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Effective Parenting Principles

Why do some parents seem to be more successful than others? Some parents have an approach, a style, or attitudes that help their children grow in a healthy, robust manner, even when they have considerable challenges. Other approaches, styles, and attitudes are, more often than not, associated with children who continue to have difficulties and acquire even greater challenges as they move through childhood. I want to summarize some of the approaches and attitudes that parents can bring to family life that will enable their children not only to overcome challenges but also to become warmer, more nurturing, positive, flexible, assertive, and creative as they grow older.

Principle 1: Be Realistic About Parenthood
Sometimes the best you can do is less than your "best." One of the first challenges that parents face, especially parents with more than one child, is how to find enough time to keep their children and spouse emotionally nourished, meet their own needs, contribute financially to the family - and still get some sleep! For most busy families, time is the enemy.

Parents who have achieved a measure of career and material success often are confronted with a shocking realization. For the first time in their lives, they face a situation where it is suddenly impossible to get an A or A+ in every subject at home and on the job. Just a few years earlier, in college or at their first job, the harder they worked and the more they strived, the better they did. Praise from their families, their bosses, and even their spouses, reinforced their own sense of accomplishment. Getting an A on a Shakespeare exam, after pulling an all-nighter, was a cause for celebration and pride. A brilliant marketing report that took time that otherwise would have been spent on a weekend at the beach but drew the admiration of their colleagues was also a source of enormous satisfaction.

But now let's shift the scene: that marketing report is due, but you have three children, all under age ten, who are clamoring for your attention. Your husband or wife is complaining that there has been little time for talk or real intimacy. As you look ahead at the next forty-eight hours, you realize that there is no way you can have special time with each child, take some relaxed time for intimacy with your spouse, and win an A+ on the marketing report. You face what seems to be a harsh choice: you can elect to get an A+ on that report, but get an F from your spouse and children. Or you can get an A+ from your children and your spouse, but rate an F on your marketing report and perhaps even run the risk of getting fired. Let me suggest a third alternative: you can try to fit everyone into some kind of reasonable balance and get Bs from your children, spouse, and boss.

What? Deliberately strive for only a B?

Most people, as they enter the excitement of marriage and the fulfillment of parenthood, rarely confront this reality. Yet if a parent is to be fair to everyone, and not end up neglecting either children, spouse, or employer, she may have to consciously strive to do only a good-enough job - perhaps for the first time in her life. In real life, being a healthy, nurturing parent to our children sometimes means that, depending on family and work circumstances, you may have to deliberately stop short of your best in order to ensure that your spouse and children get their fair share.

In many families, this is not the issue. Instead, parents may need to put family life and work life in some reasonable priority in relation to hobbies and relaxation. Or the pressing issue may have to do with reducing wasted time or becoming more efficient in work or household chores. Sometimes the issue is simply finding ways to spend time alone with each child and one's spouse. Do you drill your second-grader on his spelling so he'll get into Harvard? Or do you enjoy the castle he's building and leave the spelling until the weekend? You know what I recommend! Similarly, after a busy week, do you and your spouse go to the big party given by an investor in your firm? Or do you steal a few hours to be alone together?

Whether these kinds of decisions about the use of time are simple or complex, the key challenge here is to anticipate, to look at the true opportunities of parenthood, which include opportunities for real closeness. That requires time and consistency. You need to take an honest look at that, alongside your other responsibilities and pleasures. Anticipate and plan, and don't shortchange the very reason for much of your hard work: providing your family with what they need.

Principle 2: Give Your Child the Most Precious Gift of All - Your Time (Floor Time)
Real nurturing, which has nothing to do with money, presents, books, or expensive schools, involves a much more distinctly human commodity - your ongoing supportive and empathetic availability. Not only is being there the essence of parenting, but it is also the foundation on which you can build all the rest - the skills you teach, the expectations you build, the limits you must set. By "ongoing," I mean daily - not weekends only, or two nights a week - but every day (with an exception here and there).

The best way to spend this time together is what I have described earlier as floor time. This is the special unstructured time that you set aside for yourself and each child. During this time, about thirty minutes a day at a minimum, you get down on the floor with your child, trying to "march to your child's drummer." Obviously, with an older child, you might not literally be on the floor. But the goal, no matter where you are or what you are doing, is to follow your child's lead and tune in to whatever interests your child. The idea behind floor time is to build up warm, trusting relations in which shared attention, interaction, and communication are occurring on your child's terms.

