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. 

It’s Not A Competition

By: Carol Maxym Ph.D.

When I was a kid, I remember noticing that my parents used my brother’s many successes as what I then called to myself “Parent Badges”.  He was very smart, so that meant they were smart also.  He won all sorts of competitions, so, in effect, they did, too.  They bragged about him whenever they could (particularly when they could seem not to be bragging).   For any of you who know I Love Lucy (and if you don’t know that TV comedy series, I urge you to have a look at it.  If you can watch one episode and not laugh gleefully, please do let me know), you may remember the episodes where Lucy and Ricky get into (or try to avoid) bragging competitions with their best friends about which son is cuter and smarter and learning more things earlier.

I didn’t have so many overt successes as my brother, so I didn’t provide much in the Parent Badge department.  However when I did, I kept my triumphs to myself because I couldn’t bear the thought of my parents using my successes as their Parent Badges.  Somehow it seemed to me to take away from my hard work if they took it as their own.  Was I too sensitive?  What do you think?

As a mom, I shied away from talking about my kids very much or carrying their photos because I couldn’t bear the idea that someone might think I was bragging.  I never even kept photos in my office because I didn’t want to be asked questions that would lead me to have to talk about my daughters who accomplished much.  Perhaps I carried it all a bit too far.

Being a mom or a dad is about guiding and teaching and loving and connecting, not getting or seeking validation for yourself.  Perhaps ‘parenting’ has become something of a competition—thinking back to I Love Lucy, I guess it always was.  Perhaps that is a part of the reason I have never liked the verb “to parent.’  Your child desires your good opinion, your praise—even if he/she doesn’t want to show it.  If you use your child’s success as your Parent Badge, you take away from the connection, the relationship becomes it takes on a hint of contingency.

And then there is yet another aspect to the competition: things, buying things.  What happens to a child’s self-respect, to his/her soul when your ability to provide more and more things for status becomes a part of your child’s actual belief in his/her self worth?  Is any child better or better off for having more things than other kids—or even for being able to keep up with what other kids have or can get.  And, yes, I acknowledge that I am writing this in the midst of the Christmas/Channukah buying season/frenzy. 

When I talk to parents whose child is not doing well, they often want to know if they are to blame for the problems.  That is such a complex and complicated question.  Parents always make mistakes—that’s jus a part of the deal.  Making mistakes is not the same as “causing” your child’s problems.  And the opposite is also true.  When your child succeeds at school or sports or in the school play or the marching band, you’ve certainly helped but you haven’t done it. 

Being a parent is never about the parent.  It’s always about the child.  However that very specifically does not mean that your child should become the center of your world or that you should teach your child the false and dangerous belief that he/she is the center of the world.

So, what’s the point here?  Perspective mainly,  and the same old thing I’ve written about so many times.  Being a mother or a father is about teaching, guiding, loving, connecting.  Being a parent isn’t about the bragging rights but about helping your child learn to be a productive, caring, generous, honest citizen (which is the best recipe for happiness I know).  However much you can help your child to become that person, you gain [silent] bragging rights—and a little peace and quiet in your later years.

Intimidation

By: Carol Maxym Ph.D.

I was in Walmart today.  Waiting to check out, I heard the following conversation between a mom and her about 8-year-old son.

“I’ve already bought you…” and then she listed off about 10 toys she had purchased, she said,              in the last week.  “Isn’t that enough?” she asked.

 “No,” her son responded simply and pointedly.

Again she was on the defensive. 

“I just can’t afford it today.”

Her son walked over to a toy counter, from a marketing standpoint judiciously placed right there by the check out lines for kids to examine while their parents wait in line to pay.  The youngster found another toy (I think it was a Lego set) and placed it into the basket.

 “I don’t have the money for it,” the mother responded plaintively as her son turned the box   over to see the other side.

I don’t actually know for sure how that event turned out because it became my turn to check out and pay.  I so much wanted to say to the mom, “Don’t let him put you on the defensive.  Your goodness as a mom isn’t measured by how much you purchase.  In fact, your son will be better off if you teach him restraint, self-discipline, thoughtful instead of impulse purchasing.  Instant gratification isn’t helpful.”

I didn’t say any of that.  What do you think?  Should I have said something?  Would you have wanted someone to say something to you?

Is this Helping?

 By: Carol Maxym Ph.D.

A Very Simple Question:

Unlike just about everything else in life, I find that moms don’t tend to ask the “Is this helping?” as the primary and decisive question when looking for, continuing with, or thinking about, seeking or changing types or providers of help (therapists, psychologists, counselors, psychiatrists, tutors, coaches, etc..) 

Keep in mind, if the plumber doesn’t do a good job or the tailor or the car mechanic or the lawn guy, you change.  That’s what you should do if the therapy, counseling, coaching, medication isn’t helping. 

Simple, right?

Well, only if you have created criteria by means of which to evaluate.  You do know if the plumber fixed the leaky faucet, if your clothes fit better or the car is running.  

Can you know if the help is helping?  Yes, you can. 

I can’t tell you how many moms I’ve spoken with over the years who tell me they are seeing “the best therapist.  I really like him.  Morgan has been seeing him for years.”  My first question is always, “And have you seen improvement?”  Often, oh!  all too very often, the answer is, “Well, no....”  And I hear the confusion at the other end of the line because this mom, like so many other moms had never really allowed herself to ask the question, “Is this helping?”

Think about it:  If it isn’t helping either the professional isn’t whom you need or the problem has been oversimplified, jargonized, simply not been understood.  

We’ll be providing more and more information on how to do better to find your child the help each of you needs.

How To Boil A Frog

By: Carol Maxym Ph.D.

HOW TO BOIL A FROG:  RECIPE:

1.         Place frog in large pot of cool water.  Place pot on stove.

2.         Continue to heat slowly, being careful not to increase heat too rapidly.  Frog will acclimate 

            itself to the temperature and does not seek to escape to save itself.

3.         Continue cooking over slowly increasing heat until thoroughly cooked.

CAUTION:  Dropping the frog directly into boiling water, will cause it to

       jump right out to save itself.

HOW A TEEN BOILS A FAMILY:  RECIPE 

Using low but constant tension, agitating continuously:

1.         Intimidate and bully parents. 

2.         Making certain not to bring to a quick boil, carefully combine lies

with manipulations.  Add a pinch of need to be rescued.  

3.         Making sure to keep parents unaware of the increasing confusion,

pit parents against each other until they explode.  Be sure to allow

parents to justify, excuse, and rationalize the increasing chaos,

unhappiness, and failure.

CAUTION: If you act too precipitously, your family may realize what you

     are doing and react.