I’m stable enough to handle the possibility that my neighbors think I’m making bad parenting choices, because I know in my heart that those choices are right for my children. Even if I later change my mind about how to handle something with regard to my kids, the path I took to get there was valuable.
There are many things you cannot change: technology, competitive schooling, the structure of modern institutions. You can take small steps to insulate yourself from anxiety-provoking conversations about kids’ accomplishments, or to keep family life and mealtimes device-free. But ultimately, you’re stuck in this era. It may help to acknowledge that even if portable electronics and omnipresent media pose challenges, they also open opportunities for our kids’ generation. Indeed, for all the stress and anxiety that suffused the childhoods of young Millennials like my twenty-five-year-old stepdaughter, many of them are growing into creative, open-minded, social justice–oriented young adults.
If the situation you’re in makes you wonder if you’re “doing it wrong,” focus on the common threads in the Apprenticeship Model: strong adult-child connections, communication that uncovers the underlying causes of misbehavior, and training kids in cognitive, social and emotional, and essential life skills. We saw those three elements in Vicki Hoefle’s students in Vermont, the educators trained by Ross Greene in Maine, the classrooms playing the PAX game in Maryland and Columbus, and the PEP families of the Washington, DC, area. Remember the lessons of Chapter 3: empathy will help your children’s brains make the neural connections necessary for self-regulation, and they can’t learn or solve problems in the midst of an emotional outburst.
Even if you shift your parenting just slightly in the direction you want to head, you’re improving your children’s world. Celebrate those small changes and the resulting improvement in your family life. Don’t look for immediate proof that your discipline style is working. You may not see it until interactions go more smoothly a few days or weeks later.
We are the only parents our children have, so we must find the courage to be our best selves—and to forgive ourselves when we fall short. It’s worth the effort.
11
Create Lasting Change
THE GONZALEZ-MCCOY HOUSE SOUNDED LIKE the site of a World Wrestling match.
Thud. Shriek. Aaak!
Chloe Pearson, six, and Jesse Temchine, four, jumped from the third step of the staircase leading upstairs and landed in the hallway between the den and the dining room. They scrambled back up the stairs to jump down again. From the second floor, I could hear the distant screams and thumps of two nine-year-olds, Sawyer Pearson and Milo McCoy, and two eight-year-olds, Mariana Cullen and Rosa McCoy, engaged in who-knows-what violent pastime.
But no adults jumped up to intervene. The four couples chatted with each other about politics and Ayurvedic diets while they prepared curry cauliflower and pesto, Brussels sprouts, rice, and steak for this multifamily dinner party. A couple of dads started a fire in the den. Host Andy McCoy grilled on the patio, and the moms bustled around the kitchen and set the dining room table. Everyone was dressed casually but nice—in dark jeans, sweaters, and collared shirts.
From the beginning of the evening until the door closed on the last guest, all the adults displayed a high tolerance for loud and rough child play. They deftly redirected kids who were over the line, whether their own children or a friend’s, without yelling or scolding or lecturing. They tolerated chatter about “chicken doodle butt” and farts, while spotting potential meltdowns over Pokémon card trades and gently heading them off. Other than that, the eight kids—ages four to nine—were pretty much independent, roaming the three floors of the house at will.
All the parents were graduates of the PEP parenting curriculum. Andy and his wife, Ana Gonzalez, signed up for PEP 1 and coincidentally found that Jesse’s parents, Ben Temchine and Mikaela Seligman, were in the same class. Meanwhile, Camila and Colin were taking PEP 1 with me and Brian as their leaders. The four couples asked to be assigned to the same PEP 2 class, which Eric and Nicole Pearson joined after having different instructors in the first class. PEP 1 and PEP 2 each usually comprise eight weekly meetings.
Colin started encouraging other families at the kids’ school to check out PEP. As the room parent, he shared books and audio resources that he felt were useful. The parents I met said that being together reinforces the firm and kind strategies they learned and helps them stay on the paths they’ve charted that are different from what they experienced in the families in which they grew up.
“We love our friends. We cherish them dearly, and we really try to support them,” Andy told me. He grew up with an authoritarian father whom he loves but whose parenting he doesn’t want to emulate. “It’s a huge support network for the parents in terms of how they support their kids and all of us guys raised wrong. We just want to do things better.”
FOR DECADES, PERHAPS CENTURIES, HUMAN beings have tried to figure out what keeps us stuck in dysfunctional habits and how to effectively change behavior. Whether it’s weight loss, smoking cessation, or alcohol abstinence, researchers have found that social support not only increases the odds of successful behavior change but also makes people more likely to stick with their new behaviors for good. One study found that people lost more weight when meeting in a group to discuss strategies and set goals than when they met one-on-one with a counselor. Moreover, participants who formed buddy groups to continue after the end of the program were more likely to maintain their weight loss. These findings underlie the success of programs from Weight Watchers to Alcoholics Anonymous, all of which build on positive feedback from peers and the optimism about your own future that comes from seeing others successfully overcome challenges similar to your own.
Possibly the hardest part of successfully changing your parenting is sticking with it in a world that is busy and judgmental. When Maddie decided in third grade that she didn’t need to brush her thick, long hair before pulling it into a tangled ponytail, a chorus of objections rose in my throat. I could just imagine the judgment from other parents and her teachers. But I stopped myself from insisting—she deserved to have autonomy over her own body at least. The more freedom I gave her in areas like this, the more willing she became to cooperate with morning and evening routines and to help around the house.
As a buffer against that critical world, create your own community of support. Invite other parents to meet and discuss these ideas. You can use this book—or any of the books and other resources listed in the pages that follow—as the basis for a conversation. Get support from a tribe of like-minded parents, even if it means creating your own group. One reason Brian and I continue to volunteer as PEP leaders is to stay immersed in these ideas. It makes it harder to stray from the parenting path we’ve chosen in those moments when we’re tired or low on willpower. Writing this book truly kept me honest, as I often found myself writing about strategies that I put into action hours later.
Don’t expect that you’ll finish this book and leap into wholesale change. One review of seventy-seven parent education programs found that the most successful ones had parents practicing their new skills with their children over the course of many weeks. (Successful programs also focused on increasing positive parent-child interactions and teaching emotional communication skills.) Expect that it will take time to adopt these new habits. All the educators who implemented the models in this book received training and practiced with supervisors and peers while learning the new skills.
As PEP founder Linda Jessup put it to the group of parents in her PEP 3 class, learning to parent in a new way is “very much like potty training. First you just make a big mess, and it just feels normal, and you don’t even know you wet your diaper.
“Then you begin to recognize you’re wetting yourself. At that point, it’s too late to be proactive, but it’s the next step in learning to be potty-trained. The third step is you recognize the feeling that you have to go to the bathroom and you begin to head for the bathroom, and
at first you often don’t allow enough time, so you still make a mess, but you’re progressing and are ahead of the game. It’s very much the same with these well-established patterns. First we make a mess, but even being able to recognize it is a start. Then to be able to recognize it sooner and take action to not go down that path.”
One of my favorite tools for parents trying on a new style is the “mumble and walk away” technique described in Chapter 7. Perhaps your child says something oppositional, and you feel the heat of anger flare up inside you. You open your mouth—and remember you’ve decided not to yell. But you don’t know what to do instead. Give yourself breathing room to figure out your next steps. Pretend you hear a distant phone buzzing or that you left a pot on the stove. Mumble an excuse and exit the room quickly. Do whatever it takes to avoid falling into your old angry habits.
When I was a brand-new mom, I loved comparing notes in the mom-and-baby support group I attended weekly at a local birthing center. We shared tips for nursing, sleeping, and dealing with know-it-all relatives. But as my kids grew, I found comparisons with other people’s kids to be less useful. In fact, they sometimes fed my worst impulses.
Your children need to experiment, fail, and try again to find their path through life. So do you. Pay attention to whether certain friends or family members make you feel more competitive or anxious. Notice anything else that triggers unhelpful parenting behaviors in you. Maybe social media drives these impulses. Once you figure out your danger areas, limit your exposure.
Don’t feel you need to convince naysayers that your parenting choices are right for your child. You know that they are. You may want to come up with some inoffensive answers to their arguments in support of reward-punishment parenting. If they say, “It worked for me,” or, “I turned out okay,” you could mildly comment that times are different now, or that your kids have different needs. Or just smile and nod.
WHEN MADDIE WAS IN FOURTH grade, I started leading PEP parenting classes. I was heady with my new insight about the right way to parent and quick to diagnose instances of bad parenting around me. I had all the answers. Then, to my horror, Maddie’s fourth-grade teacher, Jaclyn Chernak Sandler, introduced a behavior-tracking app called Class Dojo. Sandler awarded each child Class Dojo points for desired behavior, like being on task or participating, and deducted points for unwanted actions, like missing homework. People in the positive parenting camp view Class Dojo as the spawn of the devil: a cold, manipulative way to control kids’ behavior that undermines intrinsic motivation. It’s like the PAX game seen through a funhouse mirror. Instead of behavior parameters set by the whole class in the context of a fun group activity, the teachers define good and bad unilaterally and single out children on an individual basis.
Unfortunately for me, my daughter didn’t read the research. She loved Class Dojo. She spent ages customizing her avatar, a cartoon monster with choices of color, hairstyle, and body parts. She eagerly checked her ranking, exulting at a green positive behavior point and despairing when she earned a red negative point. Over the course of the year I saw her often discouraged when she dipped into the red, but it didn’t dim her enthusiasm for the technology—or for Sandler, who became her favorite elementary school teacher. Maddie even asked us to set up a family Class Dojo so that the kids could earn points for doing chores, being loving, and the like.
Although I am not likely to recommend Class Dojo or begin rewarding behavior with prizes, this experience helps me keep the reward-punishment debate in perspective.
