children

Is the old adage true — ‘tis better to give than to receive? In this holiday season, which for many children represents an annual Get-Fest, it’s worth thinking about the virtues of giving versus receiving.

Life is a balancing act as we apportion energy across family, career, personal time, social life, and more. We know we’d drive ourselves crazy if everything we do needed to measure up literally to our “best.” And yet it’s hard to find a parent who doesn’t regularly tell their children, especially when it comes to schoolwork or athletics: always do your best. Not sometimes, not often, but always!

In moments of frustration, many of us use self-demeaning expressions. Or we sigh and our face transmits the deep disappointment we’re feeling toward ourselves. In those moments, we’re failing to offer ourselves compassion — the kindness, caring and understanding we might offer a friend or even a stranger. We’re forgetting when we put ourselves down that imperfection is part of being human, that mistakes don’t define us or make us less worthy than others.

Do you let your four-year-old always win at CandyLand, or your eight-year-old at Monopoly? Do you fake fatigue at tennis so your twelve-year-old comes out ahead? Many well-intentioned parents purposely dumb down their game in the belief that it will be more fun for the youngsters if they come out the winner — and maybe, through all those victories, enjoy a boost to their self-esteem. It’s a short-sighted strategy.

Many parents have been seduced by the appealing but dangerous notion of parent-as-friend. The generation gap that existed forty or fifty years ago has narrowed as parents have adopted youthful ways of dress, of lifestyle, of thinking, making the demarcation between generations harder to find nowadays — and making it easier to pursue the idea of friendship with our kids.

Our children are bombarded by toxic messages — from media and television, from peers and perhaps from us — about what’s required in order to be acceptable, in order to be fully loved: be smarter, be thinner, be stronger, be more popular, do more, do better, do your best … It’s an endless stream of prerequisites to feeling worthy. The underbelly of those messages is the unspoken take-away: I’m not enough just as I am. I’m not smart enough, thin enough, strong enough, popular enough, busy enough, successful enough … I’m simply not enough. And as a result, I’m not worthy of love and acceptance.

The United States is facing an autism epidemic. The latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest that 1 in every 88 children in the U.S. is diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The number of children with ASDs has greatly increased from the 1980s when children were diagnosed at a rate of 2-5 in 10,000 (Kogan et. al., 2009). Little debate remains about whether these statistics reflect an increase in actual cases or an expanded level of awareness, identification, and diagnosis of these disorders. Even when taking into account wider diagnostic criteria, research suggests the increase in the number of disorders is real (Hertz-Picciotto & Delwiche, 2009).

About half of all American children will experiencetheir parents’ divorce, and 25% will also face divorce in a parent’s second marriage (Copen, Daniels, Vespa,& Mosher, 2012). While divorce is often stressful for families, a great deal of variability exists in children’s adjustment to divorce. One important factor linked with child outcomes after divorce is the quality of the divorced couple’s co-parenting relationship.

Both “Ouch, that’s hurtful” and “I’d like to apologize” are ways we make ourselves vulnerable — not always easy to do with our kids. To apologize — to admit that we erred — can seem like we’re giving up our power as parents, relinquishing our authority and losing our position.