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What does it mean to be the best parent for your kids?

Photo Credit: Suzy Hazelwood
Photo Credit: Suzy Hazelwood

I have been talking about conscious parenting both publicly and within my family conversations for the past several years. I believe I have always practiced being a conscious parent, but I first understood the term itself and felt it aligned with the way I was parenting our five kids after reading The Conscious Parent by Dr. Shefali Tsabary in 2014.

I have been curious about what my parenting has meant to the adult children in my life, so while the oldest three boys were home for Thanksgiving weekend I decided I wanted to ask each of them some questions about their perception and experience around the way they were parented. There is value in understanding my adult children’s point of view of my parenting practice as I continue through the teen years with Mia (13) and Maddux (15). I know I will continue to talk with them and other young adults as I begin writing a book on the practice of parenting with intention.

The videos of each interview range from 5-10 minutes in length. Truth be told, I could have talked with Nick, Allen-Michael, and Brigham much longer because I had more questions, but they’d all been so kind as to immediately agree to be videotaped with me that I didn’t want to push it.

Under each video are additional comments and reflection about the content.

A little background about my relationship with Nick (for those who may not be aware)…he came into my life just shy of my 19th birthday, shortly after I finished my freshman year in college. I had a very upper-middle-class upbringing and getting pregnant forced me to grow up really quickly. When I made the decision to raise Nick, I was asked to leave my family home. I lived on welfare until I could afford to make ends meet with full-time secretarial work, my mom taking care of Nick so I could do that, and support from Nick’s dad.

His dad and I stayed together for the first few years of Nick’s life, but our relationship was very unhealthy and it eventually ended. This forced Nick to go between two very different households for the remainder of his childhood. While I believe Nick’s dad loved him very much, he was fighting a personal battle that often led to abuse of our son. Nick hid this well, and though I cannot go back and change anything about his experience, I value Nick’s honesty in telling me that I could have tried harder to get him to share more about his weekly visits with his dad. In hindsight I recognize it always took 2-3 days for Nick to readjust to being home with us, and to this day I don’t know the extent of what he experienced physically or mentally while in his dad’s care. His dad passed away in 2010 at the age of forty-two and Nick has done a lot of self-work to move forward past his childhood experience and use of alcohol to self-medicate. Though I didn’t know how difficult his teen years were, I do know I often bragged to my friends about how close I felt our relationship was. We have always been close. In many ways we grew up together. Today Nick is sober, married, and happy in the life he and his wife have built together. Nick and I have a very open, easy-going relationship that I treasure.

Allen-Michael and I have enjoyed many deep conversations in his adulthood. At twenty-five his faith (which has actively developed over the past decade) has led him to travel both the country and the world sharing his love of God and Catholicism with hundreds of young people. He is now in his first year of seminary. It’s interesting because at a time when his faith-life was growing in one direction (in the tradition we…admittedly inconsistently…imparted on him during his childhood), mine has taken a complete shift into a deeper belief and development in a spiritual relationship with God that has nothing to do with religion or church practices. The beautiful thing about this is that we both choose to focus on what we agree on (God exists/there is something larger than ourselves going on/we are an extension of God called upon to serve others) rather than the beliefs we don’t share. While (to be brutally honest) I may not have chosen this path for him, it is not about me. The calling he is following is a good example of releasing our need to have control over our children and their outcomes. The kids who came through me will live out their greatest purpose to the best of their ability and my primary role is to appreciate and support them in that endeavor. I know that if Allen-Michael continues through seminary he will one day make a faithful father to many people. It’s a gift to watch him continue to unfold into a gentle yet strong young man.

Brigham (20, a junior in college) has blessed me and our family so often with his free-spirit…he was the most hesitant to answer my questions without knowing what they were first. Brigham has always wanted to know as much as possible before things happen. This phase of parenting, during the college years, can be be most challenging (based on my perspective having parented for three decades through all phases). It’s really a time when what you’ve worked to model and instill comes through in your child’s actions. Brigham works diligently at everything he does, but at the same time, he’s also very go-with-the flow. There are a lot of moments when anxiety about a choice he might make could hamper our relationship if I chose to defer to fear (breeding disconnection between he and I) instead of holding space for any choice he makes because I understand I am not in control of, responsible for, nor do I want to get in the way of his learning for himself the lessons life is willing to teach him.

It is in our greatest challenges that we grow as human beings.

