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| Self-Help for Parents | |
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From: New York Now | Cityscape | Self-Help for Parents By SUSAN FERRARO At a party in Brooklyn not long ago, Madeline Amato watched a little boy about 5 take off his shoe and throw it at a chandelier. It missed. He threw it again. And again. And again. Chatting nearby, the boy's parents did nothing. When the shoe hit the chandelier and a piece fell to the floor, "The parents picked it up and said something like, 'Don't do that again,' and just went on," says Amato, a housewife and mother. "I thought, 'What is going to happen when this child is a teenager? Is he still going to be running the show, doing things that will have more serious consequences?' " Amato admits she is not a perfect parent. She struggles with the challenges of rearing three children every day. But, "There's no controls on a lot of kids — they get into little skirmishes, they interrupt constantly if their parents are talking, they won't sit down to have a meal," she says. "I just find it mind-boggling." We see it all the time: children behaving badly and parents failing to take charge. The grownups are usually nice people with good intentions. But they don't seem to be setting limits or defining consequences. Child-rearing used to come naturally. Now we're not so sure. And the experts — first and last refuge of the self-help generation — make us nervous: Do it our way, they imply, or ruin your children for life. Discipline, almost everyone agrees, is necessary. The key years are birth through age 5, says Dr. Anne Beal, mother of two and co-author of "The Black Parenting Book." That, she says, is when families lay down standards and "when we, as parents, have our children with us the most." But, torn between options, parents often seem uncertain, even paralyzed. Do we spank, call a "time-out" or give a misbehaving child a hug? Will verbal discipline foster civility or curtail curiosity and joy? Will too much praise boomerang into self-centeredness? In one corner are experts generally viewed as "permissive." Led by the late Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose "Baby and Child Care" has sold more than 50 million copies and remains a top seller, is a group that now includes Dr. William Sears and Martha Sears, R.N; Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, and Dr. William Pieper and Martha Heineman Pieper, Ph.D. Recoiling from the strict Victorian approach to rearing children, they advise parents to examine their own motives as well as those of their children. Though details differ, permissive theories generally recommend feeding on demand, toilet training when the toddlers decide they're ready, and removing or ignoring children if they do something nasty. Kindness is better than harshness, their thinking goes. Parents should work at bonding with children (something once taken for granted). Children are imitative, says Martha Heineman Pieper (who tells interviewers she's not really "permissive"): If you slap their hands when they act their age — say reaching for a hot stove — they will only learn violence. Instead, she says, the wise and loving parent distracts a toddler — and hugs her. Brazelton, a popular and widely read pediatrician and author, is not above getting someone else to do the dirty work in teaching good behavior. If a toddler who bites won't change his ways after time-outs or explanations, parents should not slap his hand or bite back to teach him, he advises, but make a play date with another toddler who bites and let them teach each other. Done right, the permissive philosophy suggests, parents and children can achieve a kind of ideal family state, with smooth sailing much of the time. A happy, secure child is proof that the parents are doing a good job. An unhappy child indicates they're making a mess of things — and hurting the child. In the other corner, eager to argue, are the new reformers — "conservatives" — who blame permissiveness for producing bratty children. Surging ahead since 1997 are Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo, who run Growing Families International, a publishing "ministry" that teaches their methods via books and more than 55 videos. Ezzo, an evangelical Christian pastor, and his wife, a nurse, say they started giving advice to parents because people liked how their two daughters turned out. The Ezzo approach is simple, rule-based and tailored to the parents' needs more than the needs of their offspring. Ezzo parents feed babies on a schedule, toilet train early and expect immediate obedience to commands. Babies can cry themselves to sleep. It's indulgent, they say, to make chores into games — well-behaved children should do them, no questions asked. "Children are born with a natural bias to the self," not to others, says Ezzo. Parents who focus on building self-esteem and being happy create narcissists. The Ezzos believe that the goal in life should be contentment, not endless happiness. Critics of the Ezzos have focused on infant feeding, and allegations have been made that newborns put on their strict feeding schedules have failed to gain enough weight. (Ezzo says it's the fault of the parents and the pediatrician for not monitoring a child's weight better.) "We are talking about the basics here — how to teach kids to be kind, honest, polite, neat, how to learn