Parenting Winning Children - The Guidance Psychology of High Expectations

“I worried about my oldest daughter keeping her virginity while she was in high school. Now, just ten years later, I lay awake nights, anxious that my youngest girl will be crippled by AIDS or become addicted to life-devouring drugs.”

Mary Ellen Fitzsimmons, Single Mother

NEW Vital Information about your teenager. Scientists are now gaining new insights into remarkable changes in teenagers’ brains that may help explain why the teen years are so hard on young people -- and on their parents.

AN AWESOME RESPONSIBILITY

All normal parents love their children and want them to live meaningful lives among loving people with whom the youngsters find places to belong. We teach them to be as successful as we can. Because of their love, parents normally have no intention of crippling their child's physical, psychological or spiritual growth with inadequate guidance or with harsh discipline. It is our intention to maintain loving and purposeful relationships with our youngsters during their formative years. Nevertheless, because we bring our own emotional baggage with us, because many of us had less than ideal childhoods, the road to disaster for many children is paved with the good intentions of inept parents. For -- the fact of the matter is -- we make but one journey through life with each child -- and although most adults strive diligently to succeed, we can never control all society’s variables and we do have difficulty compensating for our own weaknesses. Even when we do the best we can, we spend years before learning how well we have done with our most precious assets.

Despite the best of intentions, virtually all parents I know (I spent yesterday afternoon with a group of friends, honoring a recent high school graduate who is leaving home to matriculate in Carleton College), readily admit that guiding their offspring to emotional and spiritual maturity is an awesome responsibility. Because of a combination of social, cultural and financial changes occurring across our civilization, the responsibilities each parent carries have indeed become more difficult than they were when society was less complex. One deeply concerned mother of several daughters shook her head and lamented;

I worried about my oldest daughter keeping her virginity while she was in high school. Now, just ten years later, I lay awake nights, anxious that my youngest girl will be crippled by AIDS or become addicted to life threatening narcotics. What on earth is happening to our children when eighty percent of high school girls have already engaged in high risk sexual relations and dangerous drugs are as available as soft drinks?

At one Parent/Teacher Organization meeting, when my oldest son’s now adult daughters were rowdy teenagers, a middle eastern father chided the group that Americans were having discipline problems with their children because they are too permissive. He continued to say that he, as an Islamic father, had no problems maintaining control of his daughters. The group pondered this for a moment or two and someone suggested he share his methods with the PTO members, many of whom were indeed being challenged. When he offered some obviously simplistic, rather primitive religious advice from the desert sands of Arabia, one woman grew suspicious and asked how old his always obedient daughters were. He answered, five and seven years. He then became angry when the group burst out in laughter at his advice. My son, for whom the Moslem man worked, took him aside after the meeting and kindly told him that his daughters were going to turn him inside out when they reached puberty -- unless he switched from a controlling to a counseling relationship. His said the daughters were surely going to grow up yearning to be part of their high school society and the only way he could block their desire for acceptance would be to stamp out every iota of their creativity -- or possibly keep them locked in the attic for ten years! And sure enough, I live across the street from South West High School and the oldest Moslem daughter, now fifteen or sixteen, ran past recently with a group of girls training for cross-country competition. She was wearing a traditional head scarf -- but was also clad in a T shirt over an athletic bra and a pair of short shorts. The Moslem Religious police in Saudi Arabia, who behead girls who so much as touch the hands of any man except for their fathers, brothers or husbands, would have stoned her for playing the harlot had she dressed for a sporting event in her father’s homeland. Life goes on and every generation must find its own way rather than simply adopting the past as eternal wisdom.

In his delightful short story The Reivers, William Faulkner wrote about a disobedient son’s father who is preparing to thrash him for his boyish transgressions. Before he can get his leather razor strap, the boy’s grandfather steps in to block the whipping and the angry father becomes disgusted with the older man. He grumbles, Father, when I was a boy, you had no compunction about whipping me! The elderly grandfather sighs and admits that his son is right, that he did whip him too often when he was growing up. But -- he adds, As a grandfather, I’m much smarter now than I was when your age. Most of us do learn something important while traveling life’s journey. To paraphrase an old Pennsylvania Dutch quip:

Too soon we get old and too late we stop hurting our kids. Or as H. L. Mencken griped, Our parents ruin the first half of our lives and our kids ruin the second half.

My own children are grown now and even my grandkids have kids -- several of whom are almost grown, which shall likely make me a great, great grandfather before many more years past. I have participated in my own development, that of my children and my grandchildren and now my great grand kids. Two weeks ago my wife Roberta and my youngest son took two of our great grandsons to a fabulous Minnesota Twin’s baseball bash for kids, where they could eat all the hot dogs and drink all the pop they could manage without throwing up and come home with prizes of all kinds. It was a hoot for everyone -- unto the second and third generation of our clan! I have also served as a pastor for seven years, was Director of a learning and learning disabilities center in association with the University of Wisconsin, professor of psychology and department chair at Westminster College, leadership professor in the Executive Development Conference at the University of Arizona in Tucson and a leadership consultant from London to Singapore. I have also researched and written more than a score of books, seminars and psychology assessment instruments, of which this is my most recent study course.

