Friday, February 15, 2013

Theoretically Speaking


    
Theoretically Speaking....

Mothers have essentially been having babies the same way since the beginning of our species.  First you have sex, then you get fat, then the baby comes out.  Not much has changed really. Of course, how you have sex, how much fat is reasonable, and how the baby comes out have all been affected by what is culturally and socially acceptable.  Having had three C-sections, I'm grateful that Caesar, or whoever it was, discovered that babies can come out man-made holes as well as the anatomically created ones.  If not, I would be childless and dead.

For centuries mothers have passed down to daughters the shoulds and should nots of pregnancy and childbirth.  All this great advice emerged from culture.  I remember, as a child, being told that pregnant women couldn't work in a garden because it would kill the plants.  Personally, I think some farmer's wife made that up - how very clever of her!  Anyway, from one generation to the next, valuable, if not always requested, advice has been freely passed down from well-meaning mother to skeptical daughter.  But, that's not all.  After the baby arrives the real fun begins.

I'm from the South - a point I proudly make. However, if I believed everything my mom, aunts, cousins, and grandparents said about raising kids I'd have kids who were "knocked into the middle of next week" or walking around "with a knot in their tails".  In all fairness, the whole mess of raising youngins had to be a little confusing.  In one generation, we went from the woodshed to Dr. Spock. I seem to remember some relative saying that Dr. Spock's books were only useful if applied directly to the behind.  

  Times have changed.  Enter any bookstore today and you will see volumes and volumes of parenting books - everything from Parenting for Dummies to Making Your Kids Mind Without Losing Yours.  The challenge is not finding information, but limiting it.  Sometimes, too much information is as dangerous as none at all.  So, today we have resources. We have books, magazines, television, radio, the internet, parenting and child development classes, and much more.  And, we still have moms.





The question then becomes, are we doing it any better?  Are we closer to raising the kind of kids who will leave the world a better place?  Are they smarter, kinder, more compassionate, more open-minded, more curious, or more happy than their ancestors?  I guess everyone has an opinion about that. As a matter of fact, in Child Development we learn about many people who had theories about the growth, development, and behavior of children.  For example, Freud suggested that behavior is a result of unconscious drives that are created from our early experiences.  Erik Erikson taught that successful or unsuccessful resolution of a series of psychosocial crises determines our psychological health.  According to Piaget, children process their experiences differently than adults and are often bound by cognitive limitations. The Behaviorists, Watson and Pavlov, believed that behavior is a result of conditioning or training.  I could go on and on.  I'm fascinated by these theories and have grown to appreciate their actual application to human behavior.  However, I've yet to see one theorists who can tell me how to raise happy, self-fulfilled children.  And, how could they?  The truth is that knowledge is power.  I've studied the theories and I've applied them...and they helped.  They often eased my fear that my kids were the weirdest on the planet.  Learning that stealing requires a level of understanding that, cognitively speaking, is admirable, helped me spare my gum-stealing daughter's life. However, the other truth is that IT'S NOT ALL IN THE BOOKS.  Sometimes, as parents, we have to fly by the seat of our pants.  We don't always (translated - seldom) get the kids we ordered.  If we did, we'd have a boring world full of happy, compliant, narrow-thinking clones.  Therefore, we're put in the position of raising happy, productive members of society without instructions, manuals, or a single clue as to how we should do it.

I have some theories about raising kids.  These theories are not supported by research and I have no actual proof that they are valid, but here's what I think.  First of all, parents should chill. I can hear my children belly-laughing at this.  Nevertheless, it is true.  Our children are only on loan to us for a short period of time.  We should enjoy that time and quit worrying about the little stuff.  Eating ice-cream sundaes for dinner will not kill a kid, but the memory of doing it might last forever.

The second theory is - learn, early on, that your children are not clones.  They're not going to live your life.  They're going to live theirs.  The paths they choose might not only be different, but contrary to what you would choose for them.  Letting go is hard (a lesson I'm currently struggling with).  If you have taught your children well and valued them as irreplaceable members in the family, most often they will adopt a value system similar to yours- even if they divert along the way.




Finally, don't just love your children unconditionally, but demonstrate that love every day. Hugs, kisses, and "I love you" are important.  However, they don't replace genuine expressions of acceptance, appreciation, and respect. In my day respect meant doing what you're told, not talking back, and honoring your elders.  Today's definition is a bit more expansive.  Respect for children looks exactly like respect for adults.  It means valuing opinions, recognizing competency, and acknowledging worth.  You wouldn't walk up to an adult with a drippy nose and yank a tissue across his face.  That would be disrespectful.  However, we do it to children all the time.  That would be disrespectful, too.  Remember that respect grows from respect - even with children.

  I have many more notions or "theories" about how children develop and why they behave the way they do. Many you won't find in books. I'm sure you do, too.  I'd love to hear them, so please share.