Best Things Fathers Do

Ideas and Advice from Real World Dads

by Will Glennon (more about this book and author)

Chapter 2: Dad is Different and Can Make a Difference
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Teach risk-taking

Living life to the fullest requires taking risks. On one level, this is completely obvious: just identifying a need raises the distinct possibility that we won’t be able to satisfy it. Ask a favor and risk being turned down. Ask for a date and risk rejection. Start a new business and risk financial ruin. Everything, from the most inconsequential to the most important things in life, requires us to put ourselves, our money, our egos, our hearts, and our physical well-being at risk. Yet we live in a society that has become so focused on avoiding risks that it can be easy to forget how important it is to help our children develop the skill and courage to take them. Teach risk-taking.

Sometimes it scares me how obsessed we have become with “security.” I’m terrified that my children will be too afraid to
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do the things they need to do to be happy and successful in their lives. I’ve tried, largely by example, to let them see that you just can’t compromise, you can’t play it safe when it comes to what you really want and believe.

Traditionally, in almost every culture, the role of teaching risk-taking behavior has fallen to fathers. From the earliest memories of our species, we have had to be prepared to risk everything to protect our children. Fathers taught children how to make their way in the wild, how to recognize dangers without letting those dangers hinder them from accomplishing their tasks. So it is today as well. The specific dangers may have changed from wild animals and enemy tribes to bullies and busy streets, but the most debilitating danger remains the same: pervasive, overwhelming, self-defeating fear. It is our job to teach our children to be fearless.

We need to expand their worlds. Some parents are so worried about protecting their children that they end up with children who are seriously handicapped. Inadvertently, we accomplish what the ancient Chinese did purposefully in the practice of binding girls’ feet—we wrap them in such tight protection that they end up hobbling through life, afraid to take any risks whatsoever.

The process of learning—growing and stretching the bounds of who we are—has a built-in positive feedback loop. With each new discovery, each lesson learned, we become larger and more complete than we were before, and we gain confidence that we can continue to grow and learn. The process itself is like a self-esteem escalator, moving higher and faster all the time. The more we can do, the better we feel about ourselves; the better we feel, the more we can do.
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One of the best ways to teach our children how to evaluate new situations, to understand how much risk is reasonable, and to be comfortable and unintimidated, even in completely foreign territory, is to give them a guided tour. Expose your children to the real world. Have them sort through their clothes and toys and go with you to deliver them to a local charity. Take them with you to work or on business trips.

Involve them with money. Two findings repeatedly surface from study after study: how to deal with money is one of the biggest issues of anxiety and contention among couples; and children who grow up in families that expose them to economic issues turn out to be the best managers of businesses. This is not surprising; what is surprising is how many parents continue to keep their children almost completely ignorant of real economic issues. Give your younger children an allowance for chores done around the house and yard; then make a special shopping trip so they can spend the money as they choose. Involve older kids in family financing; have them participate in planning a family vacation, complete with weighing different options that have to fit into an overall vacation budget. Let teenagers help balance the checkbook and see what groceries, gas, and insurance cost; talk to them about credit cards and about saving for college. If you own a business, expose them to the financial side as well as utilizing their labor.

When our children get themselves in over their heads, we are almost always tempted to dive in and come to the rescue. But in so doing, we rob them of the opportunity to grow that the moment of crisis presents. One of the least-discussed secrets of life is that it is precisely in such moments—when we are forced to face the very thing that appears to be the most difficult to face—that true growth and transformation can take place.
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Rescuing our children prematurely can cripple them just as surely as neglect or overprotection. We need to provide them the opportunity—the benediction—to learn how to solve their own problems. In the long run, this gift will be the most valuable skill we can teach them.

This is such a difficult assignment: to stand there, knowing that you could step in and alleviate the immediate pain, yet also knowing that, by doing so, you would do more damage than good. It is a delicate balance that we must always consciously maintain. Good fathering does not stem purely out of instinct, simply because we love our children. We need to apply all our love, all our strength, and all our analytical skills in this endeavor.