Fourth grade was filled with learning and excitement for my daughter because Sandler focused on the three pillars of the Apprenticeship Model: nurturing relationship, communicating, and building skills, within a structure of clear limits and routines. My daughter felt her teacher’s caring and interest every day and could always confide in her about a problem. She grew academically and in behavioral skills because of the mix of challenge with support. These pieces outweighed what research tells us is the negative aspect of reward-based behavior modification schemes.
The episode also helped me check both my judgment of other people’s parenting and my envy of their perfectly behaved children. For one thing, we don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. And for another, every parent creates a unique relationship with their children, shaped by the kids’ temperament, interests, and skills. As tempting as it may be to wish away our child’s negative qualities, they are here to stay. Rather, we should do our best to work with our child, view them in a positive light, and accept the hand we’ve been dealt. My kids may be more hyperactive than I was, and our dinner table more chaotic than my childhood mealtimes, but at least my kids will be more physically fit and will explore more diverse interests than I did in my youth.
Taking this view is known as a strength-based approach to parenting. Rather than fretting about our child’s differences—whether from temperament, skill level, or brain function—we can look for the positive side. A child with ADHD may grow up to be a creative genius or dynamic leader. The mixed martial arts champ and inspirational speaker Scott Sonnon—whose parents ignored doctors’ advice to institutionalize him because of his learning disabilities—says that doctors delivering a diagnosis of dyslexia should tell parents, “Congratulations! Your child is one hundred times more likely to become a millionaire entrepreneur.”
If we parents can’t envision a successful future for our children, they’ll be forced to find it on their own. This is a lonelier way to grow up, and a less effective way to parent—we’re supposed to enable our children to pursue their dreams, not limit them.
As we strive to imagine our kids’ future, it’s difficult not to look across the fence to our friends and neighbors. Comparing my children to other children used to send a pang of fear or regret through my chest, as I wondered: Should I have been doing Kumon with my kids every day after school? or, Why isn’t my daughter trying out for the soccer academy? Competitive parenting is responsible for many bad parenting choices, and we should all develop ways to keep it at bay.
Connecting with a group of like-minded parents is a good start—we can take turns reminding each other that our children thrive on independence and autonomy and that their worth isn’t defined by their grades or extracurricular triumphs. The PEP community serves that role for me and Brian, as does our neighborhood, where kids often play spontaneously in each other’s yards.
I tell my children that their job until age eighteen is to figure out who they are, what fuels their passion, and how they will contribute their unique skills to the world. My role is to support them in sorting that out, not to impose my own choices on them. As skilled as my daughter is with a soccer ball, I’m not going to force her to continue to play just because she’s talented and it may look good on her college application.
We can exercise our good judgment without being judgmental. When I see another parent sternly bossing around their children in public, my heart breaks a little. But I also remind myself that I don’t know the full story of that family. I can use the experience to inform how I want to parent without concluding that that parent is good or bad, or right or wrong.
Parenting in this way means consciously breaking with the norms in the culture around us. My mother sometimes wonders if we’re pampering our children by incorporating their opinions into our household routines. “The rest of the world won’t cater to them,” she argues.
But I see it as giving them a deep well of encouragement from which to draw strength to face the world. The Apprenticeship Model develops their self-advocacy and negotiating skills, as well as giving them a chance to live with the decisions they make. They are building the responsibility, perseverance, and flexibility of mind that will serve them well for success in adulthood. Children are remarkably adept at code-switching. They know just how far they can push their mother versus their father, versus their grandparents, versus their teachers, and they adjust their behavior accordingly.
VICKI HOEFLE GROUND TO A halt halfway throu
gh her second-session curriculum the evening I visited Burlington. The parents kept bringing up scenarios for her to solve. When is screen time a privilege that goes along with a responsibility (good) and when is it a bribe (bad)? How should they handle a child who lingers over dinnertime? The mom in the green raincoat raised her hand.
“Now what?” Hoefle said with mock impatience.
“We had an incident this weekend where my son had a playdate. They did something naughty,” the mom said.
“What did they do?”
“They wrote all over a door in markers.”
“At your house?”
“Yes.”
“How old are they?” Hoefle asked.
“Four.”
“What are you doing with markers where everybody can get them?”
“My six-year-old left them out and I didn’t realize they were there.”
“So they wrote on the door and that’s naughty because…”
“If you would write on paper or places other than your walls and doors,” the mom responded with a chuckle.
“But is it naughty? Do you think he was doing it to be bad?”
“I think he knows the difference between right and wrong,” she said.
“Okay. I just wanted to check. So what did you do?” Hoefle said.
“I had a talk with him,” she said.
The room exploded with laughter. They’d already gotten that Hoefle thinks parents talk and lecture too often. They were already forming a community.
“So what’s the problem? In one sentence, what’s the problem?”
The mom was stumped. She stuttered a bit.
“Failure to manage markers,” offered another mom.
The Good News About Bad Behavior Page 25