“When I was about nine,” Shannon said, “riding on a bike down the road to my house, I have a vivid memory of the mailbox, the leaves on trees, and the sky. I realized I have a voice inside my head that’s always talking to me. Then I noticed myself noticing that voice. I thought, Who is this voice? The journaling helped me to always have that voice and witness to my life.”
Shannon models a calm response to feelings of anxiety for her kids. She’s aware that she could easily have followed the same life path as her father, who abused drugs and alcohol and never was able to create a stable home for his children. “In college, I turned to marijuana as a coping mechanism, and it really worked,” she said. “I’m worried about adolescence and what it will mean for Frankie. Will she take the first sip of beer and realize, ‘This works, this dulls the anxiety.’ I hope if we have this ongoing closeness, that won’t happen.”
IN AVA’S FIRST-GRADE YEAR, MY husband and I suggested that she check out the introductory meeting of the beginning orchestra at a nearby music school. She eagerly picked out the violin when the instructors let the children try a violin, a viola, and a cello. She loved going to her orchestra rehearsals, a jumble of musically inclined children that perfectly suited my little extrovert. To my delight, she also willingly went along to weekly, one-on-one violin lessons with a teacher in our neighborhood.
This was a welcome change from her older sister, who grudgingly took piano for a couple of years. Every practice became a battle. Every lesson brought gentle chiding from her teacher. We finally accepted defeat and let her quit. Perhaps the instrument didn’t suit her temperament, I thought. Unlike band or orchestra, piano students don’t have a regular social gathering as part of rehearsal or performance.
I took the lack of struggle before Ava’s violin lessons as evidence that our newfound parenting strategies had given us the perfect recipe for instilling a love of learning. Our daughter was intrinsically motivated to learn a challenging skill! I came back down to earth the day she and I were walking hand in hand away from the lesson and she said, plaintively, “Why can’t I just get the Jolly Rancher without having to go to the lesson?” I hadn’t even noticed that she was collecting this weekly treat from her teacher.
When children who experience the Apprenticeship Model of parenting at home go out into the “real world,” they very well may enjoy the Jolly Rancher they get after a violin lesson, or the class pizza party earned for weeks of good behavior. This isn’t a problem. Those experiences can serve as the focus of a thoughtful discussion about why home is different than school, and the values we hope our children will internalize.
What if your kids are shamed, scolded, and punished in school or activities run by old-school adults—the kind of behavior that Chapter 3 taught us can provoke our kids’ fight-or-flight response? The trusting relationships they have with their primary caregivers should inoculate them against lasting harm from these encounters. After all, many adults can point to teachers who served as negative mentors, giving an enduring example of how not to treat another human being. These experiences also help our kids develop resilience as they see that they can survive harsh treatment, and perhaps even learn something.
It’s tempting to want to share new techniques that are working with your friends. Although you certainly can recommend this book, and I hope you do, it’s always tricky giving unsolicited advice to teachers or other parents in hopes of modifying their behavior. One idea: use the same strategies you use with children. Connect with them, notice their strengths, and express empathy for the challenges they face. At that point, they might be more open to input, especially if you first ask permission to give advice. A gentle question can often be more thought-provoking than a sentence that begins: “You should…”
If any suggestion or model in this book doesn’t resonate with you, leave it aside for now. If sticker charts or other incentive systems seem to be working, don’t worry about it for the time being. Adapt the ideas in this book to your own style. The parenting language that I use is often mild and tentative. I might say, “I noticed you were…,” to describe an episode of misbehavior and encourage a problem-solving conversation, as Ross Greene does. Or instead of commanding a child, I’ll use the phrase I learned in PEP, “Would you be willing to…,” as the preface to a request, whether to help load the dishwasher or pick up backpacks.
Parents who come to my workshops sometimes bristle at phrases like these and view them as weak. I encourage them to try out more collaborative and neutral language before rejecting it, but I also recognize that the Apprenticeship Model can and should look different based on your personality, your child’s needs and skills, and your family’s cultural background. The way kids in Baltimore and Columbus form bonds with parents and adults will differ from parent-child connections in Washington, DC, Santa Fe, Maine, and other communities described in this book.
I wouldn’t expect African American or Latino families, or those in other parts of the country, to act the same as my Asian-Jewish-white household firmly entrenched in the mid-Atlantic. My family is demonstrative and silly, which may not feel right to you, depending on your personality and style. But while the language may differ, the fundamentals of mutual respect, open-minded listening, and a focus on problem-solving are vital to reaping the benefits.
We may need to reject some of our cultural and family background to embrace the Apprenticeship Model. I have a history of authoritarian parenting on both my father’s Episcopalian side and my mother’s Chinese side. Yet I believe I can keep the enriching parts of my heritage while shedding those traditions that will undermine mental health in the children being raised today.
Immigrant parents’ success at teaching their children to value hard work and education can be compatible with respect and collaboration. Parenting is not a race to age eighteen, with an Ivy League acceptance letter being the prize and American parents trying to mimic our counterparts in China, France, Denmark, or whichever other country produced the highest test scores or happiness survey results this year. Media firestorms that erupt over the latest formula for academic, artistic, or athletic success represent another temptation to competitive parenting that we must resist as we let our children define success for themselves, not based on our wishes.