This study course is based in part on some of the concepts that were discussed in my books such as Nice Guys Finish First, Lovers For Life, The Psychology of Leadership, The Pastor’s Handbook On Interpersonal Relations, Frontiers of Fulfillment, The Liberated Soul and others. It isn’t a rehash of any of them but draws from my ever-increasing maturity as I continue my life-long quest for knowledge and wisdom. Parenting is written specifically for mothers and fathers who are committed to guiding their children and adolescents toward emotional, spiritual and career maturity and to life-long satisfaction. It is based on several psychospiritual principles that include these.

We must:

DEVELOP CONSISTENTLY LOVING RELATIONSHIPS WITH OUR CHILDREN THROUGH KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM AND FAITH.

SHARE THE REWARDS OF GREAT SATISFACTION AND DEEP MEANING WITH THE KIDS WE LEAD TO SUCCESS.

CREATE A FAMILY OF DEEPLY COMMITTED PERSONS IN WHICH EVERY MEMBER IS A COMMITTED STAKE HOLDER.

Those three approaches are best implemented through two principles of psychology that are easy to remember and to apply.

They are:

THE BASIC PRINCIPLE OF HUMAN COOPERATION THE PRINCIPLE OF INTERPERSONAL RECIPROCITY

The basic principle our children need to absorb from our attitudes and activities is that all men and women, boys and girls continue holding the attitudes and doing the things reward them or appear to reward them and stop doing the things that deprive them in some manner. The basic principle has these three elements to it.

Good things happen to people who do good things. Bad things don’t happen to people who do good things. Good things don’t happen to people who don’t do good things.

This is not necessarily the way the world functions, whether at school, on the playground, on the job, in the criminal justice system or in politics, but it can be our promise to those precious children whom we want to mature as courageous, successful and loving adults. Of course you are not all powerful or totally wise and we all grow weary, frustrated and crabby at times. But, we are not discussing the cosmic principles of good and evil here, but learning practical ways of improving our interactions with our children so we can guide them toward maturity and competence. Children grow ill and suffer and friends move away and discretionary income may be lost -- life has its downturns -- but to the best of your abilities, you promise to live with a sound quid-pro-quo that is put in simple words children can understand. You must communicate clearly and consistently follow up with this commitment --

When you do what I need from you, I shall grant what you need from me.

In addition, I shall not treat you badly when you are doing your best to cooperate with the people among whom we belong. And finally, I shall not make any extraordinary effort to waste my time, money and energy rewarding people who fail to cooperate for the good of this family unless I see some hope for the future.

The reciprocity principle is less cerebral -- is more instinctive in nature.

The positive, neutral or negative way you treat individuals and groups, comes from your values, attitudes and expectations that are based on your basic trust in humanity or in your basic distrust of society. The way you relate to others determines the way the vast majority of persons relate to you.

In other words:

I have just given you a very powerful interpersonal mechanism for creating a positive psychological and spiritual climate within your home, on the job and in virtually all of your relationships

I cannot take a great deal of credit for this fact of existence -- since both Aristotle and Jesus were teaching it long before I arrived on the scene -- but it still works wonders in complex situations today. Management psychologists now call this principle behavior modeling, through which we demonstrate as well as discuss the attitudes and activities that shall be rewarded. I realize this principle of reciprocity will have little value if your boss’ cousin is gunning for your job or when you are being stalked late at night by a rejected lover, but it does work in the vast majority of cases with people who are merely annoyed or frustrated without nursing hidden agendas. Actually, we often teach our children in this manner -- whether we recognize it or not. Children learn much that is both good and bad from their parents, from their attitudes and activities, although there is often a great gap between the concepts we express and the activities we pursue.

When we relate to other persons, each of us goes through a series of spoken and unspoken transactions that play a crucial role in how we manage relationships. If we demonstrate love and trust -- normal men and women as well as boys and girls are draw into our attitudes and activities. On the other hand: If we are paranoid or psychopathic and are consistently distrustful, people feel uncomfortable around us and likely deal with us cautiously even if they cannot avoid us entirely. If we are closed-minded and defensive in our relationships, our children usually learn to behave in the same manner. One very good psychologist, whom I shall call Fred to protect the guilty, muttered one night after we’d quaffed a few beers too many:

I’ve studied Freud, Adler and Frankl and rejected most of Skinner’s simplistic stuff and accepted Dugal Arbuckle’s existential approach, but one concept keeps coming to me. I believe in nurture and nature or nature and nurture -- or perhaps both! But after forty years of assessment and psychotherapy, I have found a consistent factor to explain sound mental health. Healthy and happy parents rear healthy and happy kids. And nutty and frustrated parents rear nutty and frustrated kids.

