I am not the perfect parent, but I have learned a lot from parenting books

When my son was born, I read some books to help me understand his physical needs, e.g. swaddling, healthy sleep, fevers, teething etc. So that I could keep him safe. I did not really think about his mental health needs e.g. emotional growth, taking brain breaks. I applied the same rule of thumb to my own life, I looked after my body through exercise and weight management but neglected my soul. I did not meditate or even take downtime at the weekends or on vacation. When my son was diagnosed on the autism spectrum and with low self esteem and mild depression, the parent coach I had hired to help me communicate suggested we have mental health days, days where there were no rules to follow and total freedom to choose. I had never considered the importance of this, nor the freedom it could bring me not to be the rule enforcer for the day. I needed the break too, and I realized that something in my soul was not right. I did not like myself and I couldn’t quite pinpoint why. I had always had body image concerns but this was something new. I realized I did not like how I parented, the person it made me become. I was parenting as an authoritarian parent, as I had been parented. My tools were control, criticism, and shame. I hated myself when I wielded them because I knew they were harmful, from personal experience. But I had not taken the time to learn about a different way to parent. I knew this was not the parent I wanted to be. 

The first book I read was not a parenting book. And it was recommended to me by a friend who was trying to help me have a different mindset about my work. This first book that taught me about parenting was Carol Dweck’s Mindset. It taught me that all the fixed beliefs my parents had passed down to me were not helpful; you’re not smart, you’re bad at math, you can’t spell, if you achieve something out of hard work it doesn’t count. Mindset taught me that talent is seldom enough, everyone who succeeds also works hard. 

“We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.”

Mindset taught me that life was not black and white. I believed I was a bad listener. It taught me that sometimes I was good at listening. It made me realize that I had a very fixed mindset and that my parents had a very fixed mindset about me. I realized I could learn to be a different person, my faults were not fixed personality traits I could not change. I could learn to be compassionate as well as critical. I started listening out for specific words like “never, always, everyone”. These are really good cues to feeling like everything is wrong, as opposed to a specific circumstance. I also started to notice when I was good at listening, and when I struggled to listen. If I was doing something I would ask the kids to wait one second so that I could finish and turn my full attention to them. I also started to make sure when I was talking to them I had eye contact and gave them the best opportunity to demonstrate that they could listen when I had their full attention.

Nora McInerny’s book No Happy Endings also brought home the point, beyond being on a continuum of feelings or actions, you could also have complex dichotomous feelings in a single moment; you could be happy AND sad. Seeing the world in this more fluid and complex way was so reassuring to me. There was hope. I could change. But I also saw the damage I was doing to my kids from being authoritarian and giving them inflexible rules and fixed labels. In particular, Brene Brown’s Imperfect Parenting made me realize that labeling my kids as I had been labeled was not helpful. It did not highlight the behavior they were doing that they could change, instead it labeled them as a person who could not. I was a behavior change scientist. Behaviors I could change. I just needed to know what to do differently. I started to catch when I labeled the kids or they labeled each other. It was shocking to notice how often we do use labels and how they are often unkind. “Don’t be a baby”, “Don’t be mean”. The example Brene Brown provided of her daughter resonated with my struggles with my daughter I learned to turn, “you’re messy” into “you are making a mess with this glitter”. The specificity in the description allows you to see what you can do differently. Being messy just makes you feel like giving up on yourself.

I realized before I found the parent who I wanted to be, I still needed to let go of the parent I had defaulted to being. I read The Conscious Parent by Shefali Tsbary. Transforming Ourselves, Empowering our Children. It helped me see that the cycle of adopting your parents’ values and attitudes to parenting was an unconscious one.

 “When you parent, it’s crucial you realize you aren’t raising a “mini me,” but a spirit throbbing with its own signature. “

I knew I had different values from my parents. I did not care about appearances or material wealth. But I could see that my parents had parented like their parents and passed on their concerns about societal expectations. One time I pointed out to my mom that my daughter was definitely seen and heard. I tried to say kindly how being seen and not heard was not particularly empowering. Her response was: “We had it worse as kids”. She could not see beyond her own experience of being parented.

“It’s no surprise we fail to tune into our children’s essence. How can we listen to them, when so many of us barely listen to ourselves? How can we feel their spirit and hear the beat of their heart if we can’t do this in our own life?”

