As you’ve already read, every kid has the same task: figure out who she is—her skills, preferences, beliefs, values, personality traits, goals, and direction—get comfortable with it, and then pursue and live a life that is congruent with it. This is what the renowned psychologist Carl Rogers referred to as self-actualization.
As you also read, you as a parent have an important task as well: you, too, have to figure out who your child is, get comfortable with it, and then help her live a life that is congruent with it. Notice that it’s not your task to mold the lump of clay (your child) into the form you envisioned: she’s not a lump of clay, and you don’t have that kind of power.
But you also want your kid to benefit from your experience, wisdom, and values. In other words, you want to have influence. That influence is exerted through your expectations, which include many realms: family member (e.g., chores, how family members should be treated), health (hygiene, sleep, food choices), student (grades, effort, work habits), member of society (how to treat other people, abiding by laws, responsibility to the community at large), and outcomes (being able to earn a living, function independently). Your expectations can’t be blind, though; they must be matched to your child’s skills, preferences, beliefs, values, personality traits, goals, and direction (summarized hereafter as characteristics). And you’re not the only one with expectations for your child; the world has academic, social, and behavioral expectations too.
Throughout your child’s development, there is a continuous interplay between her characteristics and your and the world’s demands and expectations. The bar is continuously raised; the demands and expectations become more intense and complex as your child grows. And your child’s characteristics evolve over time as well.
Most kids are able to meet most of the expectations that are placed upon them most of the time. But every kid struggles to meet expectations sometimes, some more than others. In other words, there are times when there is incompatibility between your child’s characteristics and the demands and expectations that are being placed upon her.
For example, if a classroom teacher insists that your child pay rapt attention and sit still for long periods of time and your child is distractible and hyperactive, or finds much of the material less than captivating, then there’s incompatibility between the teacher’s expectations and your child’s characteristics. Now, if your child is driven to succeed against all odds, or is eager to please, or has the ability to muster the psychic energy to focus even when she’s bored stiff, or if she’s fearful of your wrath in response to bad grades, she may be able to overcome the distractibility, hyperactivity, and/or boredom, at least some of the time. But if your child does not possess any or many of these characteristics, the incompatibility will remain.
If the peers on your child’s school bus are boisterous and tease a lot and your child is very quiet, shy, and sensitive, there may be incompatibility between the social demands on the school bus and your child’s capacity to respond effectively. If your child has the ability to let things roll off her back, or if she’s able to join up with other kids who are equally introverted, she may be able to reduce or even surmount the incompatibility on the school bus. But if she doesn’t possess these protective characteristics and isn’t able to transcend the incompatibility on the school bus, it will remain.
There’s also incompatibility if your child’s teacher is assigning massive quantities of math homework and your child only marginally understands the material and is therefore having difficulty completing that homework. If your child is tenacious in response to adversity, or has the wherewithal to seek assistance when she needs it and the persistence to seek help elsewhere if the initial help isn’t helpful—or if the teacher is very attuned to his or her students, good at noticing when kids are struggling, and highly skilled at providing help—your child may be able to overcome the incompatibility. Otherwise, the incompatibility will remain.
Notice that, in the last example, dealing with incompatibility isn’t the sole responsibility of your kid. Sometimes a kid needs a partner to help out. And one of your most important roles as a partner is that of helper.
We tend to limit our use of the word helper to those in professional roles—physicians, mental health professionals, educators—but as a parent, you’re in one of the helping professions too. That being the case, there are probably some things you should know about being a helper:
1. Helpers help. In other words, helpers abide by the Hippocratic Oath, which goes something like this: don’t make things worse.
2. Helpers have thick skin. In other words, they try hard not to take things too personally. That way, they can stay as objective as possible and maintain their perspective. While helpers are entitled to their own feelings, they aren’t ruled by them. In other words, helpers try very hard to make sure that their own feelings don’t interfere with helping.
3. Helpers only help when their help is really needed. That way, helpers also promote independence.
Sticking with these themes can be tough. There’s no love like the love parents feel for their children. You’ve been caring for and worrying about that kid for a long time. You were there when she was totally dependent on you as an infant, and you’ve been there through thick and thin ever since. Parenting has provided you with some of the best times of your life.