Sometimes when I explain this concept to parents, they insist that they are already providing a great deal of nurturing. Twice a year, or sometimes even as many as four or five times a year, the family goes on a wonderful vacation where they spend a lot of time together and have great fun. Countless families, when I have asked them about the daily "chicken soup" nurturing part of life, respond with descriptions of idyllic vacations and the closeness they achieve. When I inquire further, I find that sometimes the mother and father's relationship can indeed be sustained by these interludes. But when I talk to the children in such families, I usually hear a different tale.

"We had a great vacation," they say, "and Mommy and Daddy were both relaxed and we all had fun. But I never see them when I need them - when I'm frustrated with my school-work, when my friends are mean to me, when I get scared and worried, when I feel lonely. That's when I need them."

One child said, with a sigh of resignation, "I guess I can learn to live without them." Interestingly, this child's mother was insistent about the extraordinary amount of nurturing in the family. She described the fact that they had dinner together as a family at least one night a week and did a weekend activity on Saturday and Sunday. But she also described a very busy week, during which she got home at about 7 o'clock at night and her husband got home at 8:00 or 8:30. There was time only for some brief help with homework, a quick bite to eat, showers, and bed. The mother proudly pointed out that this was far better than all her neighbors, who didn't have even a single family dinner together during the week and didn't do things together on weekends. Further, she noted that many of the other fathers traveled during the week. She and her husband were home - albeit late - almost every evening. This mother also remarked that perhaps the standards had changed since when I was growing up; in those days, people expected there to be some family time each and every evening. But now that just wasn't the norm anymore. Yet her son still felt lonely and depressed, resigned to "living without them."

Some children, perhaps, can cope with this apparently changing standard, which seems to occur most in fast-paced, expensive cities, where many families have two working parents who arrive home past dinnertime. Our challenging children, however (and even many children who don't have these challenges, I should add), can't get along in this new schedule. We need to make sure we listen to them as we as parents redefine our expectations for ourselves.

In recent years, there has been a tendency to downgrade that part of parenting that children need most: a parent's nourishing availability. Depending on their personality and particular challenges, some children need this to an exceptional degree.

A touching experience I had with one family speaks to this point. Both parents were busy professionals, and their daughter fit the description of a self-absorbed child. Her motor tone was low and there were slight receptive language problems. Thin and frail, she was a sweet, almost angelic little girl who could easily become withdrawn - repetitively playing with some toys and hardly uttering a sound. She rarely made any demands. I saw her initially because of her language delay and tendency to withdraw from other children. With a rigorous and energetic program, she quickly became more outgoing, happy, and verbal, and showed that, behind her apathy and tendency to become self-absorbed, she was a bright and creative child.

She made steady progress until her parents decided to move. With her parents absorbed in the packing and unpacking, she began to regress. They brought her in to see me, alarmed that she had retreated so severely. When I saw her, I was also very concerned. All of our progress had been undone. She was turned inward, muttering to herself - now it was hard even to get her to look in my direction, let alone talk to me. Her parents reported that, at home, she was moping, hardly speaking, and seemed only to babble incoherently at her dolls.

I asked the parents to participate in a "family vacation" in their new home. The father was about to go on a three-week business trip. I asked him to cancel the trip, even though it would be very difficult for him to rearrange his plans. He needed to provide a consistent and a high degree of floor time to woo and re-engage his daughter, intensifying a pattern that we had used originally to pull the little girl back into the world. I asked her mother to ignore the unpacking and her professional work for a few weeks to participate in this "family vacation."

The family followed the suggestions and, three weeks later, returned to my office. I was amazed to see their daughter not only back to her sparkling, enthusiastic new self, but also being even more verbal and assertive and sophisticated in her language than she had been even before she had regressed. Her parents beamed with pride, relieved that their daughter's regression had only been temporary. But now they faced a real dilemma. They saw the power that they had in their hands and within their own nurturing capacities. The father was confronted now with taking the trip that he had put off. The mother was planning on getting back into her own professional activities, as well as fixing up the new house. But they both said that they had never thought that their daughter could go this far so fast. "She's learning at a faster rate than she was even before the move," said her father. "We don't know what to do now that we see how she responds to more time with us."