I was ready, I wanted to make thoughtful decisions about my parenting.  What could I do? A key principle in The Conscious Parent is that it is not your job as a parent to make your child into something. In my case I wanted to make my kids ‘better’. I did not have a fixed goal like an A student. But in having the goal of ‘better’ 1) I was communicating that they were not enough 2) it was unreachable as the goal posts always moved. This was how I treated myself, always trying to be better. It was exhausting. So instead of trying to make them into something, the book tells you to reflect back to your child who they already are. Show in your eyes and reaction to them that they are loved, that they are funny, that they are interesting, and that they ask amazing questions. Show them that they already have inside everything they need to be who they want to be. I realized that not only had I been ‘not heard’ as a child, I was also ‘not seen’. My parents had never reflected back to me who I wanted to be. They imposed their expectations and fixed way of thinking and showed me I did not fit their mold and was not enough.

This advice resonated with advice I received from a family therapist. Show your child that they already are who they want to be. We did a dream exercise: what do you love, what would you like to do more of, how might this translate into a career? My son picked writing, comics and video game coding. So then we looked up all the ways kids could learn about these things now. He didn’t have to wait. He could do a summer writing camp. He could watch Comicon online (thank you Covid!). He could download some coding software and learn from you tube videos. He already was who he wanted to be. He chose. He decided how. I just gave him the framework to use to find out what he wanted. This was so much easier than being responsible for making him ‘better’. My job was to let him see his own power. What a relief.

Next I read: The Book You Wish Your Parents had Read by Philippa Perry (a fellow Brit). Of course this title appealed to me! The book taught me one of the most important lessons I have learned. You need to let your child express their emotions. 

“If you treat your child's sadness, anger and fears not as negatives to be corrected but as opportunities to learn more about them and to connect with them, then you will deepen your bond with them.”

Emotions help the child understand what they need. When they understand what they need, they can ask for what they want. This was so mind blowing for me because I had not been allowed to express my emotions which meant as an adult I suppressed them. When I burned out, I had to ask myself what do I want now? I had no idea. I realized I had been suppressing my emotions and needs and was totally rudderless. I learned a lot more about emotions from Karla McLaren’s The Language of Emotions. So now I can help my kids not only by acknowledging their emotions and giving them time to process them, but by asking what might the emotions be telling us, what might we need, what do you want to do with them?  In learning to express their emotions, they learn to express themselves. Plus, I remind my daughter when she has butterflies in her stomach that it is scary AND exciting. Sometimes I catch myself trying to problem solve when my daughter is sad, instead of just saying ‘it’s ok to be sad’. I also have to remind my husband to pause and let the kids express their emotions before jumping in to problem solve.

How to Raise an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims was an important book for me. Not only did it remind me not to be my kids’ personal assistant and to teach my kids practical skills like cleaning and cooking.  

“ If we want our kids to have a shot at making it in the world as eighteen-year-olds, without the umbilical cord of the cell phone being their go-to solution in all manner of things, they’re going to need a set of basic life skills.”

It made me think about parenting in the long term. The book points out that your child will not be a child for long. Most of the relationship you will have with them will be as an adult. So you really want to set your relationship up to succeed in the long term, to be the sort of relationship you would want to have adult-to-adult. This resonated with me because I feel like my parents still criticize me like I was a child. A big tenant of parenting for me is the relationship. I might have to compromise on my expectations or rules in order to have a more open relationship. And the goal is for my kids to be able to come and tell me anything, anytime. They can’t fear punishment or shame. Shame I was shifting, that was about how I treated them, not labelling them for one. And how we responded to mistakes. 

“When children aren’t given the space to struggle through things on their own, they don’t learn to problem solve very well. They don’t learn to be confident in their own abilities, and it can affect their self-esteem. The other problem with never having to struggle is that you never experience failure and can develop an overwhelming fear of failure and of disappointing others. Both the low self-confidence and the fear of failure can lead to depression or anxiety”

We put a mistake jar on the dinner table. We celebrated mistakes. I started to model making mistakes and saying sorry i.e. owning them, or making mistakes and saying ‘never mind’. I still sometimes catch myself beating myself up for mistakes, forgetting the milk at the grocery store, so this is still what my kids will pick up on. I am trying to recognize those times and say, ‘oh well’. Modeling experimenting is also helpful. Let’s try this and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, we’ll have learned and know to try something else. Often when my kids get stuck on something I remind them to try something else. Think about what they have already done and try something different this time. Experiment with changing something up. When they are struggling with a computer task I ask ‘what have you tried so far, have you tried something really different to solve the problem’. Recently my daughter challenged me to make a birthday cake with a camping theme. We experimented with the flames, melting candy in the oven. The first time it burned so we adjusted the timing. I was modeling experimenting. 

But I did not know how to move away from fear of punishments. There had to be consequences, right? I learned about the difference between punishments and consequences from Positive Discipline by Jane Nelson.