And also some of the worst, which can make it hard to stay in helping mode, or cause you to try helping in ways that are incongruent with your role as a partner. But maintaining that role is what you’re striving for. Even when your kid doesn’t meet your expectations. Even when your kid says things that are hurtful. Even when, perhaps during adolescence, your kid acts like she doesn’t want to have anything to do with you anymore. Even when it becomes clear that you’re no longer as appealing to hang out with as her peers. You’re still a partner.
Life is far less stressful—and your child doesn’t need a partner quite so much—when there’s compatibility between her characteristics and the world’s demands and expectations. It’s incompatibility—struggling—that stresses kids and parents out and that sets the stage for a variety of disadvantageous responses in both kids and their caregivers.
Yet, it’s also incompatibility that is the impetus for growth and resilience.
In other words, incompatibility isn’t all bad. In fact, incompatibility can be very good. Which is good, because incompatibility is inevitable. The conflict that often accompanies incompatibility isn’t good. Or necessary.
Seeing your kid struggle isn’t fun. The trick is to pay close attention to whether she needs your help to overcome incompatibility or can manage it on her own. And the magic is in how, if she does need your help, you handle things from there.
• • • • •
Let’s rewind the tape a little. The interface between your child’s characteristics and the world’s expectations began the instant she was born. What demands are placed on infants? Without being exhaustive—and recognizing that expectations vary across families and kids—there are demands for self-soothing, regulating and modulating emotions, ingesting and digesting food, establishing a regular sleep cycle, adapting to the sensory world (heat, cold, lights, noises, changes, etc.), perhaps sleeping in a separate bed, and interacting with people (in fairly rudimentary ways early on, with rapidly increasing sophistication as she gets older). If, in infancy, a child has the skills to handle these demands without great difficulty, then, all other things being equal, there is compatibility and things are likely to go fairly smoothly. But if a kid lacks the skills to handle these expectations—has what’s often referred to as a difficult temperament—or if the expectations of the environment are out of whack, then there is incompatibility and a heightened risk for things to go less smoothly.
How do infants communicate that there is incompatibility? Since words are not an option, they do it by crying, screaming, turning red in the face, thrashing about, vomiting, hyperventilating, sleeping too little or too much, and so forth. If caregivers have difficulty interpreting and being responsive to these signs, the incompatibility will likely be heightened.
Of course, infancy is just the beginning of the compatibility/incompatibility journey, of the never-ending interplay between expectations and a child’s characteristics. There are many points in development—we might call them points of vulnerability—at which incompatibility could arise. For example, during the toddler years, the world starts demanding that kids begin expressing their needs, thoughts, and concerns in words. When children start “using their words” in accordance with expectations, there’s compatibility. When children do not develop language processing and communication skills in accordance with expectations, or if the demands and expectations are out of whack, then there’s incompatibility.
In addition to language, another emerging skill kicks in at around twelve to eighteen months: locomotion. Language and locomotion are exciting developments, but they can also contribute to incompatibility. See, long before these skills emerge, children already have some pretty clear ideas about what they want and when they want it (usually right now!), but language and locomotion are what set the stage for them to go for it. In one respect—especially as it relates to a child starting to figure out who she is, get comfortable with it, and pursue a life that is congruent with it—knowing what she wants and going for it is a good thing. But because what she wants and when she wants it may not be feasible or safe, parental influence is really important.
How do toddlers communicate that there is incompatibility? Often with the universal sign of incompatibility: the tantrum. Regrettably, tantrums have given a bad name—the terrible twos—to this exciting time in a child’s development. But the last thing you’d want to do is view early expressions of your child’s skills, preferences, beliefs, values, personality traits, goals, and direction as a terrible thing. Tantrums are simply a signal that there’s incompatibility, not a sign that your child is challenging your desire to have influence. Tantrums let you know that your child needs some help sorting things through and that it’s time to get the ball rolling on teaching and modeling some important developmental skills such as delay of gratification, expressing concerns in an adaptive manner, taking into account the concerns and needs of other people, frustration tolerance, flexibility, and problem-solving. Tantrums are not an indication that your child needs massive doses of Who’s the Boss. If you play your cards right, the terrible twos can be a time of tremendous growth, learning, and exploration. The same can be said for the tumultuous threes. And the fearsome fours. And everything that comes after.
