<p>[Meg</a> Meeker, M.D. Never Parent Out of Fear](<a href=“http://www.megmeekermd.com/2011/10/never-parent-out-of-fear/]Meg”>http://www.megmeekermd.com/2011/10/never-parent-out-of-fear/)</p>
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<p>How does she know this?</p>
<p>I have been reading articles like this for at least 10 years- I can’t say I know many people who are worried about their kids being happy.
More are interested in their kids being productive, involved, & active.</p>
<p>I really can’t make sense of this at all… Very strange.</p>
<p>^ and able to pursue their goals. Imo, sometimes that means the boring steps and trials needed to be able and ready to pursue their goals.</p>
<p>hmmm.
The goal, IMO, is to “have” kids who have the resources to deal positively with life.</p>
<p>How to get there is an ongoing discussion and, of course, my way is the BEST way.</p>
<p>What emerald said. I swear there can’t be anything new for parenting experts to talk about and so they’re constantly recycling the same old stuff.</p>
<p>How stupid do the experts think we are? Probably pretty stupid. Everyone remembers that Dr. Spock starts off with “You know more than you think you know.” Which he then follows up with 600 pages of minutely detailed directions.</p>
<p>Is there really an abundance of clueless parents who are “straining to keep kids constantly happy”? I know more parents who are straining to keep kids fed, clothed, healthy, and educated. Most adults can clearly see that the things that make children happy in the short term are all right in moderation, but that the goal is to produce adults who have the tools to be happy.</p>
<p>A little credit for the human race, please. The majority of us are not as short-sighted and in need of directions for raising our young as the experts would like us to believe.</p>
<p>In reading this I thought to myself I’m not interested in my children being happy in the moment, every moment, through childhood. But I am hoping they will ultimately be happy adults and lead happy lives (which means being able to pursue - maybe not necessarily attain- their dreams, have fulfillment in work, family, friends, like themselves and the life they’ve made for themselves). </p>
<p>Though I do agree with the writer about the importance, and neglect of, ‘goodness of character’. I see most parents on CC worrying about what their kid will achieve, attain, get…but seldom wringing their hands about what kind of human being they are becoming in the process. It seems character is mostly something you just write about, and try to convince adcoms you have it (and hide that you might not by not posting stuff on FB)…no worry that you actually do.</p>
<p>I would say that the primary goal of the parent should be to equip your child to survive in the real world, and to give them as many valuable experiences as possible.</p>
<p>Further, the parent, hopefully, has been able to move the ball at least a little further down the field than what his parent was able to do for him.</p>
<p>The fact that your kid may be “happy” may not necessarily be a good thing. He may be happy because you let him quit the baseball team, or allowed him to pass up going to a top college so he can go to school closer to his high school girlfriend. Or perhaps you didn’t press him hard to study for his SATs. Or perhaps you allow him to stay in his room all day and play computer games, rather than getting some exercise. You do him no favor in such cases. I guess I am old fashioned. I don’t think a kid who is 17 years old, and who may not have worked a day in his life, and who two weeks ago was borrowing $5 from his mother to go to Starbucks, suddenly knows everything about everything, and should be making important lifetime decisions without at least some parental input. Some of you parents may have seen the thread entitled something like “stupid reasons my kid refuses to apply to a particular college”. My own kid is no different. I wanted him to apply to the University of Wisconsin, a school he knows absolutely nothing about. He summarily rejected the suggestion, saying “why would anyone want to go to school in Wisconsin?”, with the same tone as if I had suggested he apply to a school whose campus was a garbage dump.</p>
<p>I have no problem with kids making their own decisions, but at least they should be informed decisions, with some rational thought behind them.</p>
<p>I’m trying to think of all the myriad of decisions we have made regarding our kids and whether any of them outside birthday and Christmas madness have been made because “that’s what will make them happy”. I’d have to say that doesn’t seem to have been the governing criteria, but then we’re not all that conventional in the parental department.</p>
<p>^Seriously? Are you sure? </p>
<p>Looking back, lots of things we decided for our kids were based entirely and purely upon happiness. Stuff that didn’t matter but made life fun. And gave our kids a sense of control and autonomy, and an appreciation for knowing what they like in life. </p>