some self-control, how to serve another person," Gary Ezzo says. What divides child-rearing styles as clearly as a sharp slap across a bare leg is the "how" of discipline. The Ezzos and other conservatives — James Dobson, Ph.D., whose latest book, "The New Dare to Discipline," has sold more than 3 million copies, and the nationally syndicated columnist and family therapist John Rosemond — endorse physical punishment. In the Ezzo world, older children are spanked with a "neutral" object, the number of thwacks determined by age. For 10-month-olds who smear pablum in their hair, Ezzo says parents can squeeze a hand until it hurts enough to make them stop. Spock and his ilk abhor physical force, even swats. The Searses offer 10 reasons not to spank — citing studies showing it doesn't work and can impede curiosity. For those who do it anyway, they also offer safety tips: Don't violate privacy by spanking bare bottoms, don't strike in anger, don't hurt physically. As a magazine writer, Anne Cassidy read lots of experts on raising children. Second-guessing herself constantly, "I was wearing myself out trying to please them all the time and trying to be perfect," she remembers. "I was paralyzed with the first two children," says the mother of three. So Cassidy quit reading advice and wrote her own, "Parents Who Think Too Much." In it, she says everyone should stop reading how-to books (after they read hers). "I get my truth about child-rearing from novels and other books — poetry, and even history," she says. Dr. Rebecca Shiffman, mother of Daniel, 12, and director of obstetrics at New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, stopped reading books, too. "You can have all the theories in the world, and then have the wrong child for those theories." Yet wanting advice is understandable. Rearing children gets tougher every day. Useful supports, shared values and a common cultural understanding of what's important — respect for elders, honesty, good manners — are gone or weakened. Fast food and faster computers have forever changed homey meals and table talk. The disappearing extended family — where grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts and uncles live in close proximity — puts pressure on small family units, leaving many parents too exhausted to argue, negotiate or (sometimes) pay attention. Even toilet training is not what it used to be, and not just because the experts disagree. Some blame disposable diapers: "If they had to sit in the same stuff we did, they'd move out a little faster," says Dorinda Schiffer, 41, of suburban New Jersey, and mother of Alexander, 4, and Olivia, 3. Ethnicity also can play a role. Some black parents "will ask if 'time-out' is a white concept," says Beal. "A child out of control is unacceptable, because respecting our elders is critical. Beyond that, there are realities about our children, a real difference in the consequences if a black or white child speaks back to a policeman or teacher." There's a parent's personal history, too. Many people think "their own parents fouled up, and that therefore they need help to do it right," says Cassidy. "The fact that they might do it more or less the same way as their parents makes them nervous — and sends them to the bookstore, or the Internet. I even heard of parents who logged on [for advice] during a temper tantrum!" Although it's unavoidable, what probably undermines parents' confidence — whether single or a couple — is work. Parents, says Shiffman, lack "the 24-hour experience to know what their child is doing. The most important thing when I come home is not to yell at Daniel when he's overwound, but [to] soothe him and get him back into bed. It's not a question of disciplining him at that point." Working-parent guilt is common, says Beal. "You don't want to come home and fight with your child. You don't want those precious few hours to be fraught with conflict. And yet, the parent-child relationship is [always] fraught with conflict, because we have to set limits." No Easy Solutions Solutions are hard to come by, says Marion Lindquist, a Manhattan therapist and child-rearing expert who has not written a book. "People need to relax and not go crazy trying to follow one theory." They should give up trying to be perfect, she adds. "Your goal is to be consistent enough — no one is consistent all the time." Children will always test, Lindquist adds. "You are not their friend," she stresses, and parents have to set boundaries and "tolerate" a child's response: "You have to know that even if there is not a good feeling, it is a good thing that you are doing, and you are still connecting to the kid." Working at the job of raising children "24/7," most parents muddle through. Being a parent, says Dorinda Schiffer, "is just much more mentally stressing than I ever thought it would be." She sometimes swats her youngsters — and wonders if she should do it less, or more. When Olivia was a baby and awoke in the night, Schiffer would climb into bed with her to get her back to sleep. "It's probably not the best idea, but I can't go with sleep deprivation," says Schiffer. "Let her cry it out? It's a nice idea, but I did what I had to do to survive." There are 1,923 books listed under the general topic of "parenting," industry sources say, and many more in subcategories like teens and grandparents. A short list:
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