Speaking of what comes after, when children reach the age of three or four, the world starts demanding that they sit still and pay attention for rather lengthy periods of time, that they demonstrate greater flexibility and adaptability, and that they exhibit increasingly sophisticated, nuanced social skills. Sustained attention and self-regulation are among the broad constellation of skills known as executive functions, which are integrally related to a kid’s ability to solve problems, handle frustration effectively, adapt, make decisions, plan, control impulses, and reflect on past experience and bring it to bear in the present. Social skills represent an equally broad category that includes other skills such as sharing, entering a group, starting a conversation, and asserting oneself appropriately, along with more sophisticated, crucial skills such as empathy, appreciating how one’s behavior is affecting others, and taking another’s perspective. Countless additional expectations—some more mundane than others—are placed on kids throughout childhood: potty training; going to and staying in bed at night; getting ready for school in a timely manner; dressing independently; separating from caregivers; mastering spelling, writing, math, reading, and homework; participating in sports; making and keeping friends; and settling disagreements adaptively. Of course, that list barely scratches the surface. Yet the refrain is the same: when a kid is able to meet those expectations, there is compatibility; when a kid has difficulty meeting those expectations, there is incompatibility.
How do older kids communicate that there is incompatibility? As they did when they were younger, through their behavior: pouting, sulking, withdrawing, screaming, swearing, throwing things, slamming doors, lying, or skipping school. At the extreme end of the spectrum, kids may communicate that there is incompatibility by exhibiting behaviors that are injurious to themselves or others, such as hitting, destroying property, cutting, self-induced vomiting, using alcohol or drugs to excess, and worse. And there are many other possible indicators of incompatibility, such as poor grades, lack of interest in school, having few or no friends, excessive use of video games, and so forth.
Adults have a tendency to concentrate too heavily on the signs of incompatibility, typically a kid’s behavior. Many mental health professionals have the same inclination. But behavior is just the means by which your child communicates that there is incompatibility. It’s the fever—the signal. To have influence, you’ll need to see beyond the behavior and focus on identifying and solving the problems that are causing it. Behavior is what’s going on downstream. You want to focus upstream, on resolving the incompatibilities that are causing the behavior.
If a child exhibits enough maladaptive behaviors enough of the time, then there’s an excellent chance she will meet criteria for one or more of the categories that many mental health professionals rely upon for rendering psychiatric diagnoses, which, in general, comprise long lists of undesirable behaviors. We could debate the pros and cons of childhood psychiatric diagnoses—in the interest of full disclosure, I find that they often do more harm than good—but one thing is certain: while a diagnosis certifies that there is incompatibility, it also implies that the source of the incompatibility is the child and therefore increases the likelihood that adults will be focused on fixing the problem child rather than on improving compatibility.
By the way, there are lots of kids who are struggling but don’t meet diagnostic criteria for any particular psychiatric disorder. So you wouldn’t want to wait for a psychiatric diagnosis to be rendered before concluding that there is incompatibility.
Even when diagnoses aren’t being applied, many of the adjectives that are commonly invoked to characterize kids who aren’t meeting expectations also imply that the problem resides within the kid: unmotivated, lazy, weak, manipulative, intransigent, willful, attention seeking, limit testing, disrespectful, to name a few. These characterizations often give rise to many of the erroneous things we say about kids who aren’t meeting expectations. Here’s a partial list:
“She enjoys doing poorly.”
“She enjoys pushing my buttons.”
“She thinks she can pull the wool over my eyes.”
“She doesn’t care.”
“She’s just a bad seed.”
“She’s not working up to her potential.”
“I know she can do it . . . the effort’s just not there.”
“She needs to wake up.”
“Somebody needs to light a fire under that kid.”
“It looks like she’s going to have to hit rock bottom before she’ll want to float.”
These terms and expressions also cause parents to focus on fixing the problem child rather than on improving compatibility.
• • • • •
Let’s talk about you a little. You presumably have a wide range of strong emotions tied up in that kid of yours. You want to be a good parent. You want to do it right. You want your child to feel loved, cared for, and protected. You want to make sure she turns out OK. You want to make sure she’s ready for The Real World. Maybe you want to parent in ways that are similar to the ways you were parented. Or perhaps you’re determined to do things differently.
All parents bring a variety of tendencies and characteristics to the compatibility/incompatibility equation. Here are some of the most important:
• how attuned and responsive you are to your child and her needs
• how you handle stress and frustration
• your level of resilience
• your level of patience
• what you need from your relationship with your child
• the type of relationship you envisioned having with your child
• what you envisioned it would be like to be a parent
• the manner in which you relate to and interact with your child
• how much time you want to spend together
• how much you actually enjoy hanging out with your child
• the extent to which you are pulled away from parenting by work or other distractions
• your awareness of how your behavior is affecting hers
• your sensitivity to whether the expectations you’re placing on your child are reasonable and realistic
As you may have experienced firsthand, kids are not the only ones at risk for being harshly characterized when there’s incompatibility. Society reserves its harshest judgments for their parents: they’re inconsistent, passive, lax, permissive, rigid, not rigid enough, namby-pamby, coddling, overinvolved, underinvolved, overprotective, hovering, indifferent, irresponsible. But viewing parents as “the problem” is as counterproductive as viewing the child as “the problem,” and simply points us toward fixing the problem parent rather than toward improving compatibility.
• • • • •
Now we can begin to bring the different forces together: your child, with her characteristics; you, with your expectations; and the world, with demands and expectations of its own. We know that those forces sometimes produce compatibility, sometimes incompatibility. We’ve also established that the manner in which you respond when there is incompatibility is what will determine whether you and your child are partners, whether you’re being an effective helper, and whether your influence is truly influential.
Question: How did my child get her characteristics? Is it primarily nature or nurture?
Answer: It’s primarily, and always, both. Her skills—and yours, too—are influenced 100 percent by nature and 100 percent by nurture.
There’s the temptation to think of some characteristics, such as those caused by genetic disorders, as solely determined by nature. But the field of epigenetics tells us that while a child might be genetically predisposed to a particular disorder, there are a variety of nongenetic factors that determine whether the gene will be activated. Indeed, nurture—for example, the mother’s level of stress and the substances, good and bad, that she puts in her body during pregnancy—is exerting influence in utero, and even before the child is conceived. And the environment continues to affect the child’s outcome throughout her life.
There’s also the temptation to think of some characteristics as purely determined by environmental factors. There’s no question that trauma, neglect, poverty, family dysfunction, and other environmental risk factors can contribute to or exacerbate certain characteristics, but they don’t cause those characteristics. That’s why kids from the same tough neighborhood or family situation can have completely different characteristics. It’s why kids who have endured similar traumatic experiences have vastly different reactions to and outcomes following those experiences.
The reality is that your child is a composite of myriad characteristics, and those characteristics are influenced by a symphony of environmental and genetic factors. There are no simple explanations for how a kid turns out, though it feels more efficient to pretend that there are. “She’s vertically challenged because her mother smoked when she was pregnant” would be too simple. “She’s misbehaving because her parents are incompetent disciplinarians” would be incomplete as well. “There’s trouble in that kid’s gene pool going back a long way.” Perhaps so, but now you know there’s more to it than that.
Question: Are “expectations” and “rules” the same thing?
Answer: They are roughly synonymous, but the term expectations is preferable. When kids “break the rules,” adults tend to respond in a rigid, punitive manner, so as to compel the following of the rules. But when kids are having “difficulty meeting expectations,” the range of potential responses—as you’ll soon see—expands greatly.
Question: Aren’t there some expectations my kid just has to meet?
Answer: There certainly are some expectations you very badly want your kid to meet. But if those expectations are incompatible with her characteristics, then simply trying harder to make her meet those expectations is only likely to increase the level of incompatibility and move you further away from a partnership.
Question: How early can I begin partnering with my child?
Answer: Again, you began responding to incompatibility when your child was an infant. Your response was influenced by how attuned you were to what your infant was communicating (since she had no words) and how reliable and attentive you were to her needs. Did she need movement to fall asleep? Was she easily startled or awakened by noise? What was the best timing for feeding? Did she want to be held a lot? Did she have a strong preference for sleeping near you?
Yes, being responsive and reliable requires an enormous amount of time, energy, and commitment. When you decided to be a parent, you simultaneously decided to put someone else (your kid) first for a while. That’s what you signed up for. Those first three years of your child’s life do set the stage for much of the development that occurs later, so stimulation—not in the form of a video screen but rather in the form of your face, voice, presence, time, involvement, and attention—is a big deal. You don’t need to be too concerned about giving your infant or toddler too much attention and love.
Is infancy the ideal time to teach your child that the world isn’t always a reliable and responsive place? No—she has plenty of time to learn about that, and she needs a reliable, responsive foundation far more than she needs you to provide early lessons on how unreliable and unresponsive the world can be. In other words, she needs solid roots before she can start spreading her wings.
Question: This idea that incompatibility is a good thing—can you say more about that?
Answer: Expanding on the work of Erik Erikson, the noted psychologist James Marcia has written extensively about the four potential outcomes of your child’s journey, depending on the degree to which she has (a) actively explored alternative identities and (b) actually committed to a particular identity or self-concept (skills, beliefs, values, preferences, personality traits, goals, and direction):
• Identity foreclosure refers to a person who has not gone through the process of exploring her identity or self-concept but rather has blindly accepted the identity that was provided to or imposed upon her in childhood by parents and other significant caregivers. While this person has committed to an identity, the commitment is not a result of her own searching. An example of this might be a person who chooses a certain profession and lifestyle based on parental expectations but who might have gone in a completely different direction had she had the opportunity to explore and get comfortable with her identity.
• Identity moratorium refers to a person who is still actively searching for an identity but has yet to make commitments to specific beliefs, values, preferences, and goals. An example of this might be a person who shuffled between eight different majors while in college but never settled on one and now moves frequently from one job to another. She’s still exploring and searching for her identity.
• Identity diffusion refers to a person who has neither attempted to explore her identity nor made any commitments to specific values and beliefs. This person may be depressed or apathetic, for she has no idea who or what she is, where she belongs, or where she’s heading. She may even turn to negative activities, such as crime or drugs, as it is sometimes easier to slip into a negative identity than to have none at all.
• Identity achievement refers to a person who has both undergone the identity exploration process and has also developed a well-defined self-concept and identity. She knows who she is, what she believes, and where she’s going.
According to Dr. Marcia, what prompts an individual to begin the self-exploration process that is at the heart of searching for one’s identity? Typically, it is grappling with a crisis that gets the ball rolling: for example, the death of a close relative or friend, moving to a new town, attending a new school, being rejected by one’s friends, not being admitted to the school of one’s choice, struggling academically, enduring a romantic breakup, getting arrested, losing or being dissatisfied with one’s job, or experiencing financial pressures. In other words, struggling is often what precedes growth. Interestingly, the ingredient central to a lot of struggling is—wait for it—incompatibility. As David Brooks tells us in his book The Road to Character, each struggle leaves a residue; a person who goes through these struggles is more substantial and deep as a result.
Is it your role as a parent to create incompatibility to ensure that your kid grows, develops beliefs and values, sets goals, recognizes her strengths and vulnerabilities, and moves in a direction? No. There’s no need to manufacture incompatibility; it’s inevitable. Should you feel responsible for ensuring that life goes as smoothly as possible for your child so as to remove all potential for incompatibility? No. It would be equally counterproductive to go overboard on removing the bumps from the road. In a competitive world, can you really afford to let her stumble? In a competitive world, she’d better know how to get back on her feet when she stumbles, because you won’t always be there to lend a hand.
Question: I think I’m OK with everything I’ve read so far, but I didn’t realize I needed to give so much thought to being a parent. I don’t think my parents thought this much about parenting me. They weren’t perfect, but I turned out OK. Do I really need to think this much? Am I really trying to be the perfect parent?
Answer: The goal isn’t to be the perfect parent, especially since that goal is unachievable. Nor is the goal to second-guess every parenting decision. The goal is to think about your role in your child’s life, how to best have influence, and how to foster the characteristics you value most.
Question: It seems like the world is demanding things of kids earlier and earlier in development. Do you agree?