I believe, and have been outspoken about in many ways over the past few years, raising children is our greatest calling and it needs to evolve from one where the emphasis is on teaching and controlling kids to a place where our role is to guide them by learning who it is they are as we parent WITH them. Putting structure and boundaries in place while giving them lots of choices to discover who they are. I believe a mutually respectful friendship is the end goal when they are independent adults. When and if my kids decide to have children of their own, I’d like them to want me to be a part of their kids lives, not out of obligation but because they love and respect the person I have been throughout their lives.

Parenting is about growing you while raising them (hmmm…sounds like the title of a book…), for me this includes choosing to start and stay involved in conversations that may be difficult in order to develop better connections with my kids, it means making my own physical/emotional/spiritual life a priority so I can be emotionally present for others, and it means speaking out and getting involved in the world wherever I can to bring awareness to the importance of parenting with intention.

If I can be of service to you in navigating the parent/child relationship(s) in your life, please email me through this site or text me at 972-689-0250.

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How we contributed to the collapse of parenting

Photo credit: Nick Demou
Photo credit: Nick Demou

Leonard Sax, MD, PhD is the author of an eye-opening book called The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown Ups. He clearly breaks down the pitfalls our generation of parents have fallen into and then gives several actionable, on-point solutions for parents to take away.

Take a few minutes to watch a video I recorded that captures the essence of this book:

There are three areas where shifts from the past two decades have created a major impact on the way we are parenting today:

First, we are now living in a culture of disrespect. There are a few reasons for this…in part because of the shift in our education system from an emphasis on play and socialization skills (things as simple as taking turns, putting things away, and sharing, to more complex concepts like living a balanced life through self-control, and sometimes you will fail so you can learn resilience) to a focus on academic achievement (other countries were gaining academically on our kids, kids in the U.S. were beginning to appear less smart!). This, in turn, began a shift for parents in two ways…(a) they started to receive the message from school that it is more important to be concerned with academic outcomes than social/life skills, and (b) it then fell to parents to pick up the slack and teach/role model the socialization skills. Problem is, we haven’t done it well, possibly because we didn’t have a good example ourselves and/or because we thought the school was doing it.

In addition, media has increasingly portrayed parents in a grossly different light than they did in the 1980s. In that decade, not only did we have less variety on television but parents/family life was cherished and celebrated, parents were the figures kids came to for help, advice, and sometimes consequences based on their actions.

Have you ever watched the Disney Channel? That’s just one example of how parents are either portrayed as nonexistent or made to look like fools in family life today.

Before they are teenagers, our kids now favor the advice and approval of their same-age peers over us. Yes, adolescence is a time of naturally progressing individuation and desiring to be like the group, but it is happening much earlier and to a greater extreme in our culture today. Our kid’s friends strongly outrank us when it comes being on the receiving end of admiration. And while social media has contributed to this, it cannot be blamed entirely. In countless ways we have gone missing in building the kind of relationships our kids can lean into when they face a challenge. In some respects it’s as if we have forgotten our role (or how important it is)…or maybe it’s because we don’t understand the balance between a strict disciplinarian and being our kids best friend.

The ideal while our kids are becoming independent young adults is to get to a place where we are parenting with them and not over them.

Second area of shift in Dr. Sax’s book is that we have a major obesity issue and kids are overly medicated in this country. The rise in diabetes, ADHD, anxiety, depression and a host of other ills can be attributed to three things: what kids eat, how much kids eat (and how often), and the serious level of sleep deprivation kids in the U.S are experiencing. The chapter on this topic is so eye-opening!

The third MAJOR point (though there are so many minor and just as important points throughout the book) is that our kids have shifted from being able to handle losing and failure to becoming fragile and unable to navigate the natural ups and downs life brings. In simple terms, we have done too much for our kids and in our loving efforts to fix things for them we’ve left them cripple and whining and unable to take on [some of] life’s challenges.

But there’s hope!

After pointing out the many ways in which parenting today is showing up differently and insufficiently than it did when I grew up (in the 70s-80s), Dr. Sax gives us actionable solutions. Here is a bullet list of the ones I feel are most important:

  • Eat together as a family (without electronics) as often as possible. It’s not about the quality of the meal…it’s about being together and checking in. This isn’t rocket science, free up some of your nights.

  • Love your child unconditionally…that means they don’t have to perform (get a specific grade, play a specific sport/instrument to your liking, complete a chore to perfection) for your attention or affection. Think back to your own childhood…did you ever feel like you weren’t good enough or loved by your parent because of a grade or skill? How do you feel about that today?