This father's job still called for frequent travel, and the family was going to have a difficult time deciding whether to resume their old ways and risk slowing down their daughter's progress. They wondered whether they should somehow try to maintain this rather exceptional growth spurt they had created with their own warmth and availability.

What would you do in their situation?

The point of this story is that when children have special challenges, choices are not going to be easy. While a family vacation can't go on forever, parents must become aware of the potential power they have and the choices that are possible. In that way, they can weigh all the factors and make an intelligent choice.

Principle 3: Be Sensitive to Your Child's Physical Makeup
Each child, as we have discussed, has a unique physical makeup. This constitution, in and of itself, doesn't determine your child's personality. But it is an important contributor to her behavior and how you may react. How you react and interact with your child will play a large role in determining the type of person she is. The more you can identify your child's unique physical traits, the more you're able to relate to your child in a way that creates the warmth, spontaneity, and sense of mutual regard that is likely to build self-esteem and security in both of you. You need to understand your child's sensitivities, characteristic reactions, weaknesses, and strengths so that you can empathize with her feelings and find ways to communicate and enjoy each other.

See if you can draw a mental picture of your child's unique sensitivities. A child's reactivity to touch, sound, sight, and smell, and her response to movement can play a big part in determining how she relates to you and the rest of her world. For example, some kids respond better to firm pressure - such as in rough-and-tumble play. Other children prefer light, soothing touches. I encourage you to experiment. Try different intensities of sound and different rhythms. A child who is highly reactive to loud noises may respond well to humming or soft music, for example. Another child may respond well to more dramatic sounds - such as a louder-than-usual voice. Some children like low-pitched sounds, while others prefer high-pitched ones. Watch how your child reacts; if she looks annoyed, frightened, or confused, that will tell you a lot. A child who has difficulty processing what she hears may need simpler words and sentences than a child who is more gifted in this area.

You can also experiment with sights. The level of brightness or dimness in a room, the intensity of the colors and even the amount of animation in your face can affect a child who is sensitive to sight.

You can also try different physical activities with your child. Some like slow, rhythmic movements - such as swinging or being rocked gently. Other children do better when moving rapidly - running or racing down a slide. A fussy baby who is sensitive to movement might be soothed by resting her on her stomach, over your knees, while you apply firm pressure on her back and gently move her back and forth. Another child may do better in an upright position, resting against your chest with her head in the crook of your neck. Similarly, some older children focus best when moving around, while others do best when still. Some children, for example, can only learn while doing. They seem to be able to attend and focus better while involved in large-muscle activity - jumping and skipping. For some children, jumping on a bed or a trampoline may foster their ability to attend and engage. Other children, on the other hand, can best attend while sitting still.

Many children who are highly sensitive to touch, sound, light, or movement may be able to focus best when they are in charge of the interaction pattern. The more they are in control, the better they can regulate and monitor all the sensations coming at them, so that they aren't overwhelmed.

It's also helpful if you can draw up a mental picture of your child's muscle tone and motor-planning abilities. High or low motor tone or difficulty with planning action sequences can make it difficult for youngsters to pay attention to the world that surrounds them. A baby with high tone may have difficulty getting her hand to her mouth, for example. As a toddler, she may knock over things while trying to grab something.

A child with low motor tone may tire easily, which means that it requires a great deal more effort for her to do routine activities. Exercises, such as having the child lie on her stomach and pretend to be a boat (rocking back and forth while arching her back) or playing the "bird game" (the child wraps her feet around her parent's waist, arches her back, and flaps her arms as her parent spins around), increase tone, strength, and stamina.

Motor planning can be supported by simple games involving a sequence of actions. For example, you might play "copy cat" or "Simon says" or a game of putting objects in certain places or taking them out. Games that require a child to change direction rapidly, such as a chase game, are also helpful.

If you have a mental picture of your child's way of reacting to sensations, ways of processing sensations, and ability for planning and sequencing her actions, it puts you in a position to find the types of interactions that will foster mutual pleasure and joy, a sense of mutual competence as well as pride and respect. Also, you're then less likely to overly personalize your child's traits ("She's just nasty and stubborn," "She doesn't like me," or "She's just like her father/mother").

Instead, you will be better able to understand and empathize with your child and (when necessary) create structure and limits. These abilities will become the basis for real progress and family harmony.