Our mistakes are frequently our best teachers. They give us the hard-to-dismiss feedback we need to do better next time. Helping our children become comfortable making mistakes is an important and surprisingly difficult task. From the earliest moments of their lives, our children are constantly undertaking what seems to them to be a vast mountain range of challenges. From gaining basic control over their physical movements to speaking, reading, writing, and thinking systematically, it feels to them as if they are constantly struggling with things that everyone else (adults) can do easily and perfectly.

 

Teach them to set goals

As dads, we live by the goals we set, but for children, life has a way of just rolling forward like one of those moving sidewalks at the airport. Time passes, events come and go. With the exception of birthdays and graduating to the next class level, there are very few road signs announcing your accomplishments. “Congratulations,
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you just mastered the alphabet, or read your first adult book, or learned how to multiply, or learned your first song on the piano!”

Part of the problem is that, from our children’s perspective, from the moment they are born, they are running at full tilt trying to learn all the things that it appears to them adults have effortlessly mastered. They are so focused on all the things they don’t know and can’t do, they hardly have time left to stop and appreciate what incredible accomplishing machines they have become. Yet, helping our children to see the extraordinary string of achievements they have under their belts is a great way to get them to see just how capable they really are.

For the most part, they aren’t going to set goals for themselves and then check back in to evaluate how they did—they are entirely too swept up in the headlong rush to grow up. But that doesn’t mean we can’t help out. And we have a secret advantage—we know how incredible they are and what amazing things they can accomplish. So, whenever appropriate, with small things—like learning to tie their shoes, or making a cheese omelet, or homework, or school projects, or sports—help your child to set reasonable goals and then be sure to acknowledge and celebrate their accomplishments. Children who have goals and realistic aspirations, along with a plan for achieving those goals, are children who have a good sense of their accomplishments; children who feel capable have high self-esteem.

Learning experts have identified three zones that define us as learning beings. The first is the comfort zone. Here, we do what we already know how to do. Life is easy here, but there’s no learning going on at all. It’s a comfortable, but lazy, place. Second is the stretch zone. Here, we try new things. There’s a bit of fear attached, but generally we know we are capable of doing them. We’re challenged, but not overly threatened. The third is
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the danger zone. Here, we’re overstretched, over our heads. All we experience here is panic and fear that we can’t measure up.

Ask your child what one thing he or she would like to accomplish. Then help them break it down into increments and create a timeline. If the task is to dress without help, for instance, break it down into putting on socks, pants, shirt, shoes with help, shoes without help. Then create a chart with each category and mark off with a check, sticker, or star when each task is mastered. When the whole task is complete, don’t forget a celebration!

 

Play with your children

Play is important because it is practice, but practice for what? Thanks to the wonderful people who stand behind one-way mirrors with clipboards and watch children at play, we know that, in general, girls’ play tends to be about “being,” while boys’ play tends to be about “doing.” Girls practice being caretakers with their dolls, tea sets, houses, and role-playing games, while boys fly off into competitive sports, wildly imaginative alien worlds that must be conquered, and building massive structures out of blocks.

Both forms of play are important, but the balance in our culture is way out of kilter. Practicing how to get along with others is something boys should do considerably more often, and practicing conquering the world is something girls should be doing considerably more often.

The overall picture is too muddy at the moment for us to understand fully just how much of our children’s play is biologically motivated and how much is environmentally induced. What is clear, however, is that the combined force of the advertising industry and our own deeply ingrained cultural bias plays a major role in directing our children’s play. When most commercials and children’s programming show girls dressing up, playing house, and engaging in relatively passive games, while boys are shown kicking balls, driving toy race cars, and banging around with toy tools, the message is pretty compelling. To grow up confident in their abilities to take on the whole range of situations they will encounter, our children need to start practicing, and that means playing.

 

Plan for quiet time and dream time

One of the prevailing myths about boys, and particularly adolescents, is that they spend too much time alone. They disappear behind a closed bedroom door and don’t appear for hours, and then only to wolf down food and return to their inner sanctum. But don’t confuse private time with quiet time. Both are necessary, but quiet time is much harder to come by. For the most part, when our boys are holed up in their rooms, they are fully occupied, listening to music, banging away on the computer, talking to friends on the phone, reading, building something, drawing, or whatever. Getting them to understand the importance of real quiet time can itself be a challenge, but one that is well worth the time.