Well -- there are exceptions of course, but I modify that to include the sad fact that emotionally distressed parents usually rear psychologically inept kids, which causes them to make serious mistakes that bring suffering to themselves and to the next generation of children. Of course, remedying that -- breaking the chains of ignorance -- is what this course is all about. What you give to your kids is what you consistently receive in return, although you may go wrong by not be giving them what you thought you were offering them. I find great wisdom in something valuable Otto Rank wrote and I paraphrase:

I was resting on my bed, pondering why so many parents put so much pressure on their children, wondering why they cripple them with neuroses and psychoses and I finally reached a conclusion. They do it out of stupidity. They have no concept of sound mental health and so they rear children in haphazard ways that fail.

I find Otto Rank one of the greatest of all the mental health scholars, but I prefer the phrase, They do it out of ignorance, for while stupidity is a life-long genetic disability, ignorance may be only temporary and can be corrected. I suppose almost every teacher, professor and counselor agrees or why work with students who are doomed to repeat their parents’ blunders ad infinitum.

What parents, teachers and ministers really need to do with kids is to reverse the most common child guidance system. Rather than watching like hawks to catch the kids doing something wrong and then punishing them for it -- we must watch them like mother hens, to catch them doing something right and grant them appropriate rewards for their maturing choices. Punishment -- whether physical, emotional or spiritual, inevitably fails to accomplish what we expect as soon as a child becomes old enough to resist -- first during the terrible twos when kids learn to use the magic word -- NO! that throws many young parents into confusion. And then later, during adolescence. The only way abuse will deter a determined child is by escalating the severity of the punishment, which leads to a point of diminishing returns. In the first place, a slap alongside the head teaches the child nothing except how displeased the adult is -- he or she learns nothing about improving one’s behavior the next time around. And even if the adult follows the blow with correction, the child is usually too frightened or resentful to listen and accept the appropriate behavior. In the second place, escalating punishment either crushes the child’s spirit, making boys vulnerable to bullies or girls unable to resist abusive men, or it leads to a simmering guerilla war that poisons the home climate.

Rather than being traumatic and conflict laden, childhood and adolescence can be a grand experience for parents and offspring alike. Life remains satisfying in many families and have been great within many cultures across the world, although Socrates once wrote a bitter diatribe about the impolite and narcissistic youngsters of ancient Greece. Perhaps some rowdy boys had tipped his outhouse over! The American Plains Indians, such as the Cheyenne, Sioux and Absaroka, offered a striking example of family and community congeniality. Juvenile delinquency was unheard of -- as was theft, divorce, child or spouse abuse or even mental illness. The Great Plains children were pampered beyond reason, were reared in an atmosphere of permissiveness that would have shocked Dr. Spock. There was virtually no physical, psychological or spiritual punishment within the families or the clans and yet, infants were taught not to cry within a few days after birth, because crying could reveal the band’s presence to enemies. There was no spanking, slapping or pinching and no emotional abuse of any kind. Nevertheless, the Plains peoples reared children who were obedient, loving and loyal to parents and elders and generous to their clans for their entire lives. These stone age, pre-literate people used the Basic Principle and the Law of Reciprocity much more successfully than we industrial world persons ever have.

If you consistently use the concepts and techniques I teach in this course, you can make the most of the years you spend with your children and teen-agers. The processes learned here can mean the difference between consistent success and disastrous failure in an age when life is changing so swiftly that old traditions and worn down ideologies can no longer serve our children well. For those who haven’t seen through my approach yet -- this program is a synthesis of phenomenological or existential and behavioral elements in a child-centered guidance system.

Adolescents

Warning -- Ignoring the Following Paragraphs May Lead To Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Disaster for Your Peace of Mind and Your Child’s lifelong Welfare.

Professor Ian Campbell, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Davis, is a researcher who studies the near miraculous aspects of the most remarkable organ of human existence. This magic box is, of course, the incredible flesh and blood information processor we carry above our shoulders. Our brains can be thought of as our hardware, as the personal computer that runs ceaselessly every moment of our lives from a few months after conception until death. In fact, few physicians will declare any person dead until his or her brain wave activity has ceased completely. On the other hand, the activities of the brain -- the mind -- is analogous to software that enables most people to live their entire lives with seldom a thought about their breathing, temperature management, disease defense, wound healing, the digestion of food and blood flow. But while the autonomic system functions in a predictable manner through its chemical solutions and electronic flows, the information processing software of the brain has an entirely subjective element to it. Professor Campbell has written a great deal that is valuable for parents, teachers, psychologists, pastors or police and prosecutors who try to persuade, cajole and even browbeat young people to grow up and behave as adults. Some youngsters get along reasonably well but others do indeed find it quite difficult to bring these adult qualities into interaction with each another and their parents, teachers and pastors.

