A couple of weeks ago, my blog friend Andrea shared an article on Facebook called "Are You Damaging Your Kid’s Self-Esteem?" and subtitled "3 things you should stop doing immediately." In the article, which appeared on popular parenting site Babble, author Jennifer Lehr outlines three seemingly innocuous parental behaviors that she finds so damaging to children that she actually intervenes when she see parents committing these vile parenting crimes. The three behaviors: forcing your child to hug a relative (tells kids their personal space doesn't matter), telling kids to put on a sweater/eat one more bite (either of these has the same horrible implication that kids are too dumb to make decisions based on their own internal bodily perceptions), and tickling children (again, the whole personal space/boundary violation).
I think it's safe to say that Andrea and I both found this author to be way too judgmental and overly analytical about the damaging effects of everyday parental behaviors. Oh, and if you weren't feeling bad enough about your parenting from Lehr's article alone, she has a website called "Good Job" and Other Things You Shouldn't Say or Do (Unless You Want to Ruin Your Child's Life)." Yep, that's right, saying "good job" will literally ruin your child's life. Ditto such commonplace parental sayings as "It's okay" and "Be Careful!"
While each of these sayings has its own post dedicated to explaining the unique way in which it can ruin your child's life, Lehr's main point is that parents often work so hard to spare their children's feelings and boost their self-esteem that we're coddling an entire generation into an inability to handle setbacks.
The same point is made by psychologist Lori Gottlieb in her recent article in The Atlantic entitled "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy." Gottlieb begins her article with anecdotal evidence of some of her psychotherapy sessions with twenty-something patients who described themselves as having very loving parents and very happy childhoods, yet who still felt unhappy and dissatisfied with life. Gottlieb's logical conclusion was not that these young people may have been suffering from depression, anxiety, or some other mental illness that has a physiological cause often completely unrelated to one's upbringing. Nor did she concede that young adulthood is a stressful, anxious time for everyone, and that these particular twenty-somethings chose talk therapy as their coping mechanism. No, Gottlieb's conclusion is that these young people were overly-coddled by parents who took extremes to shield their children from any negative feelings, and the result was adults who grew up completely unable to deal with the harsh realities of life.
Now, I concede that it is possible to raise a child who is so overly-coddled that he or she can't function out in the real world. However, is it really fair to suggest that every little thing parents do to make their children feel good is going to eventually turn these children into completely incompetent adults making a beeline to the therapy couch?
As a parent, I'm just tired of the suggestion that everything I do has the potential to screw up my kid. And when I say tired, I mean literally exhausted. I have become so overly-analytical of everything I say or do that I'm worn out by lunchtime.
The over-analyzing is a result of Too Much Information, and not the kind of TMI where people tell you too much about their bodily functions. We, as parents, now have Too Much Information about all the right ways to raise a child, and unfortunately a lot of this information is conflicting and unrealistic. I'm calling for the "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG" message to be turned down a few decibels.
So, I spent the morning writing a Technorati post in rebuttal to Lehr's and Gottlieb's articles. I worked until 12:45 p.m. writing that article, and I basically parked Nathan in front of the TV the whole time. I also ignored my big pile of laundry and the dishwasher that needed to be emptied. I skipped the gym. My point is, I'm frustrated by how difficult it is to juggle my everyday household responsibilities and my activities of a semi-professional nature. Not that this frustration is anything new, to me or anybody else.
Anyway, at 12:45 I became panicked that I had a doctor's appointment at 1:15 (psychiatrist, in case you needed any more fodder to judge me as a bad parent), and that in the space of 30 minutes I needed to shower, feed Nathan and myself, get Nathan dressed, and drive to the doctor's office. Nathan began demanding a particular Calliou DVD to watch while I was in the shower, and I unfortunately gave into his less-than-polite demands because I was in a hurry and willing to do whatever it took to get me in the shower and out the door in time. During my brief shower I thought about how I had completely compromised my parenting ideals, because I do try really hard to enforce polite, non-demanding behavior, and I also try to send the message that you can't always get exactly what you want. But, I realized, sometimes there are extenuating circumstances -- like you spent the whole morning trying to craft a thorough, well-reasoned Technorati post because even though they don't pay you for those posts you hoped it would somehow further your writing career, and in writing that post you lost track of time and now you have to get yourself in the shower and get to a medical appointment where it's especially important not to look like a disheveled crazy person -- and we don't parent in a vacuum, which means sometimes we say or do things that so-called "experts" might tell you are going to ruin your child.
I'm pleased to say that I managed to take a shower, throw together a couple of sandwiches, and simultaneously drive, eat, and put on makeup, so that we were only a mere 5 minutes late for our appointment to spend 45 minutes in the waiting room and 3 minutes with the doctor.