Real quiet time requires being in a place with distractions minimized. By cutting out as much external input as possible, the deeper part of ourselves can emerge. The yearnings of our hearts become more clear, our thoughts and feelings (after an initial period of racing around at light speed, confused by all the silence) begin to slow down and can be seen more clearly.
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Structured retreats can be very beneficial. I used to take my son wilderness camping. We spent a few hours each day off on our own just basking quietly in the embrace of nature. Organizations like Outward Bound provide a great mixture of team-building and quiet time. Real quiet time is difficult to organize around the house because of all the existing distractions, but even that can be done if planned properly.

One of the most unsettling concepts in our culture is completely unstructured time. Most of us feel the need to fill all our time, even playtime, with planned activities, leaving no gaps to “do nothing.” Many of us are so busy with work and family obligations that the notion of “free time” is laughable.

There is much to be said for good planning and efficient time-management, but everyone needs to fit large chunks of unstructured time into their lives. This is particularly true for our children, who need time to dream, to “space out,” to imagine their futures. “Doing nothing” is an extremely valuable lesson to pass on to our children, because it opens them to the exciting and wide world of their own interior landscapes of thoughts, feelings, and creativity that will solidify their appreciation of their extraordinary uniqueness.

When our time is completely structured, right down to the “recesses,” the only things that can happen are contained within the plan—the barbecue will be great or a dismal failure; the trip to Waterworld will be wonderful fun, marred by too much arguing, or just downright lousy. What is missing is the unknowable—what might happen, what could arise, if nothing were planned.

By introducing our children to this wonderfully enticing “empty space,” we introduce them to a portal into their own hearts and minds, where whatever they think or feel can emerge
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and be explored. We give them the tools of inner discovery, which ultimately will be their strongest allies.

 

Let freedom of expression reign

This seems obvious—ask any parent if they want their children to grow up strong and comfortable with their own beliefs, values, and opinions, and nine times out of ten you will get an unqualified “Of course.” And it isn’t surprising that studies consistently show that children with high self-esteem are most likely to come from families that encourage freedom of expression. What is surprising is how hard it is in practice to create the space for our children to have opinions and views different from our own. It’s easy to let them have their opinions when they mirror ours, but as soon as they start espousing ideas that are anathema to us, we tend to react quickly and overly forcefully.

Healthy families are careful to foster an atmosphere where everyone’s personal opinions are respected, even if those opinions are not universally shared. Children who feel free to express themselves without fear, judgment, or rejection are happier and feel better about themselves than children who feel they have to censor themselves to fit in. Children who are encouraged to say what they think, even if it differs from their parents’ or teachers’ views, are more confident, more socially secure, and less likely to be led down some garden path by peer pressure. So bring the First Amendment to life in your home!

Make dinner time family discussion time. Establish some rules: No mocking or shaming, no interrupting (kids need space to form their thoughts), and no judgments. Encourage
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the honoring of even the most difficult topics, the most challenging questions, and make sure the more quiet family members get a chance to speak as well.

 

Nurture their creativity

How many of us have a similar story to tell—an insensitive parent or teacher who squashed our budding creativity. One of our greatest human treasures is our imagination, our extraordinary capacity to reach into another dimension and pull out textures, concepts, sounds, shapes, designs, and stories that delight and enliven our lives. And what a tragedy it is that so many people are cut off from this gift because we foolishly and artificially separate people into a handful of “creative types,” versus the rest of us.

Whatever you do, do not let your children lose access to their creative side because someone else decides they can’t draw or have no talent for the piano. Creativity comes in a vast array of categories, and it is our job to help our children find places where they can tap into that well of wonder.

Whether it is through music, writing, painting, drawing, dancing, making puppets, performing, storytelling, imagination exercises, crafts, or other projects, simply being engaged in creative efforts gives our children the almost magical experience of bringing something unique into being that wasn’t there before. This is the gift of creation, and our children get to experience the powerful feeling of being the creators.

