Happy Helicoptering

By Carol Maxym Ph.D.

Or, what do you get out of helicoptering?

I've just asked you a really hard question.  What do you get out of helicoptering?  Probably your first reaction will be to begin to list all the reasons why you must helicopter.  Slow down, please.  Read on and give yourself a chance to think it through in a different way.

Professional Mothering is the term I've coined to describe one of the main ways modern moms get caught in helicoptering  

In your job anticipating problems is a good thing.  Solving problems immediately is a very good thing.  Preventing problems adds real value to you as an employee or as a professional.  Having things well organized—another plus in the working world.  Tying up all the lose ends—another asset.  Rescuing your boss from a giant gaffe—big time good in the professional world.
Here’s the rub:  Doing all those things as a mother?  Yeah, no.  Not helpful.  Really.

There are so many “soccer moms” today who have a great education, many years of professional success before deciding to become moms.  Please don’t take this the wrong way, moms, but there are certainly ways, times when being a mom is very boring.  Very unstimulating.  You wonder what that great education was for.  I remember that very well from my days as a young mother.  Mothering just isn't always intellectually stimulating,  Mothering often isn't exciting.  Mothering rarely provides a sense of immediate success or reward—the kind that does occur in the work world.  Frankly, it’s seldom that anyone really thanks you (certainly not your toddler who cannot understand) or pays real and authentic tribute to what you do all day.

There is no respite from mothering.  You are on duty 24/7 for years and years.
So, mothers, let’s face it:  You look for something to do, something stimulating, something you can really sink your teeth into.  You are trying to bring into your mothering world the parts of your professional world that you really liked, that kept you stimulated.  Understandable.  The question is more if it is useful.

Helicoptering is one of the ways to feel busy, useful, important.  The more you helicopter, the more your child [appears to] needs you, so the more you have to do.  I mean, if he’s forgotten his lunch, well, you must take it to him.  Same goes for homework.  And what about the project for science?  Getting her ready for camp—certainly she can’t pack her own things.  She wouldn't know how.
Here’s the deal:  Your child will never learn how to be independent and highly functional if you helicopter.  As you child feels less than competent because he/she isn't as competent as you are (well, of course—you are an adult, you child is…well, a child), anxiety can take hold because your child cannot feel competent to do whatever the task, remember what needs to be remembered, take care of whatever needs to be taken care of.

So, I’ll be really blunt:  Helicoptering is selfish and it isn't good mothering (or fathering).

Think about it.

Plain Speak

By: Carol Maxym, Ph.D.

Please, please read this article. It’s short and well-written and really important.

Last week I caught just part of a radio discussion about “new research” that demonstrates how the context of one’s life matters in how one acts, reacts, etc., that connections among people and communities effects how one lives in the world. Well, my first reaction was a sort of “duh?”  I mean who didn’t know that. Then I thought for a moment more and realized that as we have created a [false] idea that behavior problems, “mental health” issues, depression, anxiety, bi-polar “disorder” –well, really all the so-called disorders, are intrinsic to the individual, we have created an illusion that we all act and react in the vacuum of ourselves and some rather loosely defined neurotransmitters that create a so-called chemical imbalance (for which there is zero real data, but it’s been a fabulously successful marketing tool) and that drive our feelings, emotions, attitudes, behavior, social behavior, and our being in the world.

Ok, so, really, let’s get serious.  Do you really—from your own life experience—believe that life, situations in life have no effect on how you feel emotionally, how you act and react?  I mean, anecdotally from your life and the lives of those you know (and forgetting all the advertising hype you’ve heard), do you really believe that what happens in your life is less important than neurotransmitters in how you feel.  I mean does this make sense?  One day your lover tells you he doesn’t ever want to hear from you and somehow simultaneously your chemical imbalance takes over and you feel depressed?  Or your son brings home a report card full of Fs, but it’s all about chemical imbalance?  And, your reaction is also just those neurotransmitters? 

Life happens, and we all act and react in ways we’ve learned.  If you come from a family where difficulties were met with anxiety, probably you learned to react with anxiety.  It isn’t about genetic material that makes your neurotransmitters fire, blah, blah, blah.  Think of this:  Schools have cultures.  In some schools, being “cool” means that you work really hard academically. In others it means being particularly kind.  Etc., etc.  Corporate cultures are exactly the same. So, yes and obviously, we do mimic the culture in which we live. It isn’t your neurotransmitters that are deciding to be kind or smart or snarky or depressed or anxious. It’s your life, your world, your experience and how you interpret your life and world and experience. 

Let’s not pretend that the brain has nothing to do with how we feel and emote and act and react. Let’s also not pretend that very much is known about that. Let’s free ourselves from the tiny, simplistic, false world or diagnosis of disorders. 

Think about it. Think how much richer your life could be minus disorders. Think about starting the discussion about your feelings not stopping it with a foolish disorder diagnosis.

     

Pivoting Round Y2K

By: Carol Maxym Ph.D.

One of my first thoughts this morning upon really going back to work after the long holiday break was that we are equidistant in time from 2000 as we were in 1986.  I am quite certain I didn’t think about that on January 5, 1986.  Reagan was President, no one had a computer or cell phone.  No one had imagined the Internet, Blogs, e-mail…. Kids abused drugs but not really prescription drugs.  Kids weren’t really being diagnosed with all sorts of diseases, disorders, and disabilities.  Hardly anyone took psychotropic medications.  Life was slower, different, more thoughtful—or am I just becoming old and nostalgic?  “Back in the good old days…”  We had less communication but perhaps better communication. We dressed with more care, eating habits had not deteriorated as much as they have now.   People wrote letters to each other, and letters were more thoughtful than e-mails.

But I do sound like an aging complainer….or do I?  I worry about that often because there is so much in the growing-up world that frightens me, disturbs me.  Sometimes I think the main value of residential treatment for kids is taking them out of their modern, highly-stimulated world.  What do you think?  Am I being simplistic?  Are we, as individuals, parents, Americans better off now than in 1986?

Well, obviously there is no one and certain answer (or maybe there is—that’s even scarier…).  More importantly, there is no going back.   So what can we learn?  How to move forward?

I think the main point is that more is not better.  More is simply more which doesn’t make it better. I think that pivoting around that millennial moment (remember Y2K? and all the horror that was to ensue that didn’t happen?) provides a window to observe where we are and where we want to be.  I’m not suggesting that we engage in Soviet-style five-year plans, but I am wondering about thinking more about how we want the world to be for our children.

And yes, I know the politicians accuse each other of stealing our children’s future (usually referring either to the National Debt or to Climate Change), but I don’t mean that.  I mean do we wish to provide our children with so electronic a world that they are using iPads before they can talk?  What about constant music everywhere providing emotional indications of how to feel just in case you don’t know yourself?  What about diagnosis of purported disorders?  Do we prefer a world of medication or a world of understanding the wealth of human emotions? 

I think the 28 years around the fulcrum 2000 have been years where we became more quickly reactive but not more helpfully reactive, or proactive.  Public figures apologize ad infinitum, So that the whole concept of apology no longer has any meaning (and I do remember beginning to notice that in the ‘80s).  Accountability is a word and one we don’t really even expect to have meaning.  There are so many words like that.  Depression is another one.

We have the opportunity to become more thoughtful, more deliberate, more reflective as we re-think the growing up world we present to our children.  Or not.