pause.

Jack had not played soccer, had not seemed to enjoy or even be interested in soccer, and so, in my opinion, did not deserve a soccer trophy. It made sense to me, but boy did I feel on the loser end of things. That sense of judgment  -I was the only one to say no- was an interesting pill to swallow.

It also showed me that ignoring the Joneses can take a lot of determination, especially in certain environments.

*****

I’ve thought about that soccer trophy many times in the nearly six years since and about praise in general. “What’s the end goal?” I ask myself. "What character traits might I instill by bestowing undeserved finery and zealous acclaim? What message would I send my kids if I disregarded their innate interests in favor of my own? Don't I want them to feel the power of their own agency?"

When we do what others do, either out of a desire to keep up or to avoid disadvantaging our children in any way, without stopping to think about the long-term consequences, we might later rue them. Even if the ramifications come from nothing more than sincerely having loved our kids so very much. Which is certainly where the praise comes in.

Oliver has to work hard to read, and Jack struggles with the process of getting his many thoughts from brain to paper. Those are the efforts that truly deserve parental help and praise. Where many of us get tangled is in generously praising or overly assisting that which doesn’t warrant it; the things kids can do on their own and should. Or the things they don't do, a la tot soccer.

When I think about the times in my own life when I learned the most, when I really glimpsed a piece of my truest self, when I figured out how to access that and unearth more, I see that they were all times in which I was alone in the struggle but could call upon the support I’d always had: I’d been given a great foundation but was then left to forge my own path.

So why wouldn’t I want to do the same for my kids? What does it teach them if I willingly decide for them, clean up after them, take away their chances to fall and fail and pick themselves up? 

I can do better in all these departments, and since hearing Julie speak, I've tried hard to backpedal the empty praise some, to remind the kids that doing things for their own pleasure is more important than mine (drawing a picture should make them happy; if I'm happy with it, that's great but shouldn't be the goal.), and to verbalize clearly that what I hope for them is that they find what makes them feel alive.

*****

One of the best gifts my parents gave me was saying, when I expressed my plan to change my major from environmental science to comparative religion, "That is SO cool." They didn't worry about how I'd support myself (or at least they didn't say that), they didn't say, "Hmm, that's odd. Are you sure?" They simply said, "That is SO cool." They said the same to my sister who majored in Acting and minored in Italian.

What that really acknowledged was a respect for the true passions we discovered and a belief in what we'd do by virtue of that. 

I carry all these things with me as I raise my kids, and they have coalesced into:

• a total commitment to teaching the boys to listen to their own hearts;
• a total commitment to not judging them for who and what those hearts are;
• a strong belief that I can't ensure that they'll always be happy but I can help them discover the best ways to find that for themselves;
• a strong belief that if they are always valued for the individuals they are, happiness is more likely to follow;
• and a desire to have them emerge from my eighteen-year womb as whole people who do not want me to move to their college town with them.

Do I expect that they'll try hard and do their best? Yes. But their best isn't mine and ultimately, their lives aren't mine either. I hope this means I'm raising adults. I think Mrs. Lythcott-Haims might say I'm decently on my way.