“Well,” I responded, “to him it may feel that he doesn’t have control of his actions. He may have responded to the impulse to hit without even thinking about it. Perhaps in his mind it was truly an accident. Or at least a surprise. That’s probably developmentally appropriate.”
She gave me a stunned look, but seemed reassured that hitting others in preschool wasn’t going to lead her child into a life of violent crime.
As I taught parenting classes and read about brain development, the pieces slowly fell into place for me. Adult actions aimed at controlling children’s behavior through rewards or punishment are counterproductive. For one, many children don’t yet have the brain maturity needed to meet parents’ expectations. And even those children who are ready lose access to the part of the brain where they can learn or exercise rational thought when they are in a conflict or having a temper tantrum. In that moment, neither threats nor rewards can reach them.
This doesn’t mean we should accept bad behavior or excuse it. Children need signals and instruction on what’s expected. They need practice exercising self-control over many years. But I believe that it helps adults to stop seeing a child having a tantrum or being disorganized as willfully disobedient, and instead to see that child as needing help self-regulating. In a sense, until children’s prefrontal cortexes are fully mature, we adults must supplement their executive function. We must remove that support bit by bit, continually challenging their self-control to grow until they’re completely independent.
The implications of this new wave of science are profound for anyone working with kids: adults can actually stimulate growth in the neural fibers that link the different parts of the child’s brain that control emotional regulation by connecting with the child in the midst of an outburst. Children can literally reshape their brains when they learn and practice skills that support desired behavior.
Faced with a misbehaving child, adults have a choice with a far-reaching impact. We can take unilateral actions—declaring time-outs, offering bribes, yelling—that deepen the kid’s dysregulation, disconnection, and despair. The research now tells us that repeated negative discipline experiences will take this child further down a path of misbehavior. Or we can choose to reinforce the relationship, help the child regain control of himself, and, often later, collaborate with them on a plan to reinforce those missing skills that will help them cope better with the situation or the trigger that led to the misbehavior. That’s the option that will build the neural pathways in that child’s brain for self-control, intrinsic motivation, and, ultimately, long-term success in life.
This combination—making connections, communicating, and systematically building capability—underpins all the successful discipline models I explore in this book and represents our best hope for raising and educating resilient, capable adults prepared to lead our society.
4
The Old Methods Don’t Work
Kids, I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today!
Kids, they are disobedient, disrespectful oafs!
—Lee Adams, Bye Bye Birdie, 1960
Men will dishonor their parents as they grow quickly old, and will carp at them, chiding them with bitter words, hard-hearted they, not knowing the fear of the gods. They will not repay their aged parents the cost of their nurture, for might shall be their right.
—Hesiod, 700 BCE
FOR AS LONG AS CHILDREN have grown into adolescents, parents have been complaining that this generation is the worst. This tradition stretches back at least as far as Homer. So I understand the skepticism when I become the latest in this string of doomsayers to attest that today’s youth behave worse than ever.
But bear with me. As discussed in the previous chapters, the ability of children to regulate their own emotions and behavior is on the decline. And it’s undeniable that our brains are being shaped by changes in media, technology, lifestyles, and other conditions of our modern society.
To understand why new parenting methods are needed for today’s kids, let’s start with a trip back in time.
Growing up in Connecticut in the 1950s, my father and his two older sisters followed strict rules. Every Sunday, the girls wore gloves and hats to their Episcopal church, where my father sang as a boy soprano in the choir. Chewing gum and comic books were banned from the house. Swearing was absolutely prohibited. They each took a turn eating dinner with their parents in the dining room to learn proper table manners, while their siblings ate in the kitchen.
They remember precious few instances of being disciplined, because they generally did as they were told and behaved as expected. My Aunt Penny recalls using a bad word in a backyard sibling dispute and being summoned to the kitchen door by her mother, my grandmother Mary. With a fierce look, Mary seized Penny’s arm and marched her to the bathroom, where she proceeded to wash the inside of the seven-year-old’s mouth with a bar of Ivory soap. It tasted awful. Penny didn’t even protest.
“I couldn’t imagine trying to resist the punishment,” Penny told me when I asked why she didn’t clamp her mouth closed. “You didn’t do that. You might resent it afterward, but you’re not going to keep your mouth shut.”
Then, when Penny and my father were raising my cousins and me, they found that kids typically obeyed an adult command with little protest or question. That’s one reason grandparents today often struggle to understand why we modern parents negotiate with our children and tolerate emotional scenes. They remember the simplicity of telling children what to do, giving a few choices, and being obeyed with little question. The few instances of childish disobedience were easily curbed by a stern look, a firm lecture, or a swat on the behind. “It worked for me” is their common refrain.
They grew up in the era of Father Knows Best, when men ruled the roost at work and women commanded the household with an iron fist. Children were seen and not heard. Psychologists call that style of parenting authoritarian, and it worked in a time when people could devote fifty years to a business in exchange for guaranteed employment and a gold watch upon retirement. This was the era of “company men” and lifetime pensions for faithful service.