Don’t allow creativity to become performance. Teach your children that their creations are for their own satisfaction. Encourage them to express their creativity in whatever ways they like and expose them to as many options as possible. But make sure
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that the teachers of these forms do not evaluate, but only encourage and offer practical advice.

Children have wonderfully fertile imaginations and, left to their own devices, they will wander off into magically imagined areas just as easily as they will deal with the contents of the sandbox in which they are sitting. But as parents, we rarely challenge them to use their powerful imaginative capacities to help enrich their own resources for growing. If anything, we tend to put a damper on things by trying to get them to focus on the practical issues at hand.

Way too much “Stop doing this. . . . And start doing that” and way too little “Imagine yourself in this situation; what would you do?” The scenarios should range from the tiny to the expansive, from “What would you do if some boy kissed you and you didn’t want to be kissed?” to “What would your priorities be if you were the President of the United States?” “How would you comfort a friend whose father had died?” to “What would the world look like if you could change one thing?” By actively creating hypothetical situations, we not only give our children a chance to explore life scenarios with minimal risk, to try out and learn about values and life strategies, but, at the same time, we support and honor their creative capacity and encourage their own trust and reliance on their imaginations.

 

Encourage an entrepreneurial spirit

Historically, men have taken more risks than women—and this has been true in entrepreneurial endeavors as well. While this has been changing in the past few decades (currently the fastest growing business category is women-owned businesses), still the
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children in our care need to be encouraged to take the risks that creating a business from scratch require.

Children as young as six to ten years old are capable of running the time-honored lemonade and cookies stand, while children in middle and high school can run babysitting cooperatives, lawn-mowing services, and dog-walking businesses—or whatever else they can come up with. Since the traditional jobs available to most teenagers are low-paying and dead-end, we should encourage our children to take their talents and use them to create their own businesses rather than working for peanuts at the local fast-food joint. Depending on the business, they will develop math skills (including costing jobs), organizing abilities, the rudiments of marketing, negotiating skills . . . the list goes on and on. Not to mention the boost to their sense of independence by earning their own money!

This is particularly important, since futurists claim that, in the future, the average worker will be a free agent, creating their own opportunities and moving from job to job. In this kind of environment, experience in starting an enterprise from scratch and seeing it through will be invaluable as they make their way through life.

Help your children see the opportunities right in front of them. Do you live in a place that gets lots of foot traffic and could support a stand of some sort? Does your child love young kids, and are there busy parents in the neighborhood who would like a Saturday drop-off babysitting service organized by a group of friends? By helping your children focus on the strengths and opportunities around them, you help them think about their own “natural resources” that will help them throughout life.
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Empower them

Power is one of those words that gives us pause, because it can be misused so easily. All we need do is look around, and it is easy to see people close to us, as well as those in the public eye, who have a burning need to exercise power and control over others. Conversely, there are plenty of people who spend much of their time and energy trying to avoid exercising any power at all, simply out of fear of being held responsible for the consequences. It is a conflicted issue, but one that is crucially important to resolve if our children are to grow up in confident control of their own lives. They must learn to be comfortable and responsible in the holding and exercising of power, and the best way for them to learn these lessons is to start early.

Each of us, even the smallest children, needs to feel that we can influence and have some degree of control over our lives. This sense of empowerment, the opposite of helplessness, allows us to realize we can accomplish our goals and be successful. To help our children feel empowered, we must give them opportunities to solve their own problems; we must trust them to make decisions and sound judgments regarding their own lives.

But it is important to see that their responsibilities are appropriate for their maturity level and that they have access to the tools they need to succeed. By trusting them with responsibility, we show them that we have faith in their abilities. But it must be a real trust—you can’t turn over the decision to them and then take it back if you don’t like what they decide.

This is obviously a gradual process. Only you know when they are ready for each step. But remember, the more we allow our children to make the decisions that affect their lives,
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the better decision-makers they will become. Like anything else, it takes practice.

