My Achilles’ heel was the quest for perfection, for the right answer. For most of my life, the answers to my burning questions were found within the pages of a book.
When I was pregnant, in 2003, I read What to Expect When You’re Expecting, The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy, and The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy. I watched what I ate, took prenatal yoga, and even went to a prenatal swim class once a week. After the baby arrived, I went to a new moms support group and listened intently to everyone’s stories, sifting through their trial and error for what would work with my child.
I was going to be perfect at this parenting thing.
As you probably know, it’s not that simple. Our children surprise us from the moment they arrive as mewling bundles of joy—and sometimes before. If we’re outgoing and gregarious, they may be cautious. If we’re introverted and mellow, they may have the energy and propensity for chaos of a Tasmanian devil.
I had to let go of my goal of being perfect, doing parenting the right way, and planning for every contingency. I had to stop thinking that I would find some ultimate recipe for creating the perfect child and lock it in for life. Instead, I had to learn patience during the bumpy process of raising human beings.
Now my goal is working with my children to support them in defining and achieving their goals, as well as providing boundaries that articulate our family values and keep them safe. Rather than finding any one solution in the pages of a single book, I’ve gleaned many different ideas from different sources of information and tested them out in real life. I wake up every morning feeling optimistic that my kids and I will work together more cooperatively than we did the previous day, and when I encounter unexpected hurdles, I take a deep breath and tackle them. Every evening I go to sleep with the certain knowledge that I can try again tomorrow.
This is not a laissez-faire approach to parenting. I agree with the ideas in books like The Gift of Failure and How to Raise an Adult, which encourage parents to stop overparenting and just let kids be. But I worry that parents will take from those books the message that they should let their kids do whatever they want. Left to their own devices, many children would spend all day playing video games and eating junk food. My role as a parent is to help them discover their own passions within healthy limits, so they can leap into the world at age eighteen as capable, autonomous human beings who can control their impulses.
Our job is to help our kids understand their own internal roller coasters of emotions and stressors and to help them discover their unique tools to manage that ride. That’s simply impossible unless we first get in touch with and learn to master our own turbulent internal landscape.
This hit me hard one day after school. My intense older child announced: “I’ve had a very stressful day. I can’t handle this right now!” The chaos of snack and jostling with an energetic younger sister had pushed her over the edge.
But in her irritated voice, I heard an exact copy of my tone and the words that I would use with them. If they were too noisy, or I hadn’t gotten enough sleep, I would feel on edge and jittery and dysregulated. But rather than taking responsibility for bringing myself back under control, I would blame the circumstance or—worse—blame my own children. I had to learn to own whatever moods and feelings washed over me and to model self-regulation if my kids were going to learn to do the same. I realized that in deciding to become a parent, I had lost the luxury of reacting with immature outrage when my feelings or pride get hurt. From then on, I made an effort to say things like, “I’m feeling stressed. I need to take a five-minute walk to calm down.”
Perfection and rigidity were holding me back as a parent. Every parent has different baggage. Maybe you’re managing an anxiety or mood disorder. In their lifetime, about 29 percent of US adults experience an anxiety disorder, 25 percent deal with an impulse control disorder, 21 percent have a mood disorder, and 15 percent abuse substances, according to government data.
Those without a diagnosis have plenty of room for improvement too. Perhaps, like Camila Cullen, your children stir hot rage in your chest that is far out of proportion to whatever offense they committed. Or you experience any raised voice or complaint as a major problem. You may have grown up in a family where negative emotions weren’t allowed, much less discussed.
If you haven’t already, take some time to look at any dysfunctional ways of communicating or interpersonal habits of your own. Learn to govern them and develop strategies for minimizing their impact on your kids. The same holds for our goals regarding our kids’ screen use. Before imposing limits on them, we must look at how we’re modeling technology and begin making any changes needed in our own screen habits.
Every parent’s approach will look different. Some take a few deep breaths and center themselves before responding to the situation in a constructive way. Others go for a hard run when they feel anger start to creep up their neck, or take the dog for a walk in the woods. Before shouting a warning, others are able to suppress that instinct long enough to gauge whether their child is doing something truly dangerous or whether their fear is unfounded. Your children are observing you every second of the day—behave in the way you hope they will behave themselves when they’re raising your grandchildren.
For many parents, a big part of this transformation is understanding how many of our impulses are driven by the worry about “what people will think.” Notice and question your scripts for what a good parent does or how children should act. Letting go of these narratives may resolve some of the conflict in your home.
After nine chapters focusing on children’s behavior, this chapter will give us a chance to talk about adult actions. I’ll share the story of my own attempt to release the dream of perfection, as well as one mom’s story of managing her own anxiety and depression so that her children don’t inherit her struggles. Throughout the chapter you’ll see how modeling impacts kids and the value of taking the time to understand yourself and learn new approaches to life.
A ROUGH-HEWN WOODEN SIGN LABELED THIS WAY marked the path to the Mountain Cloud Zen Center in the arid foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains outside Santa Fe. Walking around the bend in the trail, I spotted the zendo, nestled between thick junipers and piñon pine trees that provided a shock of green against the rocky desert landscape. The adobe building boasted the vita beams typical of Southwestern architecture; they ended in a skinny triangle you might see crowning a Japanese temple.
