The Parenting Experts: Great Parenting

Attitude over Aptitude

"Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill", the center story of a recent New York Times Sunday edition, should ask all parents of kids of any age, "What am I telling my kids is more important: effort or achievement?"

According to the article, more and more kids are taking or trying to get hold of performance-enhancing drugs like Adderall to help them score better on tests and get better grades. They're hopeful that this will lead them to an Ivy League College, which many students feel their parents expect. "At high schools across the United States, pressure over grades and competition for college admissions are encouraging students to abuse prescription stimulants, according to interviews with students, parents and doctors." (The New York Times: Sunday, June 10, 2012: Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill.)

When parents focus on achievement or aptitude—getting the best grades, being the best tennis player, the best lacrosse player, the best writer—we are teaching our kids that what they do is more important than who they are. In the world of effort, each student must learn to struggle with their own best effort. When "who you are" is challenged and supported, then students will do some pretty good things. And achievement will follow, but without the need for stimulants to help make it happen.

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By Pam Hardy, as taken from this month's The Biggest Job/Parenting Expert eNewsletter. Sign up to receive the eNewsletter at http://www.hyde.edu/about-hyde-school/hyde-email/ and choose "Parenting Expert."

Attachment Parenting?

Have you seen the May 21st issue of Time? The cover picture is provocative—a four year old standing on a chair to breast feed.  The lead article on "Attachment Parenting" asks the question "Are you MOM ENOUGH?"   

Dr. William Sears is the founder and guru of the philosophy. "The three basic tenets are: breast-feeding (sometimes into toddlerhood), co-sleeping (inviting babies into the parental bed or pulling a bassinet alongside it) and “baby wearing,” in which infants are literally attached to their mothers via slings. Attachment-parenting dogma also says that every baby’s whimper is a plea for help and that no infant should ever be left to cry." (Time: May 21, pp 34).  The article also includes a box titled “Sears vs. Science” in which the tenets are disputed. (Time: pp. 36; Jeffrey Kluger)

Compare this philosophy to The Biggest Job, through which parents are taught that we all—children included—learn from our struggles. While not suggesting that infants are left to cry or go hungry or that their needs are not attended to,The Biggest Job teaches parents not to make kids the center of the family. This creates entitled kids. Could attachment parenting start a cycle in which the child learns "I’m the center of the universe for my mother, and maybe even my dad?" Instead, Biggest Job parenting asks parents to put principles at the center of the family. 

Dr. Sears promotes a style of parenting that is the opposite of what he presumably grew up with. (Time: May 21, 2012; pp. 37). Biggest Job parenting suggests that we be careful about parenting as a reaction or a duplication of how we were raised, and instead parent from a vision of what is best for our family, our children and ourselves. Even Dr. Spock, in his 1945 book, Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, says: "Trust your instincts; you know more than you think you do." The Biggest Job would agree. 

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By Pam Hardy, as taken from this month's The Biggest Job/Parenting Expert eNewsletter. Sign up to receive the eNewsletter at http://www.hyde.edu/about-hyde-school/hyde-email/ and choose "Parenting Expert."