Hate Me Now, Thank Me Later: How to raise your kid with love and limits

—Bobbi Brown, cosmetics guru

We can’t farm out parenting to others, or to activities and electronic distractions. Our kids need to feel our real presence in their little lives. You don’t get a pass on this.

“Parenting cannot be outsourced.”

—Marc Weissbluth, MD, pediatrician and author

On the first day of elementary school, Ray Michaud, a principal for thirty-six years, begins his speech to the parents: “As much as possible, clear your calendar. These are special, formative years; these are the years your kids want to be with you. Trust me; you won’t want to miss them, they don’t come back.”

These are the years when your kids ask for one more bedtime story, for one more moment of watching them color, for you to stay in their room and snuggle one minute longer. Do.

“So here are the things I do ... things that don’t come naturally to me ... things I could easily take a pass on, but I don’t. I do these things—not because I enjoy them—but because someone very important to me does....

“I watch her lip-synch Taylor Swift music videos—not because I like to hear ‘We are Never Ever Getting Back Together’ ten bazillion times—but because the facial expressions she makes are indescribable, and I want to remember them when I am eighty years old.”

—Rachel Macy Stafford, handsfreemama.com (http://handsfreemama.com)

In interview after interview, parents talked about how spending time makes their children feel so loved. People carry with them always the small, daily acts of love. A few extras go a long way, too.

“I was a single mum, exhausted, working full-time and raising my two kids. It was a cold winter’s night, and I had just read the story Owl Moon to my daughter.

“ ‘How come we never go out at night owling?’ she asked.

“What went through my mind was that I am exhausted and could barely make it through reading a story about owling, let alone go out on a cold winter’s night, but I decided to make a grand mummy gesture. I bundled my kids up in their winter clothes and took them in the car to chase the moon. We drove about twenty minutes until we found an open field and parked. We sat in the car, staring at the moon.

“I will never forget the feeling of being with my kids, bundled up together and gazing at the starry sky. In retrospect, I wish I had spent more nights chasing the moon.”

—Mother of two

The Strength of the Bond

1. You want to inspire and teach, not punish or shame.

2. Take a parental time-out. Put some space in between what’s annoying you and your response.

3. Consequences teach accountability.

4. Calm, clear, consistent limits create an alliance. Setting limits thoughtfully is a way to love your child.

5. Discipline teaches children self-discipline.

6. Show empathy for your child’s struggle. Empathy defuses big emotions. Remember you are on the same team, working together to grow a great child.

7. When you are calm, you teach your children that they, too, can regulate their emotions—you show them how. That grows a more resilient brain.

8. Choose language with care. Shaming words are toxic and erode children’s self-confidence and self-worth.

9. How you talk to your kids is how your kids will talk to themselves. You are the voice in their heads.

10. Childhood’s greatest legacy is how we felt loved.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_9ff9b948-0ce9-57a7-9385-4ff702dbd931)

Look, No Hands! (#ulink_9ff9b948-0ce9-57a7-9385-4ff702dbd931)

At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experiences of life; the thorns should never be plucked from the roses.

—Ellen Key, teacher and author

The packaging instructions for childhood should read: “Handle with care,” not “Fragile, will break.”

Now that we’ve established the importance of making a deep connection, we have to remember to let our children discover their independence. Kids gain so much when they learn to do things for themselves.

Back in the day, parents would sit on the park bench while their kids played. Today you will commonly see parents on the play structure showing their kids how to play, or worse yet, fighting their kids’ battles. While many parents aren’t disciplining when they should, too many parents are intervening when they shouldn’t.

Two four-year-old boys were on the swings, their mums pushing from behind. Max began to cry, saying that he did not like the end swing; he wanted the middle swing. Will eyed him curiously but kept pumping his legs. Max began screaming, “I want the middle swing!” As the noise became more disruptive, and the parent posse grew restless, Max’s mum jumped in. But instead of addressing her child, she glared at Will’s mum and snapped, “You can see that my son wants the middle swing. Can your son get off?”