My hope is that as individual families and communities begin to move in the direction of this kind of parenting, a critical mass of Apprenticeship Model adherents develops who can shift how our society views discipline—and how we view success. It’s not enough to protect the children in our own homes from anxiety, dependence, and other ills. We want them to go into the world to find spouses, friends, and coworkers who are also resilient, independent, and capable. That’s only possible with widespread change.
Nobody should expect to be a “perfect” parent who never slips into doling out punishments or rewards in a weak moment. Rather than sink into self-criticism, think of your lapses as learning opportunities for everyone, and models for your children of how to recover from a mistake. Every day you have hundreds of interactions with your children. When one doesn’t go the way you want, never fear. You will soon have a chance for a do-over.
BACK IN THE ZENDO, AFTER Shannon cleaned up Sam’s mess, the children left the parents for separate meditation sessions. I followed the kids, eager to observe techniques I could bring home to my family. We sat on the floor of the dining room in a rough circle. Two older Buddhists gave instructions to eight squirmy, farty, giggling children. The women’s voices held that edge of controlled fury and exasperation that I knew well from my own life.
I felt nothing but sympathy.
We all introduced ourselves to the group. Sam drew out his first name in three syllables, to the delight of the other kids, who burst into giggles. Iggy and Hadley, classmates of Sam’s in first grade, were especially vocal in appreciating his humor.
“I don’t know if you could hear him because you were laughing,” Teri, the leader, enunciated crisply, in an overly sweet tone. “Will you say it a
gain please?”
“Sam.”
After everyone finished their introductions, Teri attempted to make the squiggly oval of bodies into more of a circle.
“Now listen, Iggy, could you move back a little bit so we’re more complete,” she said, only to react in horror a second later when Sam scooted back also, disrupting the line of children’s bodies. “Sam, no, no.”
More giggles.
“Betty, I would like Iggy to come over here,” she said to her partner.
“Can I be in the corner of the room where all the bad kids go?” Iggy asked.
“No, this is not a silly time. I want you over here please, not next to Sam,” she said.
Teri managed to ring a meditation bell, and the children listened to the echo in relative silence, broken only by giggles and the muffled sound of siblings hitting each other. Iggy squirmed on his belly and scooted back to be fully under the table in the dining room.
Teri attempted to read a book called Master of Mindfulness, punctuating her reading with injunctions and threats. The children stayed silent for perhaps a half-minute at a time before farting and giggling.
“Betty, you need to take him away if he can’t sit still,” Teri said. “You need to calm down,” she told Sam.
A bit later, the children began singing softly, interrupting the reading.
“Let’s be a little bit more respectful. That’s important,” said Betty.
“Hadley, do you think you could be still for two minutes?” Teri asked in exasperation.
“Maybe,” the little girl replied.
“Well, try!”
After about ten minutes, Teri took the five older children, including Frankie, into a small separate room—almost a large closet—and I went with them. We sat silently without much distraction and actually meditated. Teri read a few more books, and then the big and little kids were reunited for more mindfulness exercises, including a walking meditation. Although it didn’t go off perfectly, the walking meditation won the most cooperation from the little kids that afternoon.
Whenever Sam and his first-grade friends were present, their mischievous energy disrupted the group. Mercifully, our time together ended, and the children were reunited with their parents in the meditation hall for announcements and a brief good-bye.
I lingered to chat with Kate Reynolds, a tall woman with a wide-open smile and shoulder-length brown hair that looked like it had been blond when she was a child. In a rich, deep voice, she told me about her dharma talk to the parents, which I missed while observing the kids.
“The culture we live in, that we’re just steeped in now, is like a fast-moving river. There’s just so much momentum in it. It’s so easy to lose sight of what really matters for the sake of getting through the tremendous to-do list of every day,” she said as we settled, cross-legged, in the now-empty room. “Mindfulness and meditation is an opportunity, in river language, to pull into an eddy and rest and reset. It’s not hard. There’s eddies available everywhere, unlike most rivers. Anywhere you want one, there’s a space to pull out and connect with what really matters, what you really think, what you really want.”
Like Shannon, Kate found meditation at a crisis point in her life. Her daughter was four, and her high-energy son was one. Parenting was harder than she had ever imagined. “I really did not think I was going to survive parenting. I was, like, just desperate,” she said, recalling her frequent comment at the time: “I really love my kids, but I’m not particularly fond of parenting.”
She was a family therapist trained in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), an intensive treatment developed for people with suicidal thoughts and borderline personality disorder. One-quarter of the DBT curriculum centers on mindfulness, the teachings that attracted her the most. Driving by a Buddhist center one day, she spotted signs saying DHARMA FOR KIDS and MEDITATION FOR PARENTS and wheeled her car around to the parking lot. That’s how she discovered a meditation teacher who led her into starting her own parenting meditation class. “My life sort of took off from there,” she said.