Answer: I do. Apparently, we need to keep up with the Joneses. And not only the Joneses, but also the Finns (as in the people of Finland), because their schoolchildren are doing better than ours on academic testing and achievement these days. Of course, when we get carried away with our expectations—when we push the developmental envelope on expectations—we increase the likelihood of incompatibility. Many kids seem to be rising to the challenge of the intensified timeline on skills (though at the cost of being more anxious and stressed out), but it’s quite apparent that an increasing number aren’t.
• • • • •
We’ve covered a lot of ground in this chapter. Before we meet another family, here’s a summary of the key themes you’ve just read about:
• Your child’s task—and yours as well—is to figure out who she is, get comfortable with it, and then pursue and live a life that is congruent with it. But you also want to have influence, based on your experience, wisdom, and values. Maintaining that balance is the challenge.
• Your influence is exerted through your expectations. When your child is able to meet those expectations, there is compatibility; when she’s unable to, there’s incompatibility.
• The manner in which you go about responding to that incompatibility will have a significant impact on your relationship with your child, how well you communicate with one another, and whether your influence is truly influential.
• Incompatibility isn’t a bad thing; it’s what fuels most growth. It’s also unavoidable.
• • • • •
Dan Fessinger’s day finally ended at 8:30 p.m. He was a partner in a small but busy law firm, and he’d been in meetings and a deposition for seven consecutive hours. He spent a good portion of his very long days battling adversarial attorneys, but it was the path he had chosen as a litigator. As he prepared to leave the office, he looked at his cell phone and saw six missed calls from his wife, Kristin. He rolled his eyes. “Gotta be about Taylor,” he grumbled, referring to their sixteen-year-old daughter. “Do I have the energy for this right now?”
Dan had two older kids from a prior marriage and had a good relationship with them. He had a pretty good relationship with Taylor, too, though she was more prickly and temperamental than his older children had been. But his nonconfrontational disposition outside of the office was at odds with Kristin’s notions about the role he should be playing in Taylor’s life. She often implored him to support her in reining in their daughter, who’d been a handful since birth. “I don’t want her to split us,” Kristin said frequently. “We need to be on the same page.” These days, Taylor was far more communicative with Dan than with Kristin.
Dan settled into his car for the ride home and sighed as he mustered the energy to call his wife.
“Geez, you’re just like Taylor!” Kristin exclaimed when she answered the phone. “You don’t answer your cell phone either! Where have you been?”
“I haven’t had a break since one p.m. Taylor’s not answering her phone?”
“No,” said Kristin. “I don’t know where she is.”
“Well, she could be at the library,” Dan offered.
“She’s not at the library!” scoffed Kristin. “She never answers her cell phone when she sees it’s me calling. She’s probably at Scott’s house.” Scott was a friend of Taylor’s. “And I bet his parents aren’t home.”
“Did you try calling his house?”
“No answer there either. Geez, this pisses me off! I don’t know where she is half the time!”
“She has a decent head on her shoulders,” said Dan, wincing at the anticipated response.
“She does not have a good head on her shoulders, Dan! That’s why I have to watch her like a hawk!”
Dan was tempted to suggest that watching Taylor like a hawk probably explained why she didn’t answer Kristin’s calls, but thought better of it. This is like dancing on a tightrope, he thought to himself. Rebellious daughter, high-strung, anxious wife. Seven straight hours of meetings is a walk in the park compared to this. “I guess she’ll show up soon.”
“So that’s it? She’ll show up soon?”
“I’m not sure what you want me to say.”
“I saw a story on the news tonight. There’s an app that will let me shut down her cell phone if she doesn’t answer my calls. I’m installing it. And I’m grounding her.”
Great, thought Dan. So all the strong-arming that’s led us here will be fixed with more strong-arming.
Kristin was looking for an endorsement, not silence. “We have to be on the same page,” she demanded. “What do you say?”
Whose page? Dan thought. “To tell you the truth, my mind is kind of numb right now,” said Dan. “Any chance we can talk about this after I’ve had some dinner?”
“You better get home and eat quick,” said Kristin. “ ’Cuz it’s not going to be pretty when that kid walks through the door.”