Parenting Strategy 9:
Create Space for Joy, Humor and Spirit
BY ARLENE F. HARDER, MA, MFT
“We read books, consult experts, and follow the pressure to arrange endless enrichment opportunities because this hyper-parenting style is touted as the right way to raise kids. Actually, it is unbalancing our families, damaging our marriages, and contributing to unhappy, overstressed children being diagnosed as learning disabled, ADD, bipolar, and depressed, as well as to adolescents getting involved with premature sex, drugs, and alcohol.”
—Alvin Rosenfeld, MD, author of The Overscheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap and founder of National Family Night
“With time short, moms often focus on 'what's important'—catching up on kids' news, helping with homework. Yet in our tense society, children crave something more—a good time with Mom. It doesn't require an enormous amount of time, only a playful spirit, a willingness to let a homework session turn a bit silly or a chore get transformed into a game. . . . Motherhood is a big job, but it's not meant to be a burden. Sometimes you may need to be a little less responsible—to let go of your demands on yourself and have fun with your children."
—From “What Kids Really Need From Mom” by Joyce Brothers
Prickly City is a comic strip by Scott Stantis about the friendship between Winslow, a coyote pup, and Carmen, a straight and narrow kind of kid. In one strip this spring, as they are jumping from rock to rock near a small town in the American Southwest, Winslow asks Carmen, “So, what are you planning to do this summer, Carmen?”
She answers, “Hang out. Watch Clouds. Skip Rope. Just be a kid.”
His response? “Sorry, that’s not on your schedule.”
A Hurried Childhood Misses the Point of Childhood
Carmen’s plight is that of many children—and of their parents. Increasingly, today's children are denied the carefree innocence of playing openly, freely, and without an agenda imposed by adults who are, themselves, over-extended, stressed out, pressured, and anxious because they have more on their plates than they can possibly finish. Nevertheless, forgetting children learn more from watching us than from lectures about the need to just "be themselves," we hurry them through childhood. We make sure they get lessons for any musical instrument they might have casually mentioned they liked. We buy shin guards and a uniform for soccer, convinced they need the experience of teamwork and competition, even if they don’t like playing the game. We sign them up for any activity we think will stimulate their minds and give them a jump start on life's challenges.
Any child can tell you who is the neighborhood's most active "superkid," the one can be counted on to outshine his classmates in almost every activity and who brings a frequently sought-after social status to his parents. Wanting their child to be seen as a superkid, or at least not be viewed as a laggard doomed to failure in life, parents increasingly fill every moment of their child’s day with “meaningful” activities, preventing her from achieving one of the most important goals of childhood—learning what it means to be a child unencumbered by pressure to achieve goals that are not age-appropriate.
And just what is such a child? Such a child is a being who is exquisitely designed to discover the magic of life, the joy of solitude, the small pleasures hidden in unexpected places, the thrill of playing for no other purpose than to play, the delight of pondering what the world would be like if we were all ants or what would happen if some other equally unrealistic probability were to come true. Such a child develops the vital skill of creativity and imagination. Because she has experienced the pure joy of child's play, she doesn't have to wait for someone to tell her what she is supposed to do.
Parents Feel Pressured to Pressure Their Child
Why don’t more parents allow their child’s unique self to unfold without pressure to excel? I suspect there are many reasons. Partly it's because, just as a fish doesn't know it's in water, we don't recognize the damage caused by our busy, over-extended lives, since we've become so accustomed to the condition in which we find ourselves. Our culture supports the need to "do things," which is the focus of the second stage of life, but finds little profit in the lesson of the first stage of life, that of simply "being."
We also put more pressure on our children today than in years past because we simply want the best for our children, but in doing so, we've bought into the idea that in order for them to succeed, we need to push them to succeed. So we provide them more and more opportunities earlier and earlier in the expectation that, after surviving the pressure cooker of childhood and adolescence, they will have achievement programmed into them. Unfortunately, their success, if it does come, will then too often rest on the belief that they are only okay IF they succeed.
Let me make something clear. There is nothing wrong with persevering and striving for excellence! The problem comes when there is little breathing space within that perseverance and the effort to achieve the best. Without space to discover the small pleasures that come from doing nothing and without time to marvel at the wonders of the world, our lives grow smaller. Then we not only forget to stop and smell the proverbial roses, as we dash from place to place in our cars, we’re too rushed to even come to a full stop at the stop sign. We simply slow down so we can speed up again.
If you want an eloquent description of the joylessness created by our fast-paced, technologically pressured lives, you can't do better than to read the Irish philosopher and poet, John O'Donohue, in his book, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, [reprinted with permission]:
Traditionally, a journey was a rhythm of three forces: time, self and space. Now the digital virus has truncated time and space. Marooned on each instant, we have forfeited the practice of patience, the attention to emergence and delight in the Eros of discovery. The self has become anxious for what the next instant might bring. This greed for destination obliterates the journey. The digital desire for the single instant schools the mind in false priority. Each instant proclaims its own authority and the present image demands the complete attention of the eye. There is no sense of natural sequence where an image is allowed to emerge from its background and context when the time is right, the eye is worthy and the heart is appropriate. The mechanics of electronic imaging reverses the incarnation of real encounter. But a great journey needs plenty of time. It should not be rushed; if it is, your life becomes a kind of abstract package tour devoid of beauty and meaning. There is such a constant whirr of movement that you never know where you are. You have no time to give yourself to the present experience. When you accumulate experiences at such a tempo, everything becomes thin. Consequently, you become ever more absent from your life and this fosters emptiness that haunts the heart.
