One Extra Moment

By: Carol Maxym, Ph.D.

I just finished writing a blog on boundaries.  I finished it by suggesting that when you have a moment—waiting at a red light, caught in traffic, on hold on the phone were some good times to think about your boundaries.  And I stand by that.  

But here’s what I thought next:  What I said about finding the moment in between busy-nesses probably describes a lot of your life.  And that is something to notice, perhaps an issue, maybe a problem.  Harassed people are never at their best, harassed parents are most definitely stressed, beleaguered—well, not at your best.  When your life really and truly is about finding moments in between moments to think about important matters, that makes life tough.  It makes mothering and fathering tough.

It doesn’t matter if you are a stay-at-home mom or dad or one who works or works two jobs, being rushed makes life feel chaotic because being in a constant hurry creates stress which creates chaos which creates stress.  Possibly it makes you feel that you don’t or can’t give enough thought to what your are doing as you mother or father.  And I imagine you are now thinking something like, “Well, yes.  Thanks for noticing.  I thought you were here to help, to give some tips, some advice.”  Yes, I am.  At least I try. It is the goal.  

Firstly, I think it is helpful to notice what goes on in your world.  To notice actively, not just try to keep the motion going or having it just keep going because it doesn’t stop.  Noticing is important.  Deep breath.  Notice what is going on around you.  Force yourself to slow down—even if only for a minute or two and notice.  In the rush of everyday life, it is so easy to lose track, to forget to notice with a moment’s distance.  Then there is noticing how you feel, how your day’s events, conversations, emotional collisions, emotional caresses. It isn’t necessary to analyze or interpret each and every event, conversation, collision, and caress.  Sometimes just noticing it, then running it through your mind (thinking about it) without any judgment at all.  Just noticing.  

Here is the next tip: Stop micromanaging your child(ren)’s life/lives.  You are the mom or the dad.  That does not make you in charge of providing complete happiness and satisfaction on a path to ultimate success at all times.  It does not make you the one to take care of everything in your child’s life so he/she won’t be unhappy now or later.  It doesn’t make you homework monitor.  It doesn’t make you overseer of everything your child eats or drinks or wants.  It doesn’t make you the one to prevent all bad things from happening all the time.  That is NOT the role of a parent.  Micromanaging is bad for you.  It is more dangerous for your child because he/she isn’t learning how to manage his/her own life.

There are certainly many ways in which we are all more busy than we were five years ago or a decade ago.  I’m not sure we are busier than most people were a century ago (when there were many fewer conveniences in life or in homes).  I grant that our expectations of ourselves are more.  Our expectations of our kids are more.  They have more activities, more needs, more problems to be solved…or do they?  Must they?  Are they and you benefitting from the more?

Quite possibly you are thinking something like, “But of course they must go here and do that!”  Must they?  Then you think, “Well, if she isn’t at ballet, she’s on Instagram.”  H’mmm, now that is a problem.  Greater busy-ness may help, but doesn’t solve it.

But let’s be clear about the core of the problem.  Being busy isn’t a moral value.  It’s just busy.  Being connected to some number of people isn’t an ethical statement.  It’s just busy.

Where can you intervene?  Think about real needs and created needs.  Being in contact with others all day (and night) every day and night is not a need.  It is a created need.  Having everything managed in your child’s life is not a need. It is a created need.  The more needs you create or allow to be created around you, the more you are likely to fall into micromanaging.

How will your children manage if you don’t micromanage their lives?  Perhaps the more pertinent question is how will you manage if you don’t micromanage their lives?

Think about it.

Quandary

By: Carol Maxym, Ph.D.

This morning I heard the following story on NPR:  A mom had tweeted on Twitter or posted on Facebook (maybe both??) that when her son went to purchase his lunch at the high school cafeteria, he was told that he had overspent his meal allowance and wasn’t allowed food.  He offered to pay some of the bill with the $2 in his pocket ($3 short of the total), but was told that wouldn’t do.  His lunch was thrown into the trash.  The boy called his mother who came to his rescue, took him out for lunch, then went to the school, paid his bill (the e-mail about him being “overdrawn” on his lunch money account had only been sent out that morning), and paid an additional $60 to clear unpaid bills for other kids, so no one else would need to go through the humiliation and hunger her son had just faced.

So, the fact is, I probably would have done the same thing as this mother.  I would have been incensed as the stupidity of denying him lunch only to throw the food into the trash.  (Apparently it is mandated that the food be thrown into the trash…because of contamination???).  I would have put out $60 to make a statement that kids shouldn’t have to be put through such nonsense, be humiliated, and go hungry.  