I followed the blond heads of Sam and Francesca McMeekin. The two children ran up the steps into the zendo. Walking beside me, their mom, Shannon McMeekin, explained the Family Sangha, a community in which parents and children gather briefly and then part to separate mindfulness meditation sessions. A lean, blond woman with a warm smile, Shannon wore slate-blue leggings and a striped fleece over a pink T-shirt. We walked through the golden-brown doors of the zendo. We left our shoes in cubbies, then stepped into the central hall, lined with windows through which the brilliant spring sunshine flooded. At the far end of a room that seemed all golden wood and light, a small bronze statue of the Buddha faced us.
The ten adults and eight children began to settle down, climbing onto the knee-high wooden platform, called a tan, running around the walls. They sat cross-legged. Some knelt atop dark brown cushions. The room quieted. I claimed a seat.
By the entrance, the children jostled for spaces beside their friends. Seven-year-old Sam was juggling a stuffed aardvark and a jar filled with viscous liquid and sparkles. The jar slipped from his hands and the top flew off. Thud. A mixture of glycerine and soap began seeping onto the dark packed mud floor of the zendo.
“Mom, Sam’s thing just exploded all over the floor!” called Frankie, age ten.
“What?” Shannon looked over from her meditation cushion, feeling a flush rise on her cheeks, her throat tighten, and her heart race. She took a breath through her nose and exhaled slowly through pursed lips, what she calls a straw breath, to calm her physiological response.
; “Oh, Shannon, that’s not okay for the floor,” said Teri, an older woman with close-cropped gray hair.
“It just fell!” Sam wailed.
“I know, I know, I know, I know,” Shannon responded, walking over to her son. “Get the cap and we’re going to clean it up.”
Sam grabbed the cap and handed it to Shannon. She retrieved a rag from the nearby bathroom and knelt. She scooped up the gloopy mixture. Sam had wanted to share the jar, a mindfulness tool he had made—the swirling glitter representing stresses in his mind—with his friends at the Sangha. Shannon took in another deep breath, reminding herself simply to acknowledge the feelings of anxiety and embarrassment that washed over her, to notice the self-critical inner monologue that said she should’ve glued the cap shut, and to calmly shift into problem-solving.
“We’re going to share a song now,” said the leader, moving on with the afternoon’s program. Shannon rubbed at the glitter on the zendo floor. Her mentor, Kate Reynolds, seated in the middle of the room, began the song.
Since the 1960s, when enthusiasts brought the Eastern practice of meditation to the United States, a variety of schools have flourished: Vipassana or mindfulness, Zen, Shambhala, Dzogchen, Tibetan, mantra, Qi gong, Tai chi, Transcendental, and even yoga, which includes similar elements.
The common thread is a regular practice of sitting quietly and bringing the mind’s attention to a single focus. The goal is to fully inhabit the present moment, without dwelling on the past or planning for the future. There are many possible focus points: your breathing, a word, a teacher’s voice, the physical sensations in your body, a sound, or your steps in walking meditation. As your mind naturally wanders, you gently bring it back to the object of meditation. This practice helps develop mental discipline.
Through regular meditation, your mind develops flexibility and strength that can be applied to any daily challenge. Because of your regular practice, you can instantly return to that place of calm when you need to approach a crisis rationally.
I grew interested in mindfulness meditation fifteen years ago because of the evidence that it improves well-being and combats insomnia, anxiety, and depression. Not to mention the studies suggesting that the brains of people who regularly meditate over many years develop greater capacity to learn and process information.
I tried online audio and in-person meditation groups, but I kept falling asleep. Whenever I sat down to meditate, my mind would wander and before long my chin would drop to my chest. I’d snap up my head with a little snore, embarrassed at my lack of focus. Finally, I gave up.
Years later, when my children started struggling with big emotions, I took another pass at meditation. Books and blogs and other moms raved about how the practice helped their little ones manage anger and frustration. I jumped on board, trying out meditation CDs and little picture books. My children refused to cooperate. They declared that meditation was boring and useless.
I used the child meditation techniques on the nervous kids on the neighborhood summer swim team, as I lined them up for their events. I taught them to breathe in the scent from an imaginary flower and to release their breath as if they were blowing through a soapy wand to create bubbles. They loved it. But my own children resisted. How could I open their minds to this breakthrough solution?
My desperation led me to Santa Fe and Shannon McMeekin.
SHANNON FIRST FOUND MEDITATION WHEN life had ripped her open.
It was 2006. After a turbulent childhood shaped by her father’s untreated bipolar disorder and the related boom and bust of family fortunes, she finally felt optimistic about the future. She and her husband, Nicholas, were expecting their first child and building a healthy life together in Santa Fe, a laid-back city that values wellness. It was a welcome change from the East Coast intensity of Shannon’s teens and twenties, when she’d wrestled with anxiety and depression. She’d run herself ragged working in film production in New York City and keeping up with club life. A friend suggested that she visit Santa Fe for a summer housesitting gig. She came, met Nicholas, and never left. Her parents even moved west to be near their future grandchild, buying a house up the road. Her dad was the healthiest that she’d ever seen him; working as a volunteer firefighter, he apparently was stable. She finally felt connected to her father, whose mental health issues kept them from being close during her childhood.