 

Avoid rescuing

We love our children so much that it is hard for us to see them suffer, if only for a little while, in confusion or doubt. As soon as we see they’re having a problem, we tend to want to rush in and fix it.

This is particularly true with girls, who, unconsciously at least, we see as more vulnerable than boys. Studies have shown, for example, that mothers on beaches let their sons roam farther from them physically, while they try to keep their daughters right by their sides, even though neither child is out of eyesight. While it may be true that there are real dangers in the world, it is also true that such hypervigilance does less to make our children safe and more to disable them—sending them the message that we don’t trust their abilities to take care of themselves.

I’m not suggesting that we not supervise our children or let them roam around unattended. What I am saying is that, unless they are in actual danger, we should allow them to figure out the solutions to their problems, rather than running in with the cold towel, the Kleenex, or the replacement homework. When we say to them, “I know you can figure this out,” we send a strong message of our belief in their competence. When we say “Poor baby, come here and I’ll make it all better,” what we’re saying is that they lack the ability to resolve the situation and must be saved by us.

This doesn’t mean that they might not require help in figuring out how to solve the problem. But it does mean that we put the onus for the solution on their capable shoulders.
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Encourage reading

For most of the history of civilization, the mark of a person’s accomplishment and status was largely measured by whether or not they could read. If you can read, you have access to all the information and knowledge in the world. If you can’t, you are stuck in a prison of ignorance. Although part of this is no longer true, since the roaring din of modern electronic media can serve as a gateway to some of that information, what television and the movies provide in special effects and glitter, they lack in depth and breadth. So much so that the real danger is forgetting how incredibly shallow and one-dimensional most TV shows and movies are.

A study conducted by Kansas State University, polling over 600 grade-school children, found that “children perceive poor readers as less friendly and less popular than good readers.” Paul Rand, executive director of the Capable Kid Counseling Centers, told Working Mother magazine: “This perception may contribute to the correlation between poor academic performance and low self-esteem.” Clearly, a love of books and an eagerness to read will contribute to a child’s success in all aspects of life, including how they feel about themselves.

The world of books offers such variety and richness, so much more opportunity for the imagination to soar, that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the difference between reading books and watching television is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. Raising our children with a love of books places a tremendous reservoir of possibilities at their fingertips. There are inspiring books that showcase different cultures, career options, and role models; books that serve as affirming mirrors to children’s everyday experiences; fantasy
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books that spark the imagination; adventure stories that engage their dreams; history books that reveal the influence and accomplishments of role models throughout history.

From the earliest age, give your child books. There are cloth books, plastic books for the bathtub, and even chewable books for teething. Children as young as six months old will eagerly flip through little board books. Make reading a part of your daily ritual when your child is still an infant. Before bedtime or another quiet time, cuddle up in bed or on a comfortable couch and read and enjoy books together. It will become a cherished time for both of you.

 

Make success happen

One of the activities my daughter enjoyed most when she was little was playing “Chutes and Ladders” with me. For a long time, it drove me crazy, because this was a game of pure chance: you spun the dial, made your moves, and what happened, happened. It was therefore difficult for me to get at all engaged; just the sight of her running across the living room with the game in her hands and a huge smile on her face was enough to make me want to run. Until, that is, I finally figured out why she loved this game so much—she could beat me at least as often as I beat her!

It was a powerful lesson for me. She wanted an experience of success in a world where it is hard for young kids to experience it. Success experiences are not something that most of us incorporate in our parenting, but we should. For accomplishment breeds the belief that you are capable of more accomplishment, and success breeds an attitude that you can succeed.
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That’s why we need to go out of our way to create situations that will give our children that heady feeling of success. Whether it is games, sports, schoolwork, construction projects, hobbies—it doesn’t matter as long as it provides opportunities for genuine success. In fact, the broader the spectrum of success we can create, the stronger their sense of accomplishment will be. Studies from early-childhood experiences to corporate settings consistently demonstrate that one of the most important criteria for success is believing you can succeed, and that the most important factor in believing you can succeed is having a track record of success. So start helping your child create that track record today.