  • Take vacations as a family…and don’t invite the kid’s friends along. This is a time to really create some memories and connection. Think about it, if that’s your goal and if your kid is busy hanging out with their best friend during your awesome trip to the cabin in the woods, then they aren’t fully invested in the relationships that can be built during the break from the daily family grind during rest & relaxation. Vacations, yes! Friends, no.

  • Take the time to really think about what you value and want to instill in your children and then model it and be sure your family life reflects those values. Don’t allow the messages of the culture to dictate what your family will look like. Do not read this to say “be perfect and make no mistakes”…living your values is a practice, we’re parents…not perfect, right?

    One final thought wrapped in a quote from the book:

    “You must help your child to find meaning in life that is not about their latest accomplishment, or how they look, or how many friends they have, but about who your child is, their truest self.” ~Leonard Sax, MD, PhD

    In my opinion you cannot do this without first being very clear on who your are Mom and Dad.

If you’ve read the book I would love to have you add your comment or write to me at realifeparentguide@gmail.com.

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How to draw the line with your teenager

“How the hell am I supposed to believe a word that comes out of his mouth?!”  Her frustration was clear…she was beyond angry with her teenage son because his lying was out of control. She was looking to me to help her understand (a) why he was lying all the time and (b) what she was supposed to do to correct the problem.  This was not only hurting their relationship, but his lies were beginning to wreak havoc on her marriage because she and her husband did not see eye to eye on what to do about the issue.

The first step was to have Mom ask herself why her son might be lying. I told her in order to do that, she’d have to set aside feeling betrayed for a moment and honestly get curious about what she thought he had to gain by lying to her about everything from where he was going to why the money in his bank account was disappearing.

One obvious reason…he may be lying to escape the consequences of his actions, right?  Another possible reason for his lies could be, in his eyes, her son doesn’t feel there is any room in the relationship for him to make mistakes. Maybe his lies started out small and harmless enough, but have now [over time] developed into a situation that he knows causes constant anger, lectures, distrust…maybe he feels there is no going back, or it would be too hard to turn things around at this point.

Either way, I understood Mom’s frustration but needed her to take a step back emotionally to look at the situation from her son’s perspective.  

I run into a lot of parents who believe their teens are doing things to them when in actuality, their kids have made an unwise choice that has consequences they didn’t see coming, and rather than being honest and admitting the mistake (and possibly listening to some intense scrutiny and dealing with the consequences) just continue down the path because they don’t see a way out.

Believe it or not, telling the truth all of a sudden (when asked over and over again) doesn’t seem like a viable option.

If you want your son or daughter to be truthful you’ve got to be open to the fact that they’re going to make some mistakes during this often confusing time in their lives.  And when they do, you’re responsible for creating an atmosphere that allows them to feel like they can come clean and not be shamed.  

When you look back at your own teen years and you messed up, what happened?  Were your mistakes and bad choices met with anger and criticism?  Were you made to feel like garbage…or, did your parent(s) talk with you about the consequences of the choice you made and help you look at where you (if you were able to go back) could do things differently?

You know… so you could actually learn from the choices you’d made.

Because if your parents made you feel like crap for your behavior or choices during your teen years, my guess is you don’t know how to respond to your son or daughter any differently.  You might even feel justified in responding the same way your parents did. 

Ouch, that hurt.

But, ask yourself, if you were doing what your kid is doing at this moment what would be helpful to you?

I’m not saying there shouldn’t ever be consequences for kid’s actions, I’m just saying don’t take everything your teen does as a personal assault against you and your ability to parent.  

This is a time when they are trying things on…everything from personality traits to hairstyles.  

Another area you’ve gotta get clear on as a parent (and as a couple, if it applies) is what your expectations are.  And, just like when they were toddlers, you have to consistently (in word and action) talk about and model these things with your kids.  

For example…lying.  In this family, we don’t lie.  There is nothing you could do or say that would cause you to lose my love, therefore, lying is not an option.  We don’t lie to you (make sure you are telling 100% truth here because kids will wave the bullshit flag with their words and/or behavior if you aren’t on the up and up) and we expect the same from you.  There is nothing you could ever tell me that would be worse for our relationship than my finding out you lied to me.  We can work through anything as long as you tell the truth.

Mom and Dad…you’ve got to live this out and be the example of truth and unconditional love. And if you mess up, own it.  Your teen has to believe you are truly on their side and have a deep desire to set them up for success in life.

No anger, just clarity, and living by example.

Your teenager needs you in their life…be there to guide them, not rule over them and take everything they say and do during this decade so personally like it’s a direct reflection on you.

If you need help contact me.

Contact Information

(972) 689-0250
realifeparentguide@gmail.com