Empathic Parenting Blog

I’ve realized there is a subtle but ubiquitous set of best practices that tends to circulate around most positive discipline communities that many of us take for granted and become judgmental about despite our best intentions. Recently I’ve been breaking something I’ve always taken as one of these truisms of positive parenting.

In my work, two primary goals are non judgment and respect, for both parents and children. This means that my basic assumption is that I don’t know the “right” answer for anyone else. (I often am not sure I know it even for myself, but that’s another post!) I find this to be very effective in coaching, because so frequently the presenting issue (potty training, sleep issues, tantrums) is not the core concern (pressure to grow up too fast, lack of quality time between mom & dad, sensory issues). When I jump directly to brainstorming the answer to the problem that is presented, I will miss the core concern.

However, some practices I take for granted as more…well, effective (that’s a good thing), respectful (no problems with that) and sometimes, I must admit, more enlightened (a judgment - breaking primary principle #1). We all have these opinions, to some extent or another, and most do have very sound reasoning behind them.

Here are a few you might recognize:

• Give young children limited choices; with no choice they will not be able to feel influential nor practice good judgment; but with too many or too large of choices, they will be overwhelmed.
• Praise and rewards, particularly the ever present, “Good job!” don’t lead to intrinsic motivation, and should be be replaced with acknowledgment and appreciation.
• Don’t threaten, especially things you can never follow up on, such as “we are never going out to eat again.”

Recently I’ve noticed that as much as I try to be open-minded towards other people’s differing solutions to parenting dilemmas, I often hold myself in judgment against this unquestioned moral standard. So what is the golden rule that I’m now breaking, you might ask? It’s this - “Children should have basic responsibilities around the house, but should not be paid for basic chores (allowance should be either separate and unconditional or paid for “extra” chores), because otherwise they will not learn that they are expected to contribute to the household regardless. ” Even worse, I’ve crossed the line on the “don’t bribe your child for ordinary good behavior” rule a fair number of times recently as well.

Ok, I admit, until recently, whenever this topic has come up on emails lists, I’ve respectfully and non judgmentally thrown out these ‘PD truisms’, and yet at the same time held a small reserve of judgment toward parents that threaten their kids with loss of allowance for not doing the mundane and boring tasks that have been unilaterally assigned, much in the same way many of us look down on someone screaming at a child in the grocery store (as if to subtly imply that that has never, ever been us in that situation. Yeah, right.)

So imagine my inner conflict when I find myself pragmatically paying my child, albeit 20 cents here, 40 cents there, to cooperate with expected outings, or to do small tasks.

The reason and the details of my breaking of this rule would get us sidetracked, and would sound like an excuse and thereby dilute my point. Which is this. We simply cannot know the right answer for another family. (Although, I will admit we can know some very wrong answers - but I’m not talking about those - I’m talking about the more subtle stuff).

This isn’t a change in philosophy. I still believe that in many cases it doesn’t make sense to pay children for things we want them to do habitually and routinely. Rather, this is a yet another spiral on the attitude that I’m trying to reach, and can only come closer and closer to - non judgment.

So the next time you are faced with listening to a parent describe a solution that you don’t agree with, stay open minded. Truly accept that they are the best equipped to make their own best decisions, and then get curious about why this works for them. They will appreciate the nonjudgmental listening, and you may even surprise yourself by agreeing with them in the end. And if not, you will most likely have more conviction about the rightness of your own solution for your family, and the reasons why you chose it.