Now a meditation teacher herself, she finds that regular immersion in mindfulness practice helps her to parent the way she wants. “It’s absolutely necessary for me to teach to keep my shit together,” she told me with a laugh. “If I am not anchored to it, it’s so easy to become automatic and distracted and controlling, and then I’m my mother. I’m my mother’s mother, and her mother, and that family of origin is coming out of me. Not that that was all bad, but it’s not what I want.”
Thinking of the kids’ experience at the Family Sangha, I commented on how hard it is for young children to quiet their minds and meditate. “What have you found works, especially with the kids who maybe need it most?” I asked her.
“What they need the most, they need the grownups to know how to do it,” Kate said. “It’s so tempting to want to deliver something to kids that we are not willing to do ourselves. Most important is people in their lives that are aware of it and attempting it themselves, and then modeling it for kids.”
EARLIER IN THE DAY OF the Family Sanga, we dropped off Frankie for lacrosse with some other tween girls. Nicholas, Shannon, Sam, and I took our bikes to a nearby trail that ran alongside the railroad tracks. After a short ride, we headed back to Nicholas’s truck.
“Sammer, slow down,” Shannon said as we neared a busy intersection. She put a firm hand on the shoulder of his bright yellow fleece. “Don’t go too close.” The four of us pulled up and stood with our bikes at the beginning of the crosswalk.
After an interminable wait, the light signaled that we could cross. Nicholas led the way, with Sam zooming eagerly behind. Shannon and I could see them approaching a side street that we’d all need to cross. The road contained no moving cars.
“Stop!” Shannon called, from half a block away. But Sam kept going, slowing with the slight uphill incline, until he reached the street. Nicholas was already across, standing astride his bike as he watched his son’s progress.
“Okay, Sam, go!” Nicholas said. Sam pumped down on the pedal just as a black SUV rounded the corner and headed toward him.
“Stop, Sam!” Shannon shrieked, pushing her bike into motion to catch up with her son. Her whole body was tense and rigid, with no sign of straw breathing or mindfulness.
By now, Sam had biked halfway across the street, but he was moving slowly since he had no momentum.
“Come on, Sam,” Nicholas encouraged him.
“Nicholas, mixed messages,” Shannon called.
The SUV moved slowly, but surely, toward the little figure on a bike. Sam paused, unsure.
“Keep going,” Nicholas said. The driver of the SUV brought the car to a halt and waved him across.
Sam resumed forward movement, reaching his dad on the sidewalk. As Shannon approached, she saw that she knew the SUV driver, and they chatted briefly as Nicholas put the bikes in the truck. Inside the truck, Sam said: “That was scary.”
“Nicholas, that was really mixed messages,” Shannon chided. Later, she confessed to me that she and her husband would’ve had words if I hadn’t been in the car with them. To me, Sam never seemed in real danger of being hit. I could understand Shannon’s concern, but felt it was anxiety driving the protective hand on his shoulder and her instruction to stop biking.
The incident came up later at a family dinner with Grandma Lois.
“I almost got hit by a car at the end,” Sam said. “I was scared.”
“He was almost hit by the car?” Frankie responded. She looked up from a plate of chicken stew and rice, eyes wide.
“I was driving and Daddy said cross and the car was coming.”
“I was telling him to stop and Daddy was telling him to go, so poor Sam was caught in the middle,” Shannon explained.
“I was braking and just rolling,” Sam said.
“And then I knew the driver,” Shannon interjected, and the conversation turned to how she knew the SUV driver.
“Dad, do you want to bike n
ow?” Sam said. Clearly, the experience hadn’t diminished his enthusiasm. Nicholas finished up his meal, and the two headed into the mild New Mexico evening for a ride at dusk.
I helped clear plates to the sink. I felt reassured. Even this family, committed to meditation, still struggles with in-the-moment mindfulness. A thought popped into my head: could my failure at meditation, which for years I had seen as a dead end, possibly be the beginning of success? I resolved to download some meditation apps that Shannon recommended and give it another try. I wouldn’t worry about my kids refusing to sit down to meditate with me. If I could become more calm and regulated, they would at least benefit from the modeling I provided.
AT MY KIDS’ ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, Halloween is a huge deal. The kids coordinate costumes and some dress in group costumes, like different-colored crayons or characters in a fairy tale or movie. One year a friend of mine asked for advice: her daughter and some friends were planning a group costume, but another girl had complained to her mom about being excluded. My friend was worried that her daughter, Tasha, was a bystander in letting the other girl—her onetime best friend—be left out.
The girls were already eleven years old, I said, and needed to work these issues out themselves. I suggested that my friend have an open conversation with Tasha about how the excluded girl would feel, without passing judgment or giving advice. In the end, Tasha might learn more from going along with the scenario and then feeling bad about the outcome, as opposed to having the mothers intervene. If Tasha felt no remorse, her mom would have learned that she needed to strengthen empathy in her tween.
My friend realized—as I continually do—that a significant part of her reaction to the scenario was fear of how the other moms in our community would judge Tasha—and by extension her mother—for her behavior. It is often hard, but we should try our best to lay down this burden. Kids are up against enough challenges without also having to serve as validation for their parents’ child-rearing skills.
The Good News About Bad Behavior Page 24