Seriously? This woman’s judgment was clouded by her inability to let her child experience even a modicum of disappointment. Not letting a kid suffer is not about the child’s growth or development. It is actually about alleviating a parent’s anxiety.

The mum’s rant continued: “My child is so upset, I need your son to get off the middle swing.” Clearly a parenting low moment, surreal in feel, but all too common today. No, this is not the twilight zone; this is a courtside seat at the crazy game of extreme parenting. Any referee watching parents today would constantly be yelling “Interference!” Gone are the days when mums had neither careers nor nannies, when kids played kick the can in the street and came home when the sun went down. Mums could not attend to every need and desire—and didn’t. They did not hover, they did not overanalyze. Today’s mothers vowed to be different.

Our intentions were honorable: we wanted to be more attentive to our kids than our parents had been to us. We wanted their feelings to be more central than ours had been to our parents. But don’t you think we’ve gone a little overboard? We are a generation of pleaser parents, being pushed around by our own kids. The previous generation of parents was clear about the family hierarchy: I am the parent; you are the child. They wanted to be respected, whereas today’s parents want to be loved. Almost the way someone romances a mate, hoping to earn affection, today’s parents are doing somersaults to court their own kids. It’s dizzying.

“Honor thy father and mother” makes good sense—always has, always will. What past generations were missing was a respect for the child. That’s the piece that needed to be added. But instead of instilling mutual respect, we abandoned respect for parents. We have somehow confused honoring children’s feelings with giving in to their every whim.

In addition, our good intentions have morphed into intrusion, hyperconcern, and one gigantic piece of bubble wrap. We are insulating against scrapes that haven’t yet occurred.

It’s insidious. Pick up a baby catalog and check out the real gadgets sold to baby-proof the natural flow of child development: baby knee pads, toddler helmets, and the like. Have we forgotten that children come preassembled? Toddlers’ brains have natural helmets called skulls. Their tiny bodies have tons of extra padding in the form of chunky, delicious thighs. When falling does occur, they’re covered. Isn’t nature clever? Of course, as your child ages and starts climbing on bicycles and skateboards, helmets will become necessary. But don’t worry about a few bumps and bruises when kids are toddling around.

Bruised knees and bruised feelings let children learn how to deal with life’s inevitable pain. Learning from adversity is what eventually makes an adult of a child. Kids need to learn to climb little fences, so when they grow up they can scale the big ones. Children must learn to trust themselves to navigate the world.

But how can they do this if their parents keep being a human GPS? Many mothers I interviewed reported seeing mums in the sandbox taking a shovel back when one was grabbed out of their kid’s hands—obliterating all opportunities for the children to learn how to work it out on their own. Who is to blame, the kids themselves? Clearly not!

Let’s go back to basics and take our cue from the mother of all mothers: Mother Nature. If a mother hen tries to crack the eggshell to help her baby out, the chick dies.

Here lies a major problem with parenting today: our hovering and overinvolvement are preventing our kids from fully hatching. Just as the hen has to let the chick make its own way out of the shell, parents have to let their kids walk around without trying to prevent every fall. Our own worries and fears are wreaking havoc on our parenting—and on our children. Parents are trying to take the sharp edges out of their kids’ lives. But part of life is negotiating the edge. When we remove it, we deprive children of the opportunity to practice assessing and managing risk. Pain is instructive. When kids feel physical pain, they learn to avoid dangers.

Overprotection creates psychological fragility. And if you treat children like they are fragile, they will stay fragile for life.

“Don’t treat me like a feather that needs to be protected in the world!”

—Jackson, ten

That little boy is so right. Give children a little leeway. Don’t panic if they fall, physically or metaphorically. Failure, like bumps and bruises, lets children learn from their mistakes. Many of our greatest legends found their footing in failure.

Let’s Play Jeopardy with Some Famous Failures

From North Carolina, six foot six, cut from his high school basketball team. He has said: “I have missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I have lost almost three hundred games. ... I have failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”