Then he died, following an unexpected stroke. She found herself sandwiched between her mother’s grief, her own loss, and the struggle of caring for Frankie, a fussy baby, which led to attachment problems.
“When he died suddenly and shockingly, I couldn’t believe our story just ends here. It just broke my heart. It was such a loss,” she told me a few days after the Family Sangha. We were sitting on the sagging couch in her office at the Sky Center, the nonprofit where she’s a family therapist helping schools and families with suicide prevention and other mental health challenges.
“It became really clear to me that the fact I didn’t have any spiritual practices, it made it so hard for me to cope with his death. I didn’t know what I believed. I didn’t know where he went. I was so lost without any kind of [spiritual] community. I had nowhere to put my grief. It was the hardest, hardest time,” she said. She glanced down at the tinfoil-wrapped cheese sandwich on her lap, blinking away tears.
A weekly prenatal yoga class had comforted her. “Yoga was a huge anchor for me to feel peaceful and be able to sit with my emotions. I think of it as mindful movement. Yoga enabled me to get in touch with my body and my breath,” she said. After Frankie arrived, Shannon continued practicing yoga at home. She left her job as an art gallery director. Instead, she worked from home part-time on graphic design and event planning projects, while parenting Frankie and her son Sam, who arrived in 2009.
Shannon’s favorite part of yoga was the final pose, shavasana, lying in stillness on her back. When Sam was about a year old, she signed up for Kate Reynolds’s mindful parenting class. It clicked. For the first time, she felt connected to both her body and her mind. Mindfulness helped her manage her oppressive feelings and thoughts. Her lifelong struggle with anxiety and depression took a turn. She learned to notice the rush of emotions washing over her and to simply acknowledge them rather than try to fight them.
Mindfulness even led her to a new career. She earned a master’s in social work, became a family therapist, and began leading mindfulness groups in schools through the Sky Center. And mindfulness got her through a thyroid cancer diagnosis in the fall of 2010, followed by a complete thyroidectomy. Not to mention a year of seesawing emotions until a second endocrinologist got her on the right dose of hormones.
“It’s been such an amazing coping mechanism for me,” Shannon said. That’s not to say she’s cured—while she’s now cancer-free, maintaining good mental health will always be a focus of her life. “As much as I try to put the stamp of ‘healed’ on myself from my childhood, I can’t separate my mindfulness practice, my choices, my new career, from the impact my dad and his mental illness had on my life.”
But instead of seeing anxiety as a shameful or unwanted aspect of herself, Shannon reframes it as a superpower that helps her. Her hypervigilance helps her read situations early and size up people accurately. She’s more aware and can make better decisions. She manages the negatives and tries to appreciate the positives. For her, mindful parenting means pausing the instinctual reaction she might have to a child’s behavior or comment and then intentionally choosing her response, instead of reacting with anger or irritation or criticism. That pause might be as simple as one deep breath before responding, or as controlled as waiting until the next day to address something after everyone cools down.
Families pass along mental illness like an unwanted heirloom. It’s rarely pure genetics; more often mental illness arises from a combination of biology and environment. Anxiety in particular is on the rise; remember from Chapter 2 that almost one-third of children now receive an anxiety diagnosis. An anxiety disorder can appear i
n many forms: feeling on edge, being irritable, tiring easily, or having trouble sleeping or concentrating. The bottom line is excessive, uncontrollable worry that prevents normal functioning at work, in school, or in relationships.
Frankie grew from a colicky baby into a clingy toddler and then a volatile young child. The smallest incident would spark an epic tantrum, which seemed to scare Frankie as much as it alarmed her parents. “She would say things like: ‘Help me, Mommy, I’m not okay. I need help,’” Shannon recalled. Shannon recognized such feelings from her own childhood. “Because I grew up in a state of constant crisis, my body got trained to be vigilant. I always had this sense that something was threatening.”
Shannon responded by teaching Frankie mindfulness. Having learned to hold her anxiety close and accept it as part of herself, she encouraged Frankie to understand and discuss her own feelings. When Frankie was eight, they watched the animated movie Inside Out, which depicts a tween girl’s personified emotions as she navigates her family’s move to San Francisco and a new school. As much as the characters of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust resonated with Frankie, they didn’t seem quite adequate. Many mother-daughter chats followed.
“Frankie said: ‘I have more feelings like that in my body,’” Shannon recalled. “I said, ‘Yes, in our family, we have more feelings. We have a history and we have to understand them.’”
Shannon experiences anxiety as heat. It spreads, physically, over a triangle connecting her sternum, belly button, and heart, topped by a column of tightness running up her throat. She encourages Frankie to recognize the bodily experience of a panic attack in order to understand it. They also both write in journals and find that naming, recording, and acknowledging anxiety helps tame it.
The Good News About Bad Behavior Page 23