<p>Like when the youngest was 2 and insisted on wearing mittens and boots one summer, a lot. Go for it girl! It brought such joy. Or whether they wanted to take judo or art class in the summer program at school. Helping them with the craziest halloween costumes and going all over town carrying their halloween treats. The visits to the farm. Movies. The trip to Disneyland centuries ago. Half the cereals in our cupboard. And believe it or not…sometimes we even did things that (gasp!) were not even educational! Or we ate stuff that just tasted good! The horror! </p>
<p>Or like last week, three insisted on eating out at a restaurant we like. That comes up every once in awhile. One called on Friday night to ask if she could sleepover at a friend’s house. No reason to say no, or to say yes, other than it made her happy. I gave another a ride to school the other day in the rain. Sure she could have walked like 99% of the time, but what the heck, I threw caution to the wind with that one. </p>
<p>It’s not continuous, it’s not chosen over more important criteria, and it’s (hopefully) never chosen at the expense of someone’s development or wellbeing. But we definitely make lots of decisions for the sake of happiness. It has been a really joyful aspect of parenting. And our kids have grown up well adjusted, good human beings, who are hard working, smart, kind, compassionate. </p>
<p>My spouse and I frequently concede on things to one another too because it makes the other happy (even sometimes at a slight disadvantage to the other! even when its illogical!). </p>
<p>Oooh, my daughter just brought me some tea while i’m sitting on the sofa typing this…it was definitely a decision based entirely on my happiness :)</p>
<p>^You’re right, I wasn’t thinking about all the day to day stuff we do. I’m really not the world’s worst parent you just succeeded in making me out to be.</p>
<p>Starbright, that was a beautiful post.</p>
<p>I’m sure I made the worm unhappy when I made him eat some foods, take showers, brush teeth, take his daily injection, go to bed, get up for school. Oh yeah–trying to curtail computer time.</p>
<p>All in all, I’m not “terrified” of the worm not being happy, but I am certainly pleased when his life is ging well. He’s in a very “happy” place right now, in a great lab, being a T.A. for a P.I. he really likes, and thrilled with his g/f. I take no responsibility for any of it, but I sure feel good about his situation.</p>
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<p>At a certain level, this isn’t going to happen, and I think we have to be careful not to be disappointed in ourselves or our kids if it doesn’t.</p>
<p>If you have had a good education and a successful career, I think it’s asking for trouble to automatically expect that you will be able to do better for your child or your child will be able to do better for himself.</p>
<p>Of course I am here to make my kids happy, but the question is do we look for short term happiness or long term happiness. I know my kids would be happier if they were self supporting with financial security, have a partner and good friends in their life. To achieve that, as a parent while they were young, I had to make them do things they may not be happy in doing.</p>
<p>Starbright-
What a beautiful sets of posts, you covered a lot of what I believe. I think the article is badly written, whatever its intent is. Most parents do want their children to be happy, they want their kids to like them, but there is always tension there, and in the end we are parents. My take on parenting is that though in the end we have to be the parents, make the decision, popular or not, that it involves allowing the child to find their path, their own happiness and our job is to limit it as little as possible, but still make the critical decisions. </p>
<p>Yes, there are parents who go too far in this direction, who basically anything the kid wants to do they give in, they are so busy trying to be liked they forget they are the adult…and there are parents who go too far the other way, the Tiger Moms and so forth, whose idea of parenting is to be a dictator of what the kids do, because ‘they know best’, and both to me are equally wrong. Tiger mom and the ‘do it this way’ crowd would be shocked if a parent allowed their kid to go around wearing mittens and a hat in summer, or spend a summer trying to learn to write music…in a sense, the Tiger moms and the like are doing what parents at the other end do, they try to create a perfect path so the kid won’t fail, make wrong decisions, etc (and I have seen the other end of what happens with both kinds of parents, and it generally is a rough road). </p>
<p>Where the parenting comes in is judging where the kids happiness and freedom to find themselves is balanced by judgement. When our S wanted to take up the violin when he was little, what we told him was that if he ever wanted to quit, that would be fine, but that he had to finish out whatever lesson cycle he was in and then if he still felt it was not good, fine, he could quit. Why? Because we knew there would be times when he would get frustrated trying to achieve a skill, and like most kids want to quit, and we figured with this rule he could get past that…and it did work out like that, in the early years he ran into those roadblocks, wanted to quit, but worked through them, and today is a serious high school music student (and if you want to see pain and unhappiness, well, after some things he has done in music, tough lessons, etc, we have had to scrape him off the floor at times…). Likewise, a kid upset because they wanted to watch the latest episode of some tv show or go to a friend’s house and you insisted they study for a chemistry test, well, not exactly a hard one…</p>
