Aren't Happy, Successful Children Everyone's Dream?

In a thoughtful New York Times article, "Raising Successful Children," author and practicing psychologist Madeline Levine offers some poignant advice about striking the right balance between good practice and malpractice in parenting.  Levine makes a distinction between childhood 'happiness' and 'well-being,' and says that while most of us (I use 'us' because I'm a parent, too) would say we want our kids to be happy in life, what we really mean is we want them to be able cope with life's challenges with confidence.  "Life is difficult," Levine explains, "and the idea of keeping our children happy all the time -- that’s about over- parenting."  Thus, 'parenting malpractice' is any parenting action in which parents, in their efforts to protect their children from unpleasantness, cannot find the 'happy' median between being overly protective ... and overly permissive. 

 

The word 'malpractice' struck me as harsh.  There is something unethical or immoral sounding about the word; and, as I write this, I had to resist the urge to edit it out.  What won me over was the 'guilt' factor inherent in parenting.  Let's face it, when we make mistakes (which sometimes can be 'doozies' ), we do feel a little bit criminal, so maybe 'malpractice' is not really that far off the mark. 

 

One of the concepts that most resonated with me was this: “The happiest, most successful children have parents who do not do for them what they are capable of doing, or almost capable of doing, themselves.”  No doubt this would be true for the teachers in our schools, as well.  Even sadder, Levine points out, is when we do things for our kids that satisfy our own needs rather than the needs of our children themselves.  I'm reminded of the many years of dance classes I took my daughter to only to be told when she was 11 that, while she 'liked dancing OK, she hated performing.'  How can that be? I thought. She is an excellent dancer, and I love to watch her perform. 

Levine is firm that dealing with disappointment is essential to good health.  "The central task of growing up,” she says, “is to develop a sense of self that is autonomous, confident, and generally in accord with reality.”  Over-parenting, which includes unnecessary monitoring and control, actually diminishes our children's confidence and distorts the reality of life.

But, let's be honest, it's painful to watch when our children make mistakes.  I didn't want my own children to 'suffer' when they were left out of a birthday party or didn't start in a soccer game.  If they misunderstood the directions to an assignment and got a poor grade, I wanted a 'do-over' -- for them, of course!   But, Levine is right, it is in this "gray area of 'just beyond the comfortable' where resilience is born.”  She points out that kids need small daily risks and disappointments for growth to take place.  We knew this when they were little and first started to walk.  We didn't pick them up every time they fell and protect them from any future disappointments or bumps.  We actually were amazed by them and took pleasure in the sheer determination it took for them to try, try, and try again. 

Levine claims if you can't stand to see your child cry, you got into the wrong business.   Kids need the opportunity for ‘successful failures' -- failures they can live with and grow from. "To shield them," Levine writes, "to deprive them of those challenges is to deprive them of the tools they will need to handle the inevitable, difficult, challenging and sometimes devastating demands of life.”  Better to remember the lessons of infancy, to allow them to resolve it themselves, and to amaze us with their resiliency as they once did.

There is a difference, Levine points out, between top-down parenting which focused on clear expectations...  and parental behavior which is controlling.  It's OK to insist that a child turn off the television and finish the math homework.  It's not OK to tell a child what to feel and how to resolve that feeling.  Pushing, bribing, probing, implanting, which always come the outside, (i.e. from the parent) are malpractice because "the child never has the opportunity to craft an inside.”

“A loving parent is warm, willing to set limits and unwilling to breach a child’s psychological boundaries by invoking shame or guilt,” Levine concludes. It’s also vital that parents set a good example in their own lives. “One of the most important things we do for our children is to present them with a version of adult life that is appealing and worth striving for.”

 

“RaisingSuccessful Children” by Madeline Levine in TheNew York Times, and "Teach Your Children Well': An Interview With Psychologist and Author Madeline Levine" in The Huffington Post.