But then I must think a bit more deeply.  In a different day and age, the young man would not have been able to appeal to his mom via telephone for immediate rescue.  He would have been obliged to figure it out on his own—one way or another.  Might he have had to go hungry?  Yes (but then there a lot of kids in this country who arrive to school hungry every single day), and that would be unpleasant but not really much worse.  Humiliated?  Well, and there isn’t much else to say on that.  And he would have had to deal with it all on his own.  Would he have learned from the experience, grown from it?

I think about a couple of other points:  I am saddened that the person who threw away the food couldn’t come up with a better solution to the problem, but then that person worked for the food service company contracted to prepare and serve the lunches at the school. so her/his responsibility was to do as trained.  Maybe there is a problem that the food service is outsourced and so there is a responsibility to “bottom line” that supersedes responsibility to be a bit generous to a kid who doesn’t quite have the sufficient funds for his lunch—this one time—and does offer to pay what he has.

And throwing the lunch in the trash.  I just have trouble figuring out how that made more sense than to let the kid each the lunch.  

There is also and very much the issue that if kids were responsible for their own lunch money instead of having an account that is kept filled by Mom and Dad, then if Johnny didn’t have the money to purchase lunch, it was completely on him.  Old fashioned, but a good way to make sure the responsibility stays as close to the right place as possible.

So, thinking about it, what this incident makes clear is that while there may be conveniences to have accounts for kids to purchase lunch with Mom and Dad being in charge of making sure there are funds there, and it may be more cost efficient (but then I wonder if it really is) to have a food service company preparing and serving lunches, perhaps the more “convenient “ way is not the best or even better way for kids to get lunch at high school.

Pronoun Disorder

By: Carol Maxym, Ph.D.

I’m sure you have heard all about disorders.  Your child has probably been “diagnosed” with at least one of them.  I’m not a great fan of the DSM “disorders” because they don’t tell you anything you didn’t know before and contrary to popular belief they do NOT prescribe treatment.  (That’s a big difference between a medical diagnosis and a psychological or psychiatric diagnosis. A medical diagnosis is prescriptive; a psychological/psychiatric diagnosis is descriptive, NOT prescriptive.)

However, there is a newish disorder that I have personally discovered, and it is not mentioned in DSM 5.  It’s one that has pervasive negative effects.  It is easily avoidable.  There is no medication for it.  I suspect, will there ever be, for one isn’t  required.  No. 

Pronoun Disorder  can be self-corrected, and you can get rid of it yourself.  Pronoun disorder is when you use an incorrect pronoun (I, you, he, she, we, they).  

Pronoun Disorder is fostered by schools, therapists, advice-givers, advertising,  even by colleges and universities.  Pronoun Disorder is simply when, as a parent, you use the pronoun “we” instead of  “he” or “she” or “you” or you say “I” when, in fact, you are not the one who is doing the doing…whatever it is.

Here are some examples:  “I am moving my daughter into college next week.”  “We are taking the SATs again next month.”  “We have a term paper due before Christmas.”  “We need to take our medicine.”

Schools are very much at fault for creating some of the first stages of the disorder.  It happens when schools involve parents in their children’s homework.  This is certainly the case when kindergartners are given homework.  I mean, really, how are five-year-olds ever going to be able to manage doing homework on their own (that’s why kindergartners shouldn’t be given homework!)?  So when little kids are given tasks that they cannot accomplish, Mom and/or Dad are brought in and, in fact, the assignment is completed by us instead of by him or her.

Thinking About Psychobabble

By: Carol Maxym, Ph.D.

Well, perhaps we should put this post in the pet-peeves folder because the concept of overachieving is one of my pettest of pet peeves.  May I list a couple of pesky overachievers?  Leonardo da Vinci.  Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Marie Curie. Oh, right.  Another overachiever:  Steve Jobs.  Lots of people we venerate are overachievers.  So why is it a bad thing if your child is an overachiever?  (It isn’t.)

Psychology has presented us—and especially parents—with a large number of useless or even harmful concepts.  Overachieving is one of them. In a society that measures goodness and worthiness by busy-ness, achievement, and reward, the idea of stigmatizing those who achieve greatly is hypocritical, annoying, and downright stupid. 

So, when the psychobabblers start talking about overachieving, what is it they are really saying?  Well, firstly, I can’t help but wonder about just a soupcon of jealousy or envy:  Let’s put down the really successful people.  Somehow they must be psychologically compromised or emotionally stunted.  But even more than that, what the concept is really about is that some people are super intelligent, talented, socially savvy, business savvy, artistic…and so it just messes up the norms of the bell curves upon which so much of the psychobabble world is built.  And there is more to it. 