One easy avenue to encourage this is sports. Success comes in many forms with sports, especially team sports. Your contribution, whatever it is, is important and highly valued by your teammates, coaches, and fans. Second, team sports provide a very concrete and supportive environment within which to learn how to turn mistakes and losses into something on which you can build. You get the experience of working hard toward specific goals; your practice and improvement is publicly encouraged and celebrated; and you learn how to accept setbacks without taking it personally.

Additionally, and often overlooked, is that you get to become comfortable with the strength, incredible beauty, and capacity of your wonderful body, which provides a strong layer of defense against the onslaught of negative body-image messages that besiege young children in our culture. When you have seen, felt, and experienced your body turn on a baseball and send it flying, make a quick elusive cut on the soccer field, crush a volleyball, or hit a twenty-foot jumper, the power and grace you
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feel helps you dismiss the idea that you are supposed to look a particular way.

 

Travel!

As adults, most of us love to travel and readily recognize what an incredibly expanding adventure it can be. But for many understandable reasons, when we become parents, we begin to prune our travel plans into smaller and more homogenized pieces. Yes, it is a hassle to travel with kids, and yes, the kinds of places we want to go and the kinds of places they want to go don’t overlap too often. But we make a big mistake if we simply cut back our outings or keep going to the same kinds of kid-friendly theme parks year after year. What we lose is a truly extraordinary opportunity to expose our children to a whole different part of the world and a whole different way of looking at life.

Travel is a powerful mind-expanding experience in itself. But, by breaking us out of our daily routine, it presents whole new opportunities for interactions and communications with our children that would otherwise not exist. Go camping, go backpacking into the wilderness, trace the path of the early pioneers, drift down the mighty Mississippi and tell tales of the heyday of river trade, visit the early colonial villages in the Northeast and revisit American history, trace the route of the Erie Canal, try to visit countries where English isn’t the first language.

Crack open the invisible boundaries of what “life” is supposed to look like, and let your children experience firsthand the vast richness of the world in which we live. It will go a long way toward making them feel confident and capable of handling themselves in whatever situation they find themselves.
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Yes, it can be a hassle, but with some good advance planning, a willingness to be flexible, and an adventurous attitude, travel can be incredibly rewarding and can result in some of the more memorable moments in your child’s life.

Involve your children in the planning of your trips. Giving them some say in what you see or where you go helps to invest them in the excursion. When you give them some responsibility for part of the itinerary, they not only gain experience in doing research and making decisions, they learn that you trust and care about their involvement.

 

Live and teach values

One of the fascinating recent findings about self-esteem is that simply praising kids—that is, just telling them over and over that they are wonderful—does not build self-esteem. Rather, researchers have found such comments have to be grounded in something real to affect self-concept: “You did a great job on the soccer field, Anna, the way you didn’t get upset even though you missed the ball, but hung right in there and recovered well.”

What this points to is the first characteristic of living with integrity: living from a consciously sincere and honest place, where the words we speak always deeply reflect the truths we feel. This is crucially important when dealing with children, because they have an unfailing “truthometer” for phoniness, contrivedness, or just plain lies. In other words, if we want to affect our children’s self-esteem positively, we must mean what we say, we must be explicit and true in our praise, and we must praise them with sincerity, so that the praise resonates with them.
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The second characteristic of integrity is living from a place of wholeness and completeness, not slicing our lives into small pieces that can be presented or withheld to impress or manipulate. In a world in which more people are consciously or unconsciously playing roles than are actually living from their own deeply embedded truths, integrity is an extraordinary, powerful, and rare thing. When we embrace our own lives, expose the depth of our beliefs to our children, and then actually live our lives consistent with those values, we present children with an intensely valuable model. When we then let them know that we expect the same from them, by encouraging and supporting them in discovering and developing strong values of their own, we give them a precious gift of immeasurable worth. Remember that presents are no substitute for presence.