So why doesn’t that parenting style work now?
First of all, we are parenting in a different context. In schools, workplaces, and government, we value collaboration and mutual respect far more than the command-and-control model of the past. On college campuses, nineteen-year-old students are demanding apologies for racial micro-aggressions and confronting faculty toe to toe. In this environment, it shouldn’t be surprising that children challenge authority. They increasingly see themselves as equal to adults—or at least equally deserving of respect and a voice in decisions. Even preschoolers pick up on the attitudes of older children in their family and community, especially if they’re exposed to smart-mouthed tweens on Disney and Nickelodeon.
Second, we simply want different things for our kids than parents did in earlier eras. In the parenting classes I teach at PEP, in the first session, I ask parents to share what they hope for their children when they turn eighteen. What qualities or values do they want them to have? What do they want their kids to be?
Nobody ever describes wanting rule-following children at age eighteen—as my grandparents had. The adjectives these parents use run much deeper: Independent. Compassionate. Self-confident. Responsible. Honest. Optimistic. Resilient. Dependable. Happy. Service-oriented. Courageous. Kind. Respectful. Hardworking. Creative. Wise. Emotionally healthy. Curious.
When parents are trying to build their children’s emotional, psychological, and moral reserves, discipline is necessarily a more complex matter than simple compliance with adult commands. Parents today recognize that the pace of change is accelerating, and that their offspring need to adapt to whatever world exists when they emerge into adulthood. They want to raise thinkers who can understand the shifting rules of society and who don’t just blindly obey authority.
IT WAS 7:45 P.M. ON a school night. The scent of instant coffee and hummus drifted acros
s the carpeted room on the top floor of the Baptist church in Kensington, Maryland. Erika Roberts sat across from me in a circle of parents taking the PEP 1 class that I was teaching with my husband, Brian.
A tall woman with a resonant voice and easy laugh, she described to the group her struggle to figure out how to manage defiance from her five-year-old daughter, Emma, who didn’t respond as cooperatively as Evan, now nine, had done at the same age. If Evan threw a tantrum in a public place, Erika would simply walk away. He’d then clam up and rush over to avoid being separated from his mother.
“With Emma, it doesn’t work,” she told the twenty parents around her. “She’ll scream and walk in the other direction and just keep screaming.”
Her husband, Tyrone, said that his biggest challenge was getting the kids to cooperate before he blew his cool. Other parents around the room nodded agreement. They took turns introducing themselves with a litany of concerns about their kids.
Sibling rivalry. Bedtime battles. Tantrums. Strong-willed children. Trepidation about the teen years to come. The need for strategies that weren’t negative or punitive. The challenge of getting up and out of the house in the morning on time.
Eight of the parents were taking the class with a spouse. Three were single parents, and the remaining nine had a spouse at home managing dinner and bedtime. Their kids varied in age from three to fourteen, with the majority in the five- to nine-year-old range. Almost immediately, the parents bonded over their similar challenges and frustrations.
Later in the evening, Brian asked the group to brainstorm a list of qualities that the ideal parent would have.
Patient. Able to recognize which kid needs which strategy. Intuitive. Empathetic. Respectful. Loving. Creative and fun. Trusting. Supports effort. Never gets tired. Honest. Persistent. Present. Clear communicator. Willing to help. Willing to let go. Calm. Available.
“No pressure!” Brian joked as the whiteboard grew crowded with words. But the group wasn’t done. They continued with the list.
Wise about the bigger world. Good teacher. Willing to learn more. Curious. Open-minded. Reflective. Loving unconditionally. Supportive. Willing to grow.
“When you look at this list here, how does that make you feel?” Brian asked.
“Tired,” one mom responded.
“Like crap,” Tyrone said bluntly.
“Exactly,” Brian said.
“Imagine you’re a five-year-old or an eight-year-old and you have tantrums,” I said. “You forget things. You’re always getting things wrong. Imagine if you had a parent who was always patient, who was intuitive, respectful, pleasant, a clear communicator, who was wise and calm and available, always willing to learn, empathetic. Every. Single. Minute. Of the day. What would that be like for you?”
The class laughed. “I want to vomit,” one said.
“If you are a five-year-old or eight-year-old trying to figure yourself out and you have a parent who is just perfect, how can you see yourself growing into that person?”
“You’d probably be pretty dysfunctional because you’re so on the other side of the curve,” one mom said.
“I watched my much younger brother tell my dad, ‘Well, you don’t understand because it’s all easy for you, so you don’t understand what I’m going through,’” added Avery, an early thirties divorced mom of two girls.
“That’s a great insight,” I said. “One of the reasons we do this exercise is that even if you could be this perfect parent, boy, that would be discouraging to your imperfect children.”
“Or your spouse,” Brian chimed in, provoking more laughter.
“I think also it would give them a false sense of security about the world,” said Ann, who had described her eleven-year-old daughter as a fierce contrarian.
“Right. No problems. Your way is paved. In this class we like to take that list, crumple it up, and throw it out, because none of us is perfect,” I said.
