by Pam Leo

“Let us put our minds together and see what
kind of life we can make for our children.”
- Chief Sitting Bull

I often hear people say, “Kids today are different, I would never have behaved that way as a child.” Are kids today different or is it kid’s lives today that are different? In her book The Continuum Concept, Jean Leidloff points out that, “Natural logic forbids belief in the evolution of a species with the characteristic of driving its parents to distraction by the millions.” As new parents we are all told, “Enjoy your children now while they are little.” Yet how much of the day do we spend enjoying our children? Many parents spend more of their day struggling with their children than enjoying them. How has this come to be? What is making parenting today more often a struggle than a joy?

Parenting never used to be, and was never meant to be, a one or two person job. Parents used to have a village, a tribe, or at least an extended family to help care for and spend time with their children. Few families today have the resource of a live-in grandparent, aunt, uncle or nanny. Even when there are two parents in the home at least one of them is gone much of the time. Whenever there is only one adult to care for children, for extended periods of time, there often isn’t the time, attention or energy to fully meet everyone’s needs. Whether a family consists of a single parent and one child; a mom, a dad and three children; two partners and two children or a blended family with multiple moms, dads and stepsiblings, most families need more adult resources.

My experience with children is that when their needs are met and nothing is hurting them, they are a joy to be with. I’ve learned that children do not always have the language to tell us what is hurting them or what they need so they communicate their needs through “needy” behavior. When children are not a joy to be with, their behavior is usually an expression of unmet need. Just as a baby’s cry is a communication designed to bother us and move us to action to meet the baby’s needs, the needy behaviors of children are designed to bother us and move us to action to meet the child’s needs.

Ironically, when children communicate their unmet needs through needy behavior, the action adults often take is to try to change the child’s behavior. As long as we keep trying to change the behavior instead of meeting the need, those needy behaviors persist. If we look at our own behavior when our children’s needy behavior is driving us crazy, we usually find we haven’t spent much time with them and we’ve been too busy and stressed to connect with them. If we look at our behavior when we are enjoying our children, we find that we are spending time with them and not rushing them from one place to another.

There are many reasons why children have unmet needs. Sometimes we can’t hear our children’s needs because our own needs are screaming so loudly. Sometimes we lack information about their needs. Sometimes we have so little trust in our own internal voice that we listen to advice that goes against meeting our children’s needs. Most often, however, the reason children aren’t getting what they need is that our lives are too busy and we don’t have enough time to be with them and enough time to just let them be. One of the reasons parents are too busy is that there is not enough adult resource to do all that needs to be done. The loss of the extended family has been devastating to parenting and to childhood.

Childhood today is very different than it has ever been. . Parents are busier and children are expected to keep the same pace. There are so many more things to do and places to go. Children have to get to day care, preschool, school, games, lessons, and appointments. They often spend as much time (or more) in the car, getting to and from these activities, as they do at the activity. Children are frequently in transition from one place to another. Children need time with their parents and time for unstructured play, time to just be. Kids today don’t get much of that. Most children today spend less time in their home, with their family, than children ever have.

Most parents tell me that transition times are the times of greatest conflict with their children. Getting out the door in the morning and bedtime are often a struggle. It seems the very thing we enjoy about children is also the very thing that drives us crazy about them. Children live in the now. Their attention is completely on what they need, feel or are doing right now. When we are rushing to “get out the door” or trying to get them to bed we are not in the now. We are usually thinking about where we are going and what we have to do next. When transition means children have to leave what they are happy doing to go and do something they may not even want to do, children naturally resist.

The only real conflict that exists between parents and children is conflict of needs. Getting out the door is our need. Getting the kids to bed is our need. When a child’s need to have time with us or time to just be is unmet they know that going out the door or going to bed means those needs won’t get met . When children express their unmet needs through their behavior and that behavior conflicts with parents’ needs the conflict of needs often turns into a power struggle.

This summer many parents told me how much they enjoyed their children when they were on vacation and/or when family or friends were visiting. When I asked why they enjoyed their children so much at those times the answer was always the same. “We had more time and there were more adults to do what needed to be done, so we all had more time for ourselves and more energy and attention for the children.” How can we have more of this for our family in everyday life?

We may have to begin to create more adult resource in small ways. Parents could ask family members and friends to spend more time with our family on a regular basis. We can invite other families to do things with our family and invite single friends to be part of our family. We create an “extended family of choice.” When there are more adults to meet the needs of children there is less conflict of needs and fewer power struggles. Even one hour a week of more adult resource would make a positive difference.

Creating more resource will mean having to ask for support. Most parents find it difficult to ask. We may feel like we are imposing or that we are supposed to be able to do it all alone. None of us can do it well, alone. Time has shown us that. We all have to work together to make it work for everyone. The children who depend on us now to get their needs met will one day be the adults we depend on to meet our needs. They will only be able to give what they have received.

We won’t get a second chance to “enjoy them while they are little.” Meeting the needs of children takes time, energy and human resource. If we don’t create the resource to give us the time and energy to meet children’s needs now when they are little, we will spend the time dealing with their unmet need behaviors when they are big. Childhood is now. The more resource we create, the more everyone’s needs will be met. The more everyone’s needs are met, the more we will all enjoy the children, when they are little AND when they are big.