Principle 4: Work Toward a Problem-Solving Orientation
You want to help your child anticipate, practice and, slowly but surely, master behaviors and activities that she finds difficult. Children with sensitivities, that is, "regulatory difficulties" in any of the areas we have discussed, need extra anticipation and practice in the vulnerable areas. If they are sensitive to touch, sound, smells, or movement patterns, those are the very areas where they need gentle, loving practice.

Daily problem-solving discussions between parent and child are enormously helpful. For example, when the two of you discuss what will happen the next day in school, you can help her anticipate the feelings she is likely to have, and how she usually behaves in response to those emotions. You can then ask her to picture her feelings and usual behavior as a way of figuring out what she might expect in the future. This reduces the sense of surprise or shock and helps her feel prepared, even for uncomfortable situations and sensations.

Many parents, teachers, and mental-health professionals carry out this exercise, but they focus only on the situation and the behavior ("When it's circle time, you tend to sit in a corner by yourself"). But they forget to account for the child's feeling ("When you are in circle time, you feel . . . how?"). The child who can talk about feeling scared ("Like I can't breathe" or "Like my brain doesn't work") will have a big advantage over a child who discusses only the situation and her behavior. Her ability to understand and verbalize how she feels in a situation gives her much more flexibility in coping with that situation. Helping a child picture her feelings is not easy. We often want the child to feel as we do or as we wish she felt: "Don't be mad, be appreciative." "Look on the bright side." But it is far more useful to help your child express what's really on her mind. For example, when Molly missed her daddy at night while he was on a trip, it was much more helpful to picture what daddy was doing and how much she missed him (with a big hug from mom), than to tell her to think about "something else" or to reassure her too quickly how much he loves her.

One child built a little block design of where her father was going and would fly in her pretend airplane to visit him and imagine what he was doing. In addition, dad called every night and talked to each child in the family. The security of their father's real voice, coupled with the pretend visits, which included feelings of missing and even jealousy, created the elements of successful problem solving. In addition to mental anticipation, actual practice can be helpful. Trial runs of the tough test - the difficult confrontation on the playground, the fast-moving soccer game, speaking out in class - can really help a child. For example, a preschooler who has difficulty being in groups because of the noise and physical contact needs some careful preparation. She may benefit from first being comfortable with one child through lots of play dates. Then expand her contact to two children, then three, and finally the larger group. In this way, she can get used to the jostling and noise of numerous children. Practicing with a small group in the security of her own home, with a parent present, will help her anticipate the situation. Having a few children actually sit in a circle at home and listen to a story will be helpful. Then, when she has to sit in a group of children at school, without a parent, she may feel more comfortable because she has had a chance to practice and anticipate the challenges. She can even practice in nursery school with a small group of children before joining the bigger group. The eight-year-old who looks confused and lost on the soccer field because of all the movement and large, overwhelming spatial expanse may require lots of practice with dad or mom in a much smaller backyard with only one or two other players.

As a general rule, in helping children with this problem-solving preparation in both fantasy and reality, always make sure to follow the axiom "Infinite patience and practice in an area where your child is challenged." For the child who has difficulty spelling, infinite patience. For the slow reader, infinite patience. For the awkward basketball player, infinite patience. And for the child who tends to space out and be passive (who also may have a low motor tone and thus looks like she isn't trying), be even more patient. If you have always expected a lot of yourself and can't stand it when your child doesn't seem to be trying hard enough, ask yourself that critical question - is she naturally gifted in this area, or is this an area that involves challenges? If it involves challenges, turn your desire for perfection into a new kind of perfectionism - a drive for perfect empathy and patience. Patience does not mean that you let your child avoid challenges. It means that you find creative, enjoyable ways to challenge your child to practice what is hard. If you create pressure and tension around your child's challenges, she may become more, not less, unsure of herself and may tend to become self-absorbed, passive-avoidant, disorganized, impulsive, fearful, sad, or defiant. On the other hand, if you inspire your child with enjoyable challenges and a patient approach, you may see cooperation and mastery. In short, if you need to put pressure on your child, do it in areas where she is naturally talented. If you want your children to overcome challenges, you need to be supportive, patient, and help your child practice, practice, practice. Remember the three P's!