“Punishment does work in that it usually stops misbehavior immediately. The long-term results of punishment are that children usually adopt one or all of the Four R’s of Punishment: Resentment—“This is unfair. I can’t trust adults.” Revenge—“They are winning now, but I’ll get even.” Rebellion—“I’ll do just the opposite to prove I don’t have to do it their way.” Retreat: Sneakiness—“I won’t get caught next time.” Reduced self-esteem—“I am a bad person.””

My kids’ school follows this curriculum, so the expectation is to reflect the same beliefs at home. It really helps to have this support. The main lessons I learned here were 1) Have regular family meetings. Everybody gets to put issues on the agenda, everyone takes turns running the meeting, so no one is ‘in control’, and we talk about the fun things we want to plan for and the problems we are encountering. We brainstorm together about solutions. All ideas are good. Then we vote on which solution we think will work. We post it on the wall and next time the problem comes up, instead of refereeing I can point to the solution that the kids already agreed to. If it is not working, we put it on the agenda and we brainstorm again. Not only does this model problem solving, but it also means I don’t have to solve every problem which is a great relief! And I don’t have to intervene and referee, especially when I have missed half the game and don’t know the rules. And it means that you don’t have to deal with problems in the moment. It gives everyone time to cool off. We have had to take many attempts at these solutions, but for the most part they work really well. 2) As part of the problem solving you also talk about consequences, what will help us stick with the behavior, what will motivate us? One difference between punishments and consequences is the outcome is tied to the behavior. For example, I tried to punish my daughter for not keeping her room tidy by saying she could not do art. I soon saw the problem with this, partly because my daughter expressed how important art was to her as a stress reliever. I realized 1) art had nothing to do with her room 2) she needed help staying organized and so I could support her by buying a new storage system and helping her label the boxes, so she knew where all her knickknacks belonged! Instead of blaming her for being untidy I thought about how I could help her to be tidy. This is partly how consequences work; you know them ahead of time and they guide you to do the right thing.

The best example of consequences that have worked is with my son and pornography. The first time it happened I listened to various podcasts to work out how to handle it. I told my son we would talk about it later. I needed time to prepare. Then I created a list of things to talk about: normal sexual desires, addiction, viruses (computer and human), real relationships, respecting women, etc. I let my son see the list so he knew that the conversation might take a while. He needed to be prepared to take time to discuss this. And I let him choose where to start. We did not shame him. We let him know the internet made it hard for him to resist, and it was our job to help reduce those temptations with technical constraints, rules about safe use, and if necessary, time without the temptation (the devices) at all. We discussed things he could do instead that would help him manage his feelings. We had a few false starts but eventually we had a list of clear consequences pinned to the wall of his cupboard. So, when it happened again we were able to point to the rules and consequences and say this is what happens. But what I realized was that although my son knew about the consequences, he had pinned them in his cupboard. He was in denial about them. He had not used them to help him make the right decision. So next I taught him about making decisions, about weighing the pros and cons, and we included in those cons, the way he felt when he didn’t have access to his devices. I expect this won’t be the last time we deal with it. But it was an opportunity for us to talk and remind our son, he will not be punished, and that his needs are important, whatever they are.

Back to mind set. Positive Discipline also promotes a growth mindset. A growth mind set is when you believe you can learn. I believed I could learn lots of things, I had proved that through my PhD and research. So when my daughter wails ‘I can’t do it’, instead of my parents admonishing me for being a defeatist, I say ‘not yet’. “You haven’t learned it yet, but I trust you will.” But I didn’t necessarily believe I was in control of being a different person, I thought that part of me was fixed. Showing my kids that they are not a fixed label, rather a set of behaviors, helps them realize that they are in control, they can change their behaviors and even change their thoughts about a behavior. That is still a work in progress getting them to recognize their negative thoughts as passing opinions that might not even be the truth. I think it’s easier to start with the emotions in kids. They can recognize those more.

I think an important part of a growth mindset and parenting is that fixed rules do not teach you how to learn. I wanted to teach my kids how to cope, how to receive feedback, how to develop emotional awareness, how to be open minded and curious. I wanted my kids to have real life skills. To learn through mistakes, to learn to question the rules, to learn to break them and show that they didn’t need rules, they were responsible for their behavior already. When I learned that my kids testing the rules was a good sign, I started to soften. And then when Covid hit, so many expectations went out the window entirely. 

I am still learning to let go of being the perfect parent. That despite all I have learned I still feel like a bad mom at times and still fear I am not doing enough. My parent coach explained that I don’t like being a parent because I dread what I will say to myself about my parenting. However, all the lessons I have learned from these books are helping me learn to be the parent I want to be. They provide tips for how to develop a parenting philosophy and everyday practice. I feel each book adds a tool to my box. And as my children grow that box will also grow and develop. And luckily, there are always new books on parenting. Next on my reading list is Hunt, Gather, Parent. I can’t wait!