Courtesy of
Pam Leo
Connection Parenting
Optimal Child Development

Photo courtesy of WSilver

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A Dad’s Point-of-View

by Bruce Sallan

I think the hardest lesson for me in becoming a parent was learning to let go of my expectations for my sons. Okay, I’ll be completely honest; I’ve only been able to partially let go of them. I think it’s impossible not to have some wishes for our kids, but the focus here is really on how we have specific things we hope they’ll like or do that often mirror our own interests or fantasies.

When I was a member of the Big Brother organization it had the unexpected effect of turning out to be a parenting prep course. The “Little” (the term for the kid you are matched with) I had was a young eight-year-old girl who totally didn’t like doing anything physical. This was before I was married, let alone before I became a parent.

In those days, they matched girls with Big Brothers, something that is all too rare today, due to fears enhanced by the media and the exaggeration of sexual harassment. Another topic for another column, for sure, as the little girls without fathers need the “Bigs” just as much as the little boys do, so this is a terrible loss for them.

My image of parenting or being a Big Brother, at that time, was going to the park with my kid and playing ball. The memories of playing catch with my late father are among the few strong memories of my youth. He was a workaholic, by necessity, and I saw way too little of him, although I knew that he loved and cared for me. So, the occasions when we’d do things together stood out as special and I expected and I hoped to do the same with my “little” as well as my future children.

Because she was uninterested in anything physical, I had to be creative in finding outings for us to do, and find things we’d enjoy doing together. As luck would have it, when I did become a parent, neither of my sons was athletic or interested in doing much physical activity either.

At first, this was a disappointment until I reflected on my relationship with my “Little” and realized, as demoralizing as it may have been, that my kids aren’t me. What a shock! They might have interests and desires of their own. Even as young kids they exhibited strong desires that were often at odds with my hopes and expectations for them. The vanity that we, as parents, often feel about our kids is really expressed in these sorts of interests. When your child does do the sports you do, listens to the music you like, and enjoys the foods, movies, and restaurants you do, let’s face the fact that it feeds your ego and is gratifying.

But, that isn’t what parenting is about. It’s about allowing your children to discover their own passions rather than mimicking yours. If you’re fortunate enough to have children that enjoy things you do, then count yourself among the lucky few. But, your job as a parent is not to make a clone of yourself.

I think where it matters, about shared interests, is with our choice of a spouse. I made the mistake of allowing my panic over not being married in my late thirties and my fervent desire to have children, to overlook the obvious differences between my first wife and me. I rationalized our different backgrounds and different interests away, in the name of love. It didn’t work.

There’s a wonderful French movie from the 1970s, which I think tells the simplest and most basic lesson about choosing a spouse. It’s called “And Now My Love,” and was directed by the great Claude LeLouch. Given the tenor of those times and the confidence, one could say conceit of French cinema; only a French director would have taken on the concept of this movie-love at first sight. The entire movie is a tease in which our two protagonists, who we come to learn are made for each other, keep on just missing meeting each other.

The scene that relates most to my assertion that shared interests are needed takes place early in the film, when the male protagonist is taken to prison. He is led to a cell where there’s another prisoner who is making coffee. An older man, he looks up and asks his new cellmate if he’d like to have some coffee and when the answer is “yes,” he asks how many lumps of sugar he takes (back in the days when there were “lumps of sugar”) to which the answer is “three.” The older man looks up, surprised at that high number, and casually replies, “When you meet a woman who also takes three lumps of sugar, marry her.” The young man is startled and asks why, to which the older man again, calmly replies, “because at least you’ll have one thing in common.”

The rest of the movie, which I won’t ruin for you, has him checking with the various women he meets whether they take three lumps of sugar or not. The lesson is simple: having a base of commonality is a key ingredient to the success of a (romantic) relationship.

But that has nothing to do with your kids. They aren’t you and other than sharing the same DNA, they are totally unique individuals. So, if they stray away from the paths you want for them, let it go and support their passions. It’s the passions that dictate our eventual success and life satisfaction. As for choosing a mate, think about the three lumps of sugar.

Please visit www.brucesallan.com to contact Bruce and to enjoy the various features his new Web site offers, including a unique Ask Bruce For Advice section, an archive of his columns, contact info, links to his published work, photo galleries, and reader comments, plus much more. Bruce Sallan was an award-winning television executive and producer for 25 years. Google him if you really want to know more (e.g. his credits). When his boys were quite young, Bruce left show biz to become a full-time Dad. Shortly thereafter his marriage ended and his wife abandoned their children, leaving the State. Bruce found himself a full-time single Dad, in his late forties, as well as a returning single man to the changed world of cyber-dating. It became a classic “sandwich” situation when he also began to care for his ailing parents. He began writing various blogs on the dating sites he used as well as articles for local publications. The goal of his column, A Dad’s Point-of-View, is to primarily focus on parenting and occasionally other issues from the male perspective. Presently, his column is available in over 50 newspapers and Web sites in the U.S. and internationally. Bruce lives in Agoura, California with his second (and last) wife and two boys, who are 15 and 12. Find Bruce on Facebook and add him as your friend. Just be sure to tell him you saw him here.

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