<p>Part of the problem with articles like this and the attitude of some parents is they think that if you try to make childhood fun or try to minimize the pain, that this is ‘coddling them’,there is a lot of the mentality that old loony Nietze promoted, that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and they seem to live by that, and that is hogwash, too. There was an op ed in the NY Times a couple of days ago talking about coaching in little league and the emphasis on the positive, and there were the type that wrote in and talked about that life was competition, that it was okay if coaches wanted to win at that level, that if the best kids played, that is life…what people like that forget is there is a time and place for competition, but that in the early years it is more valuable that kids learn to try, to do things outside their comfort zone, and what kind of experience is it for an 8 year old to try little league and have a coach tell them they are a klutz and they sit on the bench? They learn never to try anything,to hate sports, and end up not trying anything they aren’t good at, which frankly is a really bad life lesson, because it means someone who will never innovate or create. </p>
<p>I always kind of liked the dad in the movie “Breaking Away” when he tells his son “I said you should be miserable, but not that miserable”:).</p>
<p>The funny thing is the parents who encourage their kids to be goofy, who encourage them to do things, who give them their lead (within reasonable limits) are probably not trying to make them always happy; the kid that plays little league and pitches and gets wracked is going to feel lousy, or the kid that picks up an instrument and sounds like a pop star without autotune and their cat doing a duet is going to be angry and frustrated, and failure never feels good…but it is a lesson. The problem with the wrap them in bubble wrap and the tiger mom ‘path to success’ is both avoid things at which the kid will fail, make mistakes, and that is a problem. This idea that kids have that if they try something and fail will ‘ruin their life’,that if they take a challenging course and don’t do well in it will guarantee that they won’t get into HYP and be an investment banker and drive a mercedes is ludicrous, and it is part of that side of things as well.</p>
<p>Okay, so what is my philosophy on parenting? I raised my son in such a way that we tried to give him as much freedom as we felt was safe, we encouraged him to try a lot of things, pushed him where we needed to, and while we went out of our way to make sure he was happy, that he went to a school where he would be challenged, where he had a lot of our time and resources, we also put our foot down where we needed to, and we realized that we can’t and shouldn’t try to stop him from falling, but rather let him experience the ups and downs and help him recover from the downs and understand how special the ups were:). In the end, what we really wanted to achieve as parents, which with some luck we will, is to have a child who grows up to find their passion and live into their life and enjoy it, rather the mucking through, who has the skills to handle the highs and lows,and yes, also grows up to be a good person, someone who can have empathy and concern for others. We also have tried to raise him understanding the realities of life,t hat in the end he will have to make a living and that with his path to music, he knows how hard it is and how little the rewards can be; and that while we said there is nothing wrong with getting a good education and getting a high paying job, but that that also can be a false kind of happiness, and that many people in that position are not particularly happy people or particularly good people either. If I can create a happy, fulfilled person as an adult, one who can find his dreams and do so while remembering there are other people in the world, and he can tie his shoes and go to the bathroom by himself by the time he graduates high school, well, then I will be happy:)</p>
<p>I guess I didn’t do a very good job of editing down the full essay. Click on the link read the whole thing. In my effort not to get in trouble for copying too much of it, I lost the essence. </p>
<p>Dr Meeker’s NOT saying we shouldn’t allow our kids to be happy, or that it would be good if they were unhappy.</p>
<p>She’s saying we need to allow them to fail. We need to stop rescuing them from their bad decisions and mistakes, and allow them to learn from them. We need to hold them accountable for their actions. We need to encourage them to do something challenging, even if it’s not clear they’re going to succeed. </p>
<p>What makes people truly happy - and productive and effective - is resilience. And we’re so concerned with preventing kids from experiencing failure or difficulty or a challenge and learning to recover from it that in the end we are doing them a disservice. </p>
<p>I see this ALL the time. The parent who complains to the coach about the kid’s playing time. The parent who pushes a teacher to re-consider a poor grade. The parent who takes on a second job and raids their retirement fund so junior can go to the expensive private college instead of the one that offered him scholarship money. </p>
<p>Or in less extreme cases - the parents who gives their kid an allowance at college because we don’t want them to have to work. The parent who gives their kid a car because she complains that the bus is too inconvenient (guilty, here). </p>
<p>The parent who allows the kid to stay home from school on the day of a test they aren’t prepared for, or on the due date for a project that isn’t done (I knew a mom who constantly did that - her kid eventually failed out of high school anyway). </p>
<p>The parent who repeatedly brings the kid’s lunch to school because the kid forgot it - a few days without lunch, the kid WILL remember. </p>
<p>The parent who won’t enforce rules and deliberately avoids looking for clues that their kids are engaging in so-called “rites of passage” like drinking or smoking pot in high school, privately hoping their kid won’t get caught drinking, or doing whatever - I had a principal that said the best thing that could happen to a kid who is drinking is to GET CAUGHT. The parent who never goes downstairs once to check on the party in the basement because their kid might be embarrassed. In other words, the “cool parent.” </p>
<p>The parent who nit-picks the rules when their child IS caught doing something (well everyone else does it, well it was only because of blah-blah-blah) instead of insisting that the child own up to their mistake and make amends.</p>
<p>We’re not helping them when our biggest fear is their short-term unhappiness. I know when my kids were sad I felt like I had failed them. But keeping our kids in a cotton box doesn’t create resiliency, or any sense of empathy or concern for others going through hard times.</p>
<p>Oldfort gets the point. Starbright, she’s NOT saying you shouldn’t allow your kid to be happy. She’s saying we shouldn’t make parenting decisions out of fear of the kid being unhappy. There’s a huge difference. Similar to your mitten story, I allowed my kids to do lots of quirky, harmless things because there was no reason not to allow it. It’s not about intentionally raising unhappy kids - its about allowing kids to experience unhappiness and disappointment and challenges so they can learn to overcome them. </p>
<p>Clearly, I didn’t edit the essay well. Click on the link and read the whole thing.</p>
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I didn’t find the sarcasm all that charming, considering she missed the point I was trying to make. </p>
<p>As to the OP, Dr. Meeker doesn’t give any specific examples of the sort of parenting error she is talking about. Here is one which might qualify: Last weekend D attended another in a long series of 16/17 birthday parties. She went in with 2 other friends to buy a Vera Bradley bag for the Birthday Girl, whose party was given at an expensive country club (parents making kid happy). The gift was in a gift bag, with a card from the 3 friends, and D put it on a table with the others. </p>
<p>On Monday, BG went around school saying the 3 had attended her party but had not given her a gift. Nastily. To lots of people. This continued through the week. D was kind of appalled, not to mention surprised that her gift seemed to have disappeared. She informed BG that there was indeed a gift. A check was made with the country club, and lo and behold the gift was located under the table where it had apparently fallen off. Apologies were made, but not before D got a glimpse of a side of her friend she probably won’t easily forget.</p>
<p>IMHO, these parents made their kid happy. The goodness of her character is another matter.</p>
<p>For those who want scientific evidence that character matters, and that allowing kids to learn resiliency is a good thing:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?pagewanted=all[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?pagewanted=all</a></p>
<p>Below is just a tiny smidgen of a long, well-written article, “What if the Secret to Success is Failure?”:</p>
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<p>Writers and editors are, unfortunately, sometimes sloppy in their thinking and their word choice.</p>
<p>Do I want my kids to be happy? Yes. Frankly, there’s no other point to life other than maximizing happiness. Read Happier by Tal Ben-Shahur, who teaches a class on this very subject at Harvard and you will find that happiness is the combination of many events and qualities, including a meaningful life and character.</p>
<p>What the author really should have said is “EASY” substitute the word “EASY” for Happy and the thing makes sense to all parents. It is when we try to make it easy on them that we rob them of their own joy and happiness.</p>
<p>But, do I want my kids to be happy? Absolutely.</p>