Common Sense Parenting

People ask me for advice about the crap their kids are doing, you know, on account of me being a therapist and all. 🤣

I often tell parents—I’m an expert in child development BUT you are the expert on your child. I can speak in generalities, my experience, the research, or current best practices, but YOU are the expert on your child.

Oddly people don’t always want to hear that. They think there’s a quick fix and hand off their child, thinking an hour a week for a few weeks will do it. That is so not how it works.

Sometimes it takes saying, “it took years for this problem to develop. It’s not going away in a few hours of treatment.”

As parents, we largely learned one of two ways how to parent:

1. Parenting like our parents

2. Deliberately parenting unlike our parents.

But I use a third strategy—the best of both worlds—I try to be loving, nurturing, and fun, (take the best things from my parents), while also remembering the stuff my parents did that I didn’t like, and not doing that.

Sometimes we make things too complicated. Yes, kids are not adults and we shouldn’t expect them to think, act, or feel like adults. We forget though that we can figure kids out, if we really tune into what they might be trying to tell us—if we tap into empathy.

Have you ever had the experience of telling a friend you were upset about something and they said something like, “oh that’s not so bad.” Or, “look on the bright side (and then xyz),” or they tried to jump right in and solve your problem, thinking they know what’s best for you? Adults rarely like that kind of support, yet we do that to kids all of the time. What kids really want is what adults want—to be heard and validated.

Being a parent is a lot like being a detective, except with little poop and vomit machines. Kids can’t or won’t TELL us what’s wrong, or if they do, it’ll be the most ridiculous thing-like there’s no way you’re crying because I cut your sandwich in squares instead of rectangles. Even teens don’t always know why they feel the way they feel (hell, many adults don’t either). If we tune into how we might feel in that situation, it starts to get easier. If we ask ourselves about their recent sleep, eating, health, changes in routine, or bigger life changes, school stress, whatever, we can start to really understand what’s underneath the behavior.

I took my oldest to the pediatrician in middle school because he was having vomiting and diarrhea fairly often. The doctor (smartly) asked—does this happen more during the week or on the weekends? It did indeed happen more during the week (which wasn’t shocking since there were five week days vs two weekend days), but he wanted to point out that we had to start connecting the dots. Pretty soon after that, the pattern became clear—my son would experience severe stomach upset within 24-48 hours of something happening, usually at school. As soon as I pointed out his body’s reaction to stress (much like my own, actually), his symptoms began improving. One time I actually said, “what happened yesterday or the day before?” His response, “my girlfriend broke up with me.”

Now some things aren’t that easy to fix. Children with ADHD or anxiety often need more than us just tuning in (although w the latter, one parent often also has anxiety, and doing the work to self-regulate as a parent is critical).

I won’t go into all of that here. This isn’t to offer treatment advice; it’s more just general guidelines.

I think the most important thing for parents to remember is we really are their best teachers and there’s no better way than through congruency with our actions and words, to help them learn. We have to constantly model who we want our kids to be.

Now for me, I want my kids to be funny (they aren’t that smart, so I need to make sure they are entertaining😜). I use humor a lot, as well as something I call systematic desensitization. My middle son calls it “cringy.” And I am cringy—I talk about embarrassing, awkward things that are hard for them. In part, because I find it hilarious, but mostly because I’m literally trying to train them to communicate hard things to me. So when the time comes to communicate hard things, they won’t hide and lie. I’m “desensitizing” them by repeatedly exposing them to uncomfortable topics.

I also try to model being authentic, which wasn’t always easy for me, especially when I was more caught up in the Jonses life. My ex husband cared more about how things seemed and less about how they were. More about what we had and less about who we were. I had to really work to undo that after my divorce.

One way I did that with my youngest, who at 13, still seemed very caught up in what people thought and was pretty shy, was something I called “Coaching Fearlessness.” We went to the beach one weekend for lacrosse, and I told him that while we were there, where no one really knew us, I was going to prove to him that no one cares what you are doing as much as we think.

So we brainstormed (more me than him), funny things to do. I ran on the beach in a dress, and deliberately fell flat on my face, twice, in front of a beach full of people. I also stuck toilet paper to my shoe (he said I could not put it in the back of my pants like I wanted), and walked around a packed restaurant.

He learned that no one even noticed me falling. People didn’t even look up. He also saw several people deliberately step on the toilet paper (much to my dismay), to get it off of my shoe (people being kind/helping).

I honestly can’t say whether that directly helped or not but over time, as I explained that this is who I am, and while I will be mindful if I’m embarrassing you, I’m not changing who I am to fit in with the crowd. I was modeling and explaining the whys of being myself, hoping it would rub off on him too.

And you know what else my boys saw? How much people responded to my realness. How much their friends would talk to me. How much people opened up to me instead of shunning me.

Not everyone will get it and it’s okay. My point is that we have to use ourselves very intentionally when we parent. Our actions/behavior are really how our kids learn. And our words better match, else we are creating a confusing, false “reality” for our kids that over time they will push back against.

We don’t need to be perfect. And we won’t be. But guess what? When we f*ck up, we get the opportunity to model owning our mistakes, apologizing, and reconnecting with our kids. Yep, even our mistakes are a great way to teach our children skills.

I basically tell the kids I treat that I’m like a coach—the way they have a coach teach them how to dribble a ball or swim breast stroke, but I teach skills to stay calm and talk about hard things.

Parents really are their kids best teachers. We have the power to build most of the skills our kids need to be the people we want them to be. We just need a vision for that. And that comes from knowing ourselves, and knowing the values we want them to have, fundamentally.

And an ability to see through a larger lens in understanding that what we do today shapes who they become later in life.

I am sad as I type this because I am almost finished this journey of raising them. I have kept my vision clear—focusing more on them being happy, hardworking, kind people, and less on “successes” like good grades.

Only time will really tell how well this worked out for them.

But I’m betting on them. And me.

Hugs,

Laurie