I think there can be little question that some kids are over-scheduled, at least partially because their parents are hoping they will be “over-achievers.”  Some are over-scheduled because that’s what a lot of parents do and there is the competition (overt or covert) as to who will really have the Ivy-League, NFL/NBA billionaire kid.  Lots of scheduled activities, however, beats sitting with a smart phone and being on social media or lost in imaginary world of war and destruction. Still, none of that quite taps into the real issue I have with the very silly concept.

My real issue is that it is just one of the terms that gets used without much thought.  It seems to have some sort of root in the idea (mainly false) that kids are being asked to work so hard at school that any anxiety or depression that might be noticed/diagnosed has to do with the academic rigors of school.  Kids who work very hard and feel the stress of hard work get put into the anxious/depressed over achiever category because there doesn’t seem to be a category for them. Maybe the category, if there need be one is, hard-working kids who feel the effects of hard work. Maybe they don’t need a category?

I have no problem with hard workers and high achievers.  Do you?  Really?   Hard workers who achieve greatly is a concept that makes sense.  Over achiever?  No.  So the moral of the post?  Think long and hard about the psychobabble concepts that professional advice-givers provide.  If you can’t really make sense of the concept (or the diagnosis), it is possible that it doesn’t really make sense.

The Terrible Power of Frustration

By: Carol Maxym Ph.D.

Professionally as well as personally I am generally known as a pretty tough cookie.  I’ve seen a lot of the world, experienced a lot, worked with a lot of kids and families.  I don’t blink that easily.  And last week, after two weeks of idiotic (I just stopped to make sure I wanted to use that word and I found I did) and ridiculous, pointless bureaucratic runaround I was brought to tears.  Tears of utter and complete frustration.

The cause?  I wanted to open a bank account.  No big deal, you say.  So I would have thought.  But no.  It took me 19 days to open a bank account—at a bank where I already have three accounts.  Is this because I have bad credit?  No, that was never checked.  Because I have a police record?  No, no one ever asked about that.  No, the issue had to do with…h’mmm.  I’m not sure because no one could ever really tell me.  There were just hoops to jump through and the hoops kept changing.  Whatever I did one day wasn’t good enough for the next day’s hoop.

I have been a customer of the bank where I wanted to open a bank account for 13 years.  I have three accounts at that bank, all in good standing.  I have never had an overdraft.  I have been the model customer.  Did that matter?  Apparently not.  Why?  Well, after talking to one person, then another, then another, then still another, and another, I finally learned that one part of the bank cannot or does not communicate with the other part of the bank.  Perhaps that makes sense, but I am mystified as to why.  It must have something to do with “too big to fail”…

After submitting my application, I waited four or five days then received an e-mail stating that I needed to e-mail a document to the bank.  I did so immediately.  Then several days later I received a mysterious communication (that contradicted the other communication I received simultaneously) that I had to call a number at the bank.  Again, I complied,   There I learned that I needed to produce my telephone bill.  My telephone bill?  Yes.  Now if I were a bit more modern and did not still have a land line, I would have hit a complete stumbling block.

Okay, I won’t bore you with the rest of the saga that finally culminated this very morning with my having my new bank account.  My point is the level of frustration, the time and energy I spent trying to do a simple, everyday yet necessary task.

I’ve had some bad luck recently with a $15 credit card charge somehow turning into $15,000.  Now everyone involved agreed that it was a mistake.  However, it still took approximately 15 phone calls (usually getting different information from the last phone call) and FIVE weeks to correct the mistake. Hearing the scripted, insincere apologies from the people with whom I spoke on the phone frankly increased my frustration because an apology is supposed to have meaning. Again, frustration, time and energy wasted--mine as well as all the people who spent their work day dealing with this made-up problem and my mounting frustration.  Can that be a cost effective way to do business?  Maybe, but I can’t figure out how. 

Am I alone dealing with modern everyday frustration of talking to computers, to people who are only able or allowed to read from scripts that usually don’t have anything to do with the problem at hand? Am I alone?  I sincerely doubt it.  Well, I know I’m not.  

How much frustration do we wish to cause each other in our world?  How much frustration can any one of us actually tolerate before we break?  And what do those breaks look like?  

Important questions, I think.

Whose Homework Is It Anyway?

By: Carol Maxym, Ph.D.

For ever so many years I have been telling any parent I could get to listen to me to leave their children’s schoolwork to the children.  When I made such a comment, many years ago during an interview with a national newspaper (and I would tell you which paper if I could remember but I cannot), I can well remember the journalist’s eyes nearly popping out of her head.  If I remember correctly the story was quite controversial for the usual nanosecond of controversy that contradicts conventional wisdom.  

