The Good Parent

As  a parent we want to do the best for our children. We want to make sure they are well suited for dealing with the world, that they are good people, happy, well-adjusted, follow the rules, care for others, that they will contribute to society...essentially we want them to go out and prove that we did a good job parenting them!

And yet what is good parenting? How do you learn to be a good parent? Go into any book store and you will find shelves filled with parenting manuals. Here are some actual titles:  The Happiest Baby on the Block (no pressure there!), 1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children (Hmmm, what happens when you reach 4 and they still aren't listening?) and my personal favorite, Toilet Training in Less Than a Day (bwa-ha-ha!!!). These books seem to promise that there are easy, natural solutions to parenting that you're just too dumb to figure out on your own. 

But it is oh so tempting to believe that this is the case; that the issue you are currently working on with your child has an answer.  Find it and all will be well. 

The problem is that every child is different. So what works for one will be horribly ineffective with another. Then there are also other factors to take into account such as the time of day, how much sleep the child has had (or even more important, how much YOU have had) and not to forget where the child lies on the sugar rush continuum. Truth is, never have I felt more unskilled in life as I have at being a parent. I'm not saying that I think I'm bad at it... it's just that my sense of how good I am at it is as stable as Taylor Swift's latest relationship. 

Being a psychologist doesn't help either. In fact, I think it makes things worse! I was always second guessing myself and imagining my grown child maligning me to their therapist that I was a horrible dad cause x, y or z. I remember a story from my family (I won't name names, but you know who you are) where a cousin had to write a biography of her childhood for an education class. She wrote about how she hated the ice skating lessons her mother sent her to. She dreaded them and was glad when they were done. Cue in Mom reading this years later having thought she was doing something wonderful for her daughter only to realize that her loving gesture was setting her daughter up for a peptic ulcer.

I've now come to terms that no matter what I do, no matter how many books I read, how many Nanny 911 episodes I watch, that I will still screw up. It's inevitable. As a therapist I see client after client talking about their parents. Too authoritarian and they rebel and feel unloved. Too loving (yes, that's possible) and no limits, the client feels insecure in how to be in the world. Yes we can aim for that golden mean, but we will still do something that will scar a child for life. I myself have flashbacks to the time my father pushed my face into a bowl of chocolate pudding for a laugh. So even the most innocuous gesture will have an impact, be it skating lessons or three stooges humor. (I am happy to say that I am over my pudding-phobia. It was very short lived.)

So what do we do as parents? Knowing we are going to screw up doesn't give us carte blanche or let us off the ropes of our responsibility. What we do is understand that we do our best. We get over ourselves and our need to prove how good we are to other parents ("No, I have the happiest baby on the block!!") and we work to give our children what they truly need. I'm currently doing a training in an approach to therapy that focuses quite a bit on our early childhood experiences and how they shape us. Developmentally there are certain messages and experiences we need as children to feel safe and good about ourselves. These have become my guiding principles and they are in fact what we as parents need for ourselves too. (Being a good parent means also being a good parent to yourself , but that's a different post).

So from a book called Body, Self and Soul here are the "good mom" and "good dad" messages. The great thing is that anyone can give these to a child so they are simply "Good Parent" messages.

• I want you.
• I love you
• I'll take care of you.
• You can trust me.
• I'll be there for you
• It's not what you do, but who you are that I love.
• You are special to me.
• I love you, and I give you permission to be different from me.
• Sometimes I will tell you "no" and that's because I love you.
• My love will make you well.
• I see you and hear you.
• You can trust your inner voice.
• You don't have to be afraid anymore.
• I have confidence in you. I am sure you can do it.
• I will set limits and I will enforce them.
• If you fall down, I will pick you up.
• You are special to me, I am proud of you.
• You are beautiful and I give you permission to be a sexual being.And you get to choose who you love.
• I give you permission to be the same as I am AND the permission to be more than I am AND the permission to be less than I am.