It’s pretty common these days to find families in which both parents work full-time and feel so guilty about their lack of time with their children that they attempt to compensate by providing the children with lots of material “stuff.” It’s an understandable impulse and, unfortunately, your children will help draw you down this errant pathway, since they love to get “stuff.” But “stuff ” is not what they need, and it sends a very damaging message—that love is interchangeable with, and therefore can be bought, sold, and traded for “stuff.” When that’s the message being sent, suddenly your child’s self-esteem is reduced to how much “stuff” they have and how good it is. And that is a formula that can lead only to disaster.

We live in a world that, for all appearances, values “stuff” more than anything, and it is essential that, in our attempts to transmit to our children the things we truly value, we let them know, in words and in deeds, how absolutely and completely
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wrong that message is. If you ever find yourself searching for the perfect purchase to make up for your busy schedule, stop yourself immediately. The time you spend shopping will be much better spent with your child. And while we’re at it, don’t make a habit of “shopping” with your child as a way of spending time together; the message is far too mixed, and it’s too easy to slide over into the ugly quagmire of love equals “stuff.”

Instead of presents, our children need our presence, our honest and complete focus: I am here with you, not thinking about the chores I haven’t completed, not worrying about work, not distracted, not preoccupied, not emotionally removed—just here in this moment with you.

 

Teach a healthy respect for things

At the same time, be sure to teach your children a healthy respect for the things we need and use in our lives. By understanding what kinds of things are important and useful and treating them appropriately, we can inoculate our children against the insidious cultural addiction to accumulate things and cling to them as if objects were truly a substitute for human connection.

Rather than getting your child a new toy to replace a broken one, try to fix it, or make an attempt to find a new use for it. If a preschooler breaks something purposely—say rips a book or damages a toy—don’t leap to repair the harm. When children realize the consequences of their actions, that they have to live with the torn book or the broken toy, they learn a lesson about value.

To discourage a preoccupation with material objects, model that attitude for your children. Reign in your own itch to consume for the sake of consumption. Treat the things you own
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with pride and care, teaching them respect for the things in your home that have special meaning for you, other than just simply monetary value. Because you use it only on special occasions, you show them that the bowl your grandmother gave you has meaning for you.

 

Avoid insincerity and backhanded compliments

Just as important as making sure that you are truly present when you interact with your child is avoiding that shadowy, “half-there” state of insincerity. The “That’s nice, dear” thrown over the top of the newspaper; the “How was you your day at school?” tossed off more as habit than real interest. Children have the capacity to consume untold amounts of our time, so it is easy to slip into “pretend-response mode” when we put on the appearance of interacting with them, but in fact are not at all engaged. The problem is that, even though it is not intentional, the message being sent is that they are not deserving of our attention.

If you catch yourself slipping into this mode—and we all end up there once in a while—stop immediately and apologize. Explain that it is not a lack of interest in what the child is talking about; it is your own problem, whether exhaustion, distraction, or preoccupation with some particular issue.

Also, be very careful about giving the gifts of positive words and then carelessly tacking on backhanded compliments. These are statements that start out positively but make a quick turnaround and end up doing more damage than good: “You look good, considering all of those chocolate bars
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you ate yesterday,” or “I’ll always love you no matter what size jeans you have to cram into,” or “Great catch, how’d you do that?” The last place our children need to hear backhanded compliments is from us. To reaffirm their growing sense of self-esteem, they need messages that signal complete engagement, support, and unconditional love.

It’s amazing how we get stuck in habits of relating to our children, even when we know better. Usually, it’s because we were treated that way ourselves as kids, and the patterns are deeply ingrained. This is where a spouse or loving friend can be helpful. Ask them to tell you if you have this problem.

Encourage them to be true to themselves

One of the most difficult tasks we face is helping our children live their lives with a strong sense of personal integrity. It’s a difficult task, because, as they head into adolescence, their concept of “true self ” is still only in the formative stages. Each year they grow, they are less and less willing to listen patiently to what we have to say; our replacements in terms of influence are their equally young and ever-changing group of friends.