So how chuffed was I to see the article in the New York Times by Keith Robinson and Angel L. Harris!  Vindicated!  Research substantiates the point that more involvement with your child’s school, school work, homework, and teachers is not only not productive, it is more often negative than positive! 

Here’s the link to the story:  http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2014/04/12/parental-involvement-is-overrated/?h=CAQEeKxe5&enc=AZO2epYKRmpHbAAgEc5nttcXiWk7faH7xymQ2thfmYrDGbvm6If6g2mJZWoEbCNaXQ5d_u6rMymrdSPHrJ6q775wv5DR4snUbagAfJvugkKQar0cLFnyNzV3CAhY0sggm99Qat69JwEl-h

I would add just a few thoughts to what Robinson and Harris have demonstrated with their research.  When they write about talking to your children about the value of education, I think what they are also saying is that raising your expectations for your child is likely to be helpful. Letting kids know that what they are doing is useful, purposeful, important for their future and that you expect them to work hard…that’s what they need to hear from you--not all sorts of superlative-lane praise.  Clear, concise statements that education matters will serve you and your children well. 

Intruding into the minutiae of what they are doing every day is not going to be helpful—it’s is more likely to be detrimental.  Common sense tells you that—now it’s substantiated by research.  When kids have ownership (skin in the game) of their education, they are more likely to care about it.

Why?  Because when you are checking to see what the homework assignments are, if your child has completed them, completed them to your satisfaction, etc., etc., you are simultaneously taking away your child’s ownership of his or her education.  Education becomes another way of pleasing you, annoying you, fighting with you, controlling you.

When my daughter was in 6^th grade, I had quite the fight with the school because I refused to monitor her homework.  I refused to read her homework assignments. She always loved school, so there was certainly and definitely no purpose in my intrusion, but the teachers were offended that I wouldn’t…well, intrude in my daughter’s education.  I remember one of them (whom I later found out didn’t even have a Bachelor’s Degree….h’mmmm) saying to me, “But you seem like such a concerned and loving mother.”  My answer then as it would be now:  “Yes.  And that is why I am not intervening or interfering in my daughter’s education.  This is HER education.  I have had mine.”

I’ll add a plea to schools and teachers:  Stop giving homework to little kids because there isn’t a shred of evidence that demonstrates that kids who start homework earlier turn out to be smarter, better educated, or better students.  Give homework ONLY when it clearly serves an academic purpose.  And a plea to parents:  Ask your school to leave off the homework until it can benefit your child’s actual academic progress.  Homework is NOT for creating parent-child time together.

P.S.  There is no correlation between when kids learn to read and their intelligence or how they will do in school.  We’ll talk more about that in the next few days.

What Do You Need From Your Child?

By: Carol Maxym, Ph.D.

Generally our children know us as well as we know them.  Their existence from infancy through toddler years and into the time when they become increasingly socialized has been based on learning to read every cue from you, verbal as well as non-verbal.  Children often try to provide their parents with what they deem their parents want and/or need.  Sometimes they are right; sometimes they are not.  

The great child psychiatrist, D. W. Winnicott, wrote about how the child who cries when sent to pre-school (day care) because he is worried his mother won’t manage without him.  Sometimes that child is right; sometime not.  His broader point is that children do try to meet their parent’s needs, such as they perceive those needs.  To that profound statement I will add a more banal thought:  The next step after that is that kids discover how to manipulate you by understanding (whether cognitively, emotionally, experientially, or just so) your needs…and what makes you happy, what makes you react in a certain way.

What do you need from your child?  Do you need to need anything?  Once upon a time, children were expected to provide for their parents in their old age.  Although there are aspects of that in our modern life, I think that few people nowadays think in terms of securing their golden years by means of having children.

I remember as a high school senior realizing that my parents wanted me to succeed largely so they could brag about my successes to their friends.  I rejected that concept, so I kept whatever successes I had to myself.  I don’t think my parents were unique or even extraordinary wanting to “use” me in that way.  Still, I reject the notion that kids need to or should provide parents with reasons to self-congratulate.  (Remember that if you are the one responsible for what a wonderful child yours is or what wonderful things they do, so must you then, I suppose, be responsible for the bad and wrong things they may do…it gets very sticky if you go down this road…)

I suppose the question posed here is one of the most fundamental.  It is a question that most of us don’t pose to ourselves and our partners as we enter into the parent state.  Still, and very much in tune with the tagline of this blog, “Think about it”…well, let’s think about it. Should you need something from your child” and if so, what.

There is no single or simple answer to this first and most fundamental question.