Principle 5: Empathize with Your Child
If you don't have the same sensitivities, it can be hard to imagine how overwhelmed, disorganized, or fragmented a child who is experiencing sensory overload may feel. When a child feels overwhelmed, she often develops fantasies about her sensitivities. When voices are too loud, she may assume that people want to hurt her, for example. If she has difficulty interpreting words and gestures, she may feel that people are trying to manipulate or trick her. It is important to let your child sense that you can understand both her fantasies and also the fact that she feels overwhelmed.

You can display understanding not only with words, but also with gestures. That is especially helpful with a baby or toddler. A reassuring "I know it's scary" look can convey a lot of reassurance to a frightened child. That doesn't mean you aren't exceedingly firm when your child is aggressive. But, even here, you try to balance your firm limits with empathy for the underlying feelings - for example, "I know you're feeling like everyone is being mean to you. And you want to be mean back. And I know all that noise doesn't help. But you still can't hit or hurt anyone." At times, obviously, limits need to be backed up with restraint or sanctions. It's easier to identify with a child's desires for closeness or her fearful feelings. It is harder to be empathetic with anger and rage. And it is especially difficult, as indicated, to put yourself in the shoes of a child whose physical experiences are very different from yours. But over time, by listening sensitively to your child and observing her facial expressions and gestures, you can get a sense of what her internal world feels like. Not only will this allow you to be more helpful to your child, it will also deepen your relationship.

Principle 6: Take It Step by Step
A child with sensitivities requires many tiny steps. She needs to put one toe in the water at a time. If the first step is not manageable, it can be broken down into ten smaller steps. The critical challenge with a challenging child is to overcome her sense (and, often, your sense) that she is standing still or even moving backward, and to dispel the idea that she has to accept feeling inadequate, incompetent, or overwhelmed. You want to help her achieve some forward momentum, no matter how small it is, so she can feel a sense of mastery. It doesn't matter how small the steps are, so long as she moves forward. The harder the challenge, the smaller the steps have to be. The skill of a parent is to turn a seemingly insurmountable challenge into small enough steps to begin forward progress. Whenever step A seems too big, don't give up - break it down into even smaller steps.

Principle 7: When Necessary, Use the "Carrot" and Firm Limits
In general, most challenging children need both warmth and nurturing (the "carrot") along with structure, responsibility, and discipline. With challenging children, it is especially important that discipline always be gentle and respectful, while also being firm.

Most families tend to move to one extreme or another. If they are emphasizing discipline, anger and annoyance are more in evidence than nurturing and support. If they focus on the "carrot," there is often little structure and discipline. Typically, as one increases, one decreases. This occurs not because it benefits the child; we do this because it is very hard to be nurturing when we are angry, and it's very hard to be firm and disciplined when we are feeling loving or guilty. Yet most challenging children require more of both the "carrot" and firm limits. Because of the nature of their challenges, they need extra experience with both of these crucial emotional experiences.

Increasing support and nurturance and structure and discipline together is no easy task. It requires consistent effort and self-reminders. Whenever you feel like you have gone too far in one extreme or the other, remember this important principle and try to increase your use of the other method as well. It also helps to remember that the more challenging your child, the more you are asking of her. And the more you ask of your children and expect of your children, the more you should be prepared to "give" them. Giving, in this context, means empathy and warmth and flexibility as well as discipline and structure.

In the principles we have just reviewed, you have no doubt seen that I believe that each of a child's challenges, however difficult, also presents a wonderful opportunity. By addressing the challenge, parents can nourish their child's sense of humanity and unique personality traits.

My approach, which sets out to do more than simply help a child over a particular hurdle, is based on the notion that children are not made up of a series of isolated traits, sensitivities, or behaviors. A child is not simply aggressive or impulsive or scared or sad or overwhelmed or inattentive. These are individual features that are part of a larger and more profound growing person. All the efforts recommended here seek to enhance children's warmth and relatedness, sense of calm and security, capacity to use their imaginations, the ability to experience a wide range of age-appropriate feelings, and the ability to be logical and thoughtful and use good judgment.