Now, let me pause here and say that yes, I do see a psychiatrist who prescribes me psychiatric medications, but I don't think I'm a particularly crazy person. I assume that most of the other people in the waiting room at the psychiatrist's office are equally non-crazy, and are just people who have experienced minor mental illnesses that have underlying physiological causes that need to be corrected with medication. Additionally, the doctor works with patients needing pain management medication, and I don't automatically assume those patients are crazy, either. So, okay, I think I have established here that I do not believe that seeing a psychiatrist necessarily makes you a crazy person. But I'm gonna go ahead and say that I think I have experienced more than my share of crazy people in this doctor's waiting room. Now, I concede that I may be more likely to judge somebody as crazy when viewed through the lens of a psychiatrist's waiting room. But whatever the reason, there are some people in that place that I've determined to be total nutters. And today ... hoo, boy.
This one old lady with pink shoes came in and immediately had some kind of conflict with the receptionist in regards to how many patients were in line in front of her. The patient with whom Pink Shoes seemed to be in competition for the next opportunity for doctor face-time was this elderly, pale, trembling lady who needed her husband to be a go-between with the medical personnel. When the whole dilemma got settled, Pink Shoes begins on a tirade about how kids today aren't read to enough, and she taught in the inner city for X number of years, and these kids couldn't read, but boy could they use the computers. This was while my kid was riveted to a Shrek racing game on the iPad, so I automatically felt judged. I wanted to argue with the lady that she didn't know what she was talking about, because actually today's classrooms have incorporated modern technology into instruction, such that learning and computers aren't mutually exclusive. But I've found there's no point in arguing with people like her, and besides she had moved on to asking this guy with a cane what had happened to him, accident-wise.
This led Pink Shoes into a story about how she got into a car accident in 1982 in California, but her insurance didn't cover medical care in California, and, "You guys need to read your insurance policies carefully, because they might not cover all 50 states." Again, nineteen eighty-two.
Then Pink Shoes made a comment to a woman wearing a Las Vegas t-shirt about how her niece lives in Las Vegas, and she is divorced, but having to work three jobs, and the niece hasn't talked to her since the divorce, even though she wrote letters and tried to call.
Next, the trembling old lady is called for her appointment, and unfortunately she trips and falls while getting up. Now, it was thoughtful of the other patients in the waiting room to try to help her get up, but as time went on it seemed obvious that some of the outside parties needed to butt out. When the lady couldn't get up the doctor suggested that she be taken downstairs to Urgent Care in a wheelchair. The old lady and her husband insisted she didn't need urgent care, which of course everybody in the waiting room had an opinion on. One guy even started asking the lady if she knew where she was.
Eventually it became clear that the old trembling lady wasn't going to go to urgent care, so the doctor called her in for her appointment. Meanwhile a city police officer showed up to determine that nobody's safety was being threatened, this being a psychiatric office that had just called Urgent Care. When the receptionist explained the situation, which was obviously not at all dangerous, the cop rightfully assumed he had done his job and left the building. That's when Pink Shoes followed him out. "Oh for crying out loud," the receptionist said.
Pink Shoes came back in and went on a rant about how she's so tired of women's opinions being ignored, and just because you're not a man with "something in between your legs," nobody lets you make your own decisions. I actually wanted to argue that since the doctor and receptionist had given in to the woman when she insisted that she was well enough to skip urgent care, this was actually a case where a woman's opinion was valued above everybody else's. But, again, there's no point in arguing with crazy people.
Plus, at that point Pink Shoes had stated, "You know, I used to live in Michigan."
Now, I think we all knew that she would continue with a comment that explained the segue between sexism and Michigan, but nobody wanted to hear it, so the man with the cane tried to derail Pink Shoes by saying, "Oh, really? What part of Michigan?"
"Detroit," she said. "I worked as a nurse working graveyard shift, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m."
"Oh, I worked graveyard shift," said the cane guy, who had explained previously that he used to be a police officer.
"After about four months I was qualified to be an RN," continued Pink Shoes, who somewhere along the line had told us that this story took place in the early 1950s, when licensing for nurses was clearly a lot more relaxed. "But I wanted to be a doctor," she said. Now, I'm assuming she figured she'd need to go back to school to be a doctor, and not just that she could ask and become one, though honestly she was so crazy and confused that I wouldn't put the latter idea past her. But whatever it took for her to become a doctor was a moot point, because apparently somebody had told her that women couldn't be doctors. Now, I'm absolutely certain that there were some female doctors in the 1950s, although I admit that potential female doctors in the 1950s had very steep odds stacked against them, and I don't doubt that there probably was some jerky male doctor in some Detroit hospital in the early 50s who was of the opinion that women weren't qualified to be doctors.
Nonetheless, whatever happened to this woman in the early 50s, or however she perceived whatever happened to her in the early 50s, did not give her any evidence for this next comment: "It's just not fair for women these days." These days?! That story happened in like 1952.
Anyway, at that point my name was called to see the doctor, so I headed into his office for my semi-annual 30-second chat of, "I'm happy with the meds I'm on, and I'd like more of them."
"Oh, so you're trying to be my easiest patient of the day?" the doctor asked.
"Doesn't seem like there's much competition for that title," I replied.
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