“I think we should keep it,” Brian joked.
“I’m not keeping anything that makes Tyrone feel like crap,” I said.
“The core motto of the class is to have the courage to be imperfect,” Brian said. “The idea is: there are lots of ways that might or might not work. You’re going to try all of them. You’re going to succeed and fail. The whole goal is you’re going to learn by doing. Having the courage to be imperfect is plenty good. That’s the goal. Just give a try.”
“Being our own imperfect selves is how our kids are going to deal with their own imperfections and living in the real world and being able to accept their own limitations,” I concluded.
The class was on its way. Over the next eight weeks, Brian and I introduced the basic principles of PEP’s curriculum, based on the positive parenting model of the Austrian psychotherapist Alfred Adler (1870–1937). We taught the parents techniques for connecting with their kids, communicating with them, and also building their ability to handle daily chores, strong emotions, and limits set by the family and enforced by the parents. Despite the demands of their lives, the parents kept showing up at the end of their long workdays to sit in uncomfortable metal chairs and make plans for improving their home lives.
ONE REASON PARENTS NOWADAYS FEEL strongly about tempering support with limits is that they’ve seen the damage done by parents who aspired to be their children’s best friends and cheerleaders, not their bosses. In the 1990s, an overwhelming focus on self-esteem as the key to success in life prompted many parents to praise their kids no matter what. Little League teams awarded trophies and medals to everyone who showed up. Instead of punishing children, parents tried to placate them, in hopes of making them happy. Helicopter parents jumped in to negotiate on behalf of their children in school and activities—and sometimes continued to intervene through their kids’ college years and first job.
This was the golden era of permissive parenting, defined by William Sears’s The Baby Book, published in 1993. Research on the importance of early childhood development and secure attachment for lifetime success reinforced the importance of nurturing parents and set the stage for a cascade of writings on mommy guilt.
Whereas 1950s homemakers thought nothing of leaving Junior in a playpen for hours while they completed their daily chores, moms in the 1990s and early 2000s co-slept, wore their babies, and often had no privacy from their children, not even in the bathroom. (I plead guilty on the latter two.) As the name suggests, permissive parents struggle with setting boundaries, sometimes giving up on limits altogether.
In the mid-1990s, sociologists and psychologists launched a wave of new studies looking at the impact of permissive parenting. They contrasted parents who were permissive with those holdovers still practicing authoritarian, Father Knows Best parenting, as well as with a third style: authoritative. Authoritative parents combine warmth and connection with clear limits. Whereas the authoritarian parent tells a child to do something “because I said so,” the authoritative parent explains the reason behind the rule and may even be open to negotiation if a child presents a reasonable argument. Don’t be confused by the similar string of letters in authoritarian and authoritative—these styles are dramatically different.
I read about these studies eagerly, hoping to solve a marital dispute. I lean toward a permissive parenting style, and Brian leans toward authoritarian. Should we—could we—combine our strengths and shed our faults to become two authoritative parents?
I combed through dozens of research papers about children’s emotional health, level of misbehavior, and academic success under different parenting scenarios. Three caught my attention.
A team of psychology professors asked 272 Pennsylvania public high school students a series of questions to assess their parents’ style and their own well-being. Questions associated with an authoritative parenting style included: “How much does your mother/father really know what you do with your free time?” They also assessed students’ answers to questions like: “When my mother/father wants me to do something, she/he explains wh
y.”
From the answers, they labeled each parent in the study one of four types: authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, or uninvolved. Both “indulgent” and “uninvolved” were types of permissive parenting, with indulgent parents being warm and connected but setting few limits. Uninvolved parents were emotionally distant and rarely supervised their children, who in turn could do whatever they wanted.
After analyzing the results, the authors published a 2006 paper reporting that the teens with authoritative mothers experienced higher self-esteem and life satisfaction and fewer signs of depression. The adolescents with uninvolved parents fared the worst, while the well-being of kids of authoritarian and indulgent parents scored somewhere in the middle.
The second paper looked specifically at alcohol and cigarette use, antisocial behavior, and depression. Koen Luyckx, a psychologist at Catholic University Leuven in Belgium, and Elizabeth Tildesley at the Oregon Research Institute led a team working with the Oregon Youth Substance Use Project. They created a prospective study, which sets up questions and study parameters before gathering data. Such a study is considered more reliable than a retrospective study because there’s less chance of bias or unrelated factors distorting the results.
They surveyed parents and their children in five different grades on an annual basis, beginning when the kids were in grades 1 through 5 and ending when they were in grades 8 through 12. A total of 1,075 parents and 1,049 kids participated, 40 percent of whom qualified for free and reduced meals and 86 percent of whom were white.
As they reported in a 2012 paper, they found that children of authoritative parents fared better than their peers on every behavior assessed. The gap was biggest for children of uninvolved parents, and it widened every year. By senior year of high school, these children drank and smoked twice as much as their peers with either authoritative or authoritarian parents.
The Good News About Bad Behavior Page 7