My understanding of mental health and mental illness, in fact, derives from this broader sense of a growing person. The person who can engage in age-appropriate relationships, thoughts, and activities, and can embrace all of life's important feelings - from love and warmth to assertiveness - is emotionally healthy. Sometimes particular traits - such as being introverted or extroverted, cautious or inhibited, or bold and risk-taking - are mistakenly viewed as signs of mental health or illness or as ends in their own right. When we think in this way, we lose sight of the larger experiences and abilities that define mental health and our humanity, such as our ability to be loving and empathetic, or our ability to experience the full range of human feelings, or our ability to switch neatly back and forth between fantasy and reality. If we zero in on limited traits, we tend to develop intervention strategies that seek to work only with isolated kinds of behavior, or we resign ourselves to lifelong limitations. We lose sight of the fact that a person can be cautious and thoughtful in some situations and exuberant and active in others, or that a person can be outgoing and bold and still be loving and sensitive to others. How well we perform as parents or how well we function in our careers will depend much more on our emotional flexibility and overall coping than whether we tend to be cautious or bold. In fact, the more flexible we are, and the better we can think on our feet, the more we will be able to call upon a range of traits, depending on the situation, even though one approach may be a bit easier for us than another.

Some psychologists have suggested that individuals who tend to be more shy and inhibited are somehow less well endowed constitutionally than those who are outgoing and extroverted. They support this thesis with the suggestion that inhibited, shy individuals experience more anxiety or depression. But they fail to look at what happens to extroverted, outgoing individuals when they grow up in unfavorable family circumstances. More outgoing individuals may, under stress, resort to acting-out behaviors, such as speeding in a car or making rash decisions in business. In addition, the individual who is more prone to acting out may tend under pressure to become more self-absorbed or narcissistic, even while appearing on the surface to be very gregarious. They may have difficulty with intimacy and relationships.

Also, keep in mind that certain traits tend to be valued at different ages. In early childhood, the shy, reflective child who is having trouble joining the group is certainly not viewed as positively as is the seemingly outgoing, confident child. Yet, twelve years later, in college, the shy, introverted child - now a young adult - may be getting A's and enjoying warm relationships because she is so empathetic and understanding of other people. She may be capable of focused contemplation and of high-level mental activity. The outgoing former leader may have difficulty slowing down, being reflective, and studying, and may be insensitive in a close relationship. At this stage, the sensitive, thoughtful person is valued over the action-oriented, gregarious individual.

Obviously, I have painted some extremes in these examples, but I have done this to make a point. We shouldn't confuse individual personality traits with bigger and more encompassing personality capacities. The capacities that make us emotionally healthy have to do with our ability to give and accept intimacy and warmth, with empathy, with communicating in close relationships a wide range of feelings, and with emotional flexibility - as well as an ability to solve problems. If family and developmental experiences are favorable, shy, introverted individuals and outgoing, extroverted individuals can achieve these larger, healthier capacities. Unfavorable experiences place stresses on both types of individuals so that they rely on unhealthy coping strategies, such as depression, anxiety, acting out, and self-absorbed behaviors.

Interestingly, each set of traits makes certain things easier and certain things harder. And each type of person has to master what for her will be the most difficult in order to achieve optimal flexibility. For example, our sensitive and shy person, with proper experiences, can learn to operate in a relatively outgoing and confident manner, while at the same time holding on to her strong introspective and contemplative skills. Our outgoing, action-oriented person can learn to be sensitive to her own and other people's feelings and to slow herself down enough to concentrate and be involved in high-level mental activity.

Sensitivity and action orientation are only two possible personality traits. I have also described children who tend to be self-absorbed, defiant, or inattentive. For each child, there is a pathway for developing the abilities needed at home, with friends, and at school, coupled with the capacity to experience a wide range of age-appropriate feelings, thoughts, and relationships. The key is to remember that the growing person is more than any one trait and that each person has different ways of achieving her most important capacities: to attend, communicate, relate, empathize, and think creatively.

While for many, following the principles I have just suggested will seem like a formidable task, remember that we, as parents, are growing along with our children. Each challenge, each new developmental milestone, is an opportunity not only for our child's growth, but for our own growth as well. By the fact of being human, we are neither perfect nor automated. Our gift is our emotions. And our emotions will overwhelm us at times and thrill us at others. As we grow with our children through the daily trials, tribulations, joys, and pleasures of life, we can only make one simple demand of ourselves: to learn from our experiences. We need to recognize that our powerful emotions, which are the basis of many of our mistakes, are, at the same time, also the foundation of our triumphs.