When I was a young pastor, science teacher, psychology professor, and clinic director, a red hot debate raged whether we should speak of the brain or about the mind, when we were trying to understand, teach and counsel children and adolescents. In my youth, some behaviorally oriented psychologists who were disciples of B F Skinner spoke of the brain as if it were a machine. Some of them reduced all of human activity to a response to stimuli -- with clearly predictable S-R behaviors. Some radical behavioral scientists went so far as to call the mind as much of a myth as the church‘s primitive teaching about the human soul. This led someone with a devastating wit to quip -- Psychology first lost its soul and then lost its mind. Many existential psychologists and scholars thought of the mind as a subjective but virtually independent entity that transcends the flesh and blood brain with its chemical fluids and electrical currents that ran the autonomic processes such as heart beat, breathing and so on. For decades the argument raged for years. When I was director of a dyslexic or learning and learning disabilities clinic in Wisconsin, I decided that we needed a middle way in order to help our learning disabled but obviously intelligent students to manage their lives and studies well enough to grow up and function as adults. I taught my teachers, social workers and psychologists:

The brain is the tangible instrument (the hardware of the system) and the mind is what the brain does, (the software). And there is nothing on the face of the earth that is more subjective and self-serving than the human mind.

Since I taught this body/mind interaction to the professionals that I led, at a time when no more than half a dozen medical schools in America had body/mind department, a great awakening has occurred. Now, three out of every five colleges of medicine, have departments that deal extensively with the subjective aspects of healing that can only be understood through mind/body research such as Campbell and others now conduct. I am pleased that the medical world has finally started catching up with this hard working, back country clinic director and author!

Robert Boyd of the McClatchy News Service wrote:

“Scientists are now gaining new insights into remarkable changes in teenagers’ brains that may help explain why the teen years are so hard on young people -- and on their parents.”

Campbell reports that between eleven and fourteen years of age, adolescents lose a significant percentage of the brain’s neural connections that enable them to think wisely and well. And Boyd writes that this loss in necessary because it trims unneeded connections in order to prepare the youthful brain for more complex adult thought processes. Boyd also quotes Alison Gopnic of the University of California at Berkley.

Ineffective or weak connections are pruned in much the same way a gardener trims a tree or bush, giving a plant the desired shape.

Jay Giedd from the National Institute of Mental Health was also quoted by Boyd.

Neural connections or synapses that get exercised are retained while those that don’t are lost. Teens appear to process emotions differently from adults.

Campbell went on to say:

Normal adolescents who are experiencing these brain changes can react emotionally. And girls start pruning their cells about a year earlier that boys but the losses end up to be about the same. This pruning is a case in which less becomes more. It causes an improvement in speed in information processing and a greater ability to build the long neuron chains required for complex problem solving.

I am convinced that many of the parent and teacher conflicts with older children and adolescents occur during this period in which the youngsters are trying to understand and to readjust their emotions without understanding anything about turmoil going on within. Many seldom have a clue and neither do their parents -- the teen age youngsters live as one researcher said, in a very small world of their own hormonal and brain driven urges for esteem, acceptance and admiration. They are so unaware of these confusing urges that kids, who run amok -- like the teen shooters at Columbine School in Colorado or at Red Lake School in Minnesota, are often unable to explain their murderous rage and ruthless aggression. They simply cannot offer a rational reason for their unspeakable violence. Some have no way of understanding their angst and rage. This is why Abigail Baird, a psychologist in Vassar College, insists that teenage criminals should never be tried as adults and never, ever executed for their crimes. It is much too easy for emotionally burned out police and ambitious prosecutors to convince themselves that they should meet the demands for ruthless revenge by an outraged public regardless of the facts. It is a sad fact that our ram-shackled criminal justice system puts one innocent defendant out every twenty in long term confinement or on death row. And even when a prisoner’s innocent is competently proven through evidence such as DNA, virtually every prosecutor in the land will fight to the death before releasing a prisoner mistakenly convicted of a felony.

As Professor Giedd concluded:

The teen-age brain is a very complicated and dynamic area, one that is not easily understood.

Obviously, every parent must learn sound ways of interacting with the vicissitudes of adolescent, must master patience and stop expecting youngsters to behave as adults do. It is good and usually productive to expect and plan well from the high expectations you hold for your child, but your suggestions during the years from about twelve to eighteen should be tempered by the fact that human children are never simply little adults to be set on course and then left to manage for themselves. They need your understanding and your assistance until their brain/minds become more adult. Of course, that is what this course and the book that contains is all about!