November 20, 2009
Catholic Charities: Ask the Counselor
Health for the family: Be a confident family
BY DON GATWOOD
Part I
When I think of the great responsibility a parent has, I feel overwhelmed and in reading parenting advice books I think I can never be an expert parent. What are your thoughts?
Parents need to have confidence in themselves and realize that they are the experts on their family. Earlier generations of parents confidently exercised leadership and looked to experienced family members for guidance and support. There were grandparents, aunts, nuns and others who were naturally confident and could pass on habits of confident parenting. The chain was broken in the cultural tsunami of the sixties which questioned all authority and promoted individualism and self expression. This, coupled with a trend of looking for experts who can tell us how to live, resulted in parents lacking confidence in their own knowledge, experience and judgment.
Because all of us as parents have the goal of raising children who will become responsible adults, we need to confidently reclaim our role as parents. Some of the ways in which we go about doing this are setting boundaries and limits. In the earliest days of our children’s lives, we provide them with structure and help them set limits to their behavior. As parents, we have to set limits with wisdom and love, and courageously guide our child’s natural inclination to explore, whether they are toddlers or adolescents. Inevitably, children will test those limits. As parents, we must have the fortitude to stand firm. Obviously, we wouldn’t allow the toddler to poke something into the wall outlet to learn of the wonders of electricity. We need to confidently set limits for our children throughout their growing years.
Unfortunately, many parents today have lost confidence in their ability to raise children who will become responsible adults. In fact, William J. Doherty, an expert in the area of family life, suggests that the current generation of parents are “the most confused and insecure.” We live in a society where parents, feeling so dissatisfied with their role as parents, have often emotionally resigned their role as parents. Doherty suggests that this happened not because we aren’t devoted or caring or sensitive. In fact, if anything parents now are much more sensitive than parents of past generations. This trend toward being more sensitive in our parenting approach is part of the fallout from the anti-authoritarian cultural upheaval of the sixties and seventies which saw the past as bad old days of repressive parenting. What we have instead is a generation of parents who are afraid to set limits or, heaven forbid, get angry out of fear of upsetting their children, and parents shaped by a consumer-driven society.
In his book, Take Back Your Kids: Confident Parenting in Turbulent Times, Doherty offers the following observations:
- We no longer want our children to grow up in fear of our anger, but we now live in fear of theirs.
- We support our children’s right to express their ire and frustration, but don’t know when they cross the line into disrespect.
- We are expert at finding community activities for our children to participate in, but don’t know when to say “enough.”
- We are better at knowing what to buy for our children than what to deny them.
- When dealing with schools, we are better at advocating for our children, but fail to side with the school when our children’s behavior is out of line.
In a consumer-driven society, children look to their parents simply as providers of goods and services. This consumer mind-set is also in our schools and our churches. We live in a society where the idea of sin and personal accountability has been lost. In this new unstable world of parenting where children are consumers of parental services and parents are expected to keep the customer (the kid) satisfied, any sense of responsibility on the part of the child gets lost.
In addition to this consumer mind-set that has influenced our approach to parenting, there exists what Doherty refers to as the therapeutic influence; a belief that began in the 70s that suggests that parents should be consistently attentive, accepting, non-directive and non-judgmental. With this came the suggestion that parents shouldn’t deal with the immediate behavior but should help the child explore the underlying cause for their behavior. This is unfortunate. Children know when they are out of step and that is when they benefit from a parent or other adult’s assertive and confident intervention.
In a stable world, children are expected to not only receive from their parents and their teachers, but they are expected to likewise contribute to the world around them. It is expected that they will contribute to the common good of the home, looking after younger siblings and do chores without expectation of compensation, and that they will assume personal responsibility for their school work.
Donald R. Gatwood is a Family Services counselor and co-coordinator of Counseling Services for Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Evansville.
Next week: We should expect our children to contribute to the common good of the home and the school and assume personal responsibility. It is important for parents to free themselves from some popular myths. See Don Gatwood’s conclusion of his column on being a confident parent next week in the Message.