We know that, when children have high self-esteem, they don’t waste time and effort impressing others, because they already know they have value. It’s implicit. But if they feel needy of the approval of others, they go to great lengths to get it. The desire to be part of a group, to fit in, is normal; the willingness to distort who you are in order to fit in, however, is a clear danger sign.
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Watch for the kinds of compromises they appear willing to make, for signs that they are sacrificing parts of their true personality to fit in. In some cliques, it’s not popular to be smart, and many children “dumb down” to be one of the gang. Suddenly, they may not want to play sports anymore, even though they love them, because “cool children” don’t do that. Or they stop reading and start watching a lot of TV (in which they never used to be interested) so they can relate to the lunchroom conversation better.

This can be a very subtle and difficult call sometimes, particularly because it is natural for middle-school and teenage children to practice putting on different personae as a way of developing their own identities. But if you feel that somehow they are doing something just to fit in rather than from an intrinsic desire to do it, trust your instincts. Chances are you are right.

 

Provide a moral framework

Certainly a crucial part of raising children is helping to steer them away from socially unacceptable behavior and teaching them how to get along cooperatively with others. There is also a good deal of more specific line-drawing that goes on: it’s not nice to hit people, it is rude to interrupt when someone else is talking, and so on.

Unfortunately, most of this “socialization” training is reactive and negative—our sweet little darling makes some social error and we intervene with a no, no, no! What is missing in this scenario is the moral framework that gives reason to the rules. Without that framework, the exchange is experienced by our children as chastisement. Even if they vaguely intuit that we may be right, the predominant experience is one of having been caught up short and read the riot act. This, in turn, engenders feelings[ pagebreak]of shame, guilt, failure, and even sometimes anger and resentment. We may get the message across by virtue of our authority, but the point is lost and the process does more to undermine their self-confidence and self-esteem than support it.

By taking the time to explain the reasons behind the rules in ways that are appropriate and understandable to their ages, we not only honor our children with the assumption that they are capable of understanding and acting accordingly, but we make it possible for them to see that this is not just a reprimand. Rather, we are trying to help them by giving them valuable information.

Rules and reprimands without well-articulated reasons appear arbitrary and an exercise of brute authority. The message is “I’m the boss, you’re the kid; I have power, you don’t.” That message not only does nothing to help children understand the moral underpinning of your judgment, it also undermines their own sense of power and responsibility. Simply by taking the time to explain our reasoning, we allow them to work on the framework of their own emerging conscience, and we reinforce their confidence that they are fully capable of doing so.

Often we say “Because I said so” because we don’t know what else to say. It helps to think about these things in advance of the moment. Why shouldn’t we interrupt someone? Why is fourteen hours of TV-watching not acceptable? If we work through the scenarios in our own minds first, we’ll be able to give answers that make sense in the moment.

h2Help them to consider others

Growing up is an egocentric undertaking. In part, this is inevitable: our children need to develop a strong sense of themselves
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and of their own desires and interests. It certainly should not be surprising, then, that they will, at some point or another, display behavior that is not only selfish but callously insensitive to others. Ironically, however, it is the children who were always allowed to assume center stage, who always got what they wanted, and who were allowed to get away with just about anything that grow into the young adults with low self-esteem. Being deferred to, catered to, and coddled may satisfy some self-centered childish need, but it leaves a child without the experience, resources, or confidence to function outside that distorted cocoon.

Conversely, children who are taught from early on that they are not the center of the universe, and that we all have a responsibility to be concerned about the people and world we live in, tend to have much higher self-esteem. This is not only because their childhood experiences of learning the limits, rules, and responsibilities more accurately reflect the experiences they will be faced with as adults, but because the very concept of being responsible for people and things outside of oneself is empowering. It is, in itself, a statement that you are needed, that your energy and your efforts are important to others and to the world at large. Indeed, a healthy sense of social responsibility can be one of the most powerful components in building a healthy, self-confident personality, because it confers a purpose that is larger than yourself.

Everyone wants to be of use. Help your children figure out how their unique talents can be of use in the world, right now, not just when they’re grown. Is your daughter wonderful with animals? Perhaps she can volunteer at a wild animal rescue foundation. Is your son a great swimmer? Maybe he can teach swimming to disabled kids. Give them the chance to contribute.

 

 

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