What is the Consequence of Over-scheduling Your Child?
Our children, wanting to please us and not knowing any other way to live than that modeled by their parents, often don't complain about overscheduling. But there is a price to be paid and I am afraid that parents today may not realize the consequence of the pressure they place on themselves, and on their children, until much of the damage is done.
Eventually some children will burn out and refuse to achieve that which they would have been capable of achieving—if they had been allowed to mature at a slower pace. After all, if a person achieves because she is being pushed from the outside, rather than because she's had the chance to experience the gradual unfolding of pleasure in learning and developing at a normal rate, she will have few internal resources on which to feel motivated for success when the trials and tribulations of adulthood add additional stress.
It is also possible, of course, that grown children will be "successful," but they may do so at the price of defining themselves by their possessions, their jobs, and their outward appearance. Yes, they may be successful, but they will not have learned how to discover joy in small things. In other words, they will have lost touch with their own hearts and, too frequently, be unable to connect deeply with their fellow human beings.
Am I being overly pessimistic? The answer depends on where you fall on the continuum of parental expectations where, at one end of the scale, parents allow their child freedom to grow up unhurried without any pressure at all and, on the other end, micro-manage their child’s schedule. With a slew of new books on the topic, I don’t think I’m off the mark in noting the need for parents to create more space for joy, humor and spirit.
I must stress, however, that I have written this ninth strategy for confident and practical parenting not only for the sake of your child, but for your own benefit and the benefit of the world at large. You see, I truly do believe that we teach our children through what we do much more than through what we preach. And I believe so strongly in the poem I used in the Introduction to Stage 7 that I will repeat it here for emphasis.
If there be peace in the heart,
there will be peace in the home.
If there be peace in the home,
there will be peace in the community.
If there be peace in the community,
there will be peace in the nation.
If there be peace in the nation,
there will be peace in the world.
—Anonymous
I’ve yet to find anyone with an overscheduled life who truly has peace in her heart.
Creating Space for Humor
"You grow up the day you have the first real laugh—at yourself."
—Ethel Barrymore
"The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children. "
—Clarence Darrow
You will notice throughout this website that most articles begin with a quotation. Many of them are ones I find amusing because they demonstrate that tough parenting challenges go a whole lot smoother if you include a big dose of humor in your day. If you can’t find humor in parenting, you’re in deep trouble.
My friend Iris keeps me up-to-date with her growing family and the very funny, frustrating and original things her children do and say. Here are two examples I find amusing.
A four-year-old needs to think quickly if he’s to come up with an excuse on a moment’s notice.
Charlie, two-years-old, came in the house dripping wet and crying, complaining that his four-year-old brother, James, threw water on him. When confronted, James said that no, it was a “silent, invisible rainstorm” which landed on Charlie only.
The problem with trying to respond to such bald-faced, but very dramatic and creative lies, is that a smile inevitably creeps into the face and if the child is at all observant, as such a child would be, the child has then demonstrated his ability to get a response from a clever lie. Someday, with practice, he hopes, his parent will actually believe him!
Not all parenting techniques work for everyone.
When Iris hollered to her kids, who were once again jostling on the stairs, she said, “It's scary for me to watch you do things where you might get hurt.” Now, in case you’ve missed that technique, it’s one of the responses suggested by some parenting experts who feel you shouldn’t directly tell a child what he is to do. Instead, the idea is that if you point out to the child how his behavior makes you uncomfortable, or sad, or creates some other negative reaction, that the child will take the hint and do as you wish he would.
James’ response was simply to say, “Then don't watch.”
Spiritual Parenting
There is something in the experience of life that is greater than the self and an individual's ego. There is more to life than an accumulation of possessions. There is more to life than fast-paced competition and success. There is something in the simple, joyful experience of life that touches our hearts. When we allow ourselves to be connected to that "something," life has greater meaning. We may call this "something" God, Spirit, Allah, Source of Life, or use some other term, but no matter how we describe it, we know that we are not alone in the world and that life is truly satisfying only when we open our hearts to experience that which goes beyond success. See Explaining a Spiritual Experience.
When it comes to parents, even if they do not believe in a particular religion, many of them recognize that, as Kahlil Gibran says, "Children come through us but not from us." Tobin Hart, writing on "Spiritual Parenting" in Psychotherapy Networker, May/June 2004, notes that:
"When we recognize a child first as a complete spiritual being, rather than merely as our growing offspring, a powerful shift occurs. . . . What arises is respect and reverence for the uniqueness of this soul in front of us, even though he or she may not yet have fully ripened as a human. Our children do not belong to us; they belong to their own soul and calling."
Yet how can we recognize the soul in our child if we don't take the time to make space for our own soul? How can we guide this child who has been given to our care if we aren't open to our own wonderful spirit? How can we show our child the wonder, mystery and awe of life when we don't create time to notice these qualities for ourselves?
If you're interested in taking a few steps toward greater spiritual exploration, there is a section I created on Learning Place Online called Questions to Begin or Expand Your Spiritual Journey. Here you will find several sets of questions designed to help you explore how you can live a spiritual life in a world that can easily distract you from living according to your highest ideals.
The questions are paired with pictures you might use for contemplating the answers. Not only does this make reading the questions more interesting, but I hope the pictures will draw you in so that, by clicking from one page to another, you might actually take time today and consider the questions seriously. In fact, if you come to a particular picture and a question you like, you can print the page and tack it on your bulletin board to remind you of your intention to create space for your spirit—and for the spirit of your child.
© Copyright 2005, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT |
