No, your Children Aren’t Born with a Book, but Feel Free to Hit yourself with One

Toward the end of the Second World War, one of my dad’s buddies got an infection. He had a high fever and was in the infirmary. His arm swelled up to three times its normal size. There was no doubt but that this young serviceman would die.

Except that a new kind of medicine, antibiotics, were now available to solders in 1945. My dad’s buddy received a series of penicillin shots. Within a couple of weeks, he was as good as new and back to active duty.

Medicine, which did not exist previously, is now standard care. Information and treatment which were not known were now readily available. Few people with access to adequate healthcare die of infections anymore. Modern medical science also has inoculations. There is no reason for anyone to succumb to measles, mumps, rubella, or a host of other childhood diseases which, until 100 years ago, routinely killed children.

Of course, there are childhood diseases for which complete and total cures do not yet exist.

I would argue that there is an analogy for the new science of parenting–not that we have all the answers, only that we have made some significant progress in the past several generations.

Just like the rusty nail that nearly killed my dad’s buddy 67 years ago, the threats to our children are as obvious today. Before you dismiss any of the following as the stuff of hyperbolic fiction, let me assure you that each of these stories is taken directly from families with whom I am currently working:

Mrs. A smokes pot with her 16 year old daughter. Her “reasoning,” such as it is, involves the following phrase “I know that she’s going to smoke marijuana; I’d rather that she did it at home, with me, where she’ll be safe.”

In actuality, this young woman does not HAVE to smoke marijuana. She smokes marijuana, at home or elsewhere, because her mother allows her to. Indeed, in a very real sense, her mother insists that her daughter smoke pot.

Mr. B. insists that it’s okay for his son not to do any chores around the house. His “explanation” is that it’s just too much trouble to stay on top of making his son take out the trash and set the table.

Denying a child the opportunity to make age appropriate contributions to the family is a mild form of child abuse.

If “don’t smoke pot with your child” and “allow your child to help out around the house” seem like large targets, let me now make the main point of this essay:

The most egregious form of inadequate parenting that I see year in and year out involves not accepting our children for who they are. Which is not to say that we must embrace mediocrity, only that trying to force your scholar to be a carpenter or your carpenter to be a scholar never works.

Replicated research corroborates that high expectations with lots of unconditional affection frequently leads to content, accomplished children. Telling your child with a visual processing issue that he’ll “never amount to anything if he doesn’t read more” does not.

On a deeply personal note, an old buddy of mine–a good friend from my childhood neighborhood–committed suicide recently. I would not presume to suggest what demons allowed him to leave his wife and grown children, my analysis would be so lacking in insight as to be meaningless. I do remember though the unending pressure from his mom that he attend medical school.

I can’t help but wonder though if he wouldn’t have been happier had he felt that his life and his choices were more under his control. Better a happy doctor than a happy mechanic? OK. But better a happy mechanic than a dead doctor, surely.

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I know there are more questions here than answers. Who am I to say that my friend would have been happier had he studied another discipline? Maybe his sadness was unrelated to his profession or to his upbringing. Maybe no one can truly know the inner workings, the “dark three a.m. of the soul” of another.

Maybe the science in which I am interested–parenting–needs another 67 years to catch up to the science of infectious diseases.

As always, your comments are most welcome.