Just yesterday, I read the book A Sick Day for Amos McGee to my four-year-old. If you’re unfamiliar with this little gem of a book, here’s a quick rundown that won’t come even close to doing the book justice. Amos is a zookeeper. Each day he goes to work and plays chess with the elephant; runs races with the tortoise; sits quietly with the penguin, who is very shy; wipes the rhinoceros’s nose, and reads stories to the owl. One day, Amos wakes up sick and has to stay home from work. So the animals get on the bus and head to his house to take care of him for a change. I’ve always liked this book, for its sweet story and beautiful illustrations.
But this time around, I got a new message from the book. It’s clear that what makes Amos so special to the animals is the way he individualizes his attention to each of them, recognizing exactly what interests them and exactly what they need. To hit me over the head even harder, he’s taking care of five very different animals, just like I am.
With as many kids as I have, and all the reading, writing, and podcasting I do on the topic, you might think I’m somewhat of an expert on raising kids. Yes, I generally know how to keep them alive, clothed, fed, and sheltered, and I keep the family more or less afloat. But one thing that has surprised me the most about parenting is how many skills are not transferrable from one kid to the next. If they were, we’d only need one parenting book to teach us everything we need to know, instead of the hundreds that are out there.
Sometimes we think of parenting as a skill to be learned rather than a relationship to develop. Make that several relationships to develop. I knew I was done having kids after I got pregnant with my fifth. It wasn’t only because my body was pretty much shot—which it was. It wasn’t even because of the work involved in adding another body to the household. It was more that I legitimately didn’t know how I could have the bandwidth to figure out one more personality. I have some extra-strength personalities in the mix over here.
As hard as it is to figure out these personalities, it’s also the best part of parenting–cultivating individual, unique relationships with individual, unique humans.
I’ve devoted a lot of energy into teaching my kids that I’m a person with my own preferences, feelings, and hobbies. I even recorded a whole podcast episode about this fact (episode 6, Mom’s Secret Identity). It’s important and true. But sometimes I don’t offer my kids the same courtesy. It’s easy to think of the kids as a collective, as in: “These kids are driving me crazy! The kids have been fighting all day. The kids leave their stuff all over the house.”
The truth is, only one of them dumped all the toys out. Another one did all his chores quickly, without being asked. Two of the kids were fighting. One was in his room quietly reading a book. None of this is news to any of you listening. Of course our kids are individuals with their own needs, interests, talents, quirks, and challenges.
But over the past couple of years, five different people have shifted how I think about this: Malcolm Gladwell, in his podcast, Revisionist History; Mary Reckmeyer, in the book Strengths-Based Parenting; Ross W. Greene, in his book, The Explosive Child; Brittney Smart, in her book, The Five-Minute Time In; and my family’s own behavioral coach, Karly Allen.
Revisionist History: Novel Problem
The first is Malcom Gladwell. I’ve been a big fan of his books for years, but I especially love his podcast, Revisionist History. In Season 4, he does a three-part series, episodes 6, 7, and 8 about the Jesuits’ approach to solving novel problems. He asks the question: “If a problem is novel, if we’ve never seen that kind of problem before, how do we know how to think about it?” According to Gladwell, we don’t know how to think about it. Most of us are really bad at addressing novel problems. Except for the Jesuits.
Their approach to solving problems is called casuistry. I can’t even begin to explain the nuances of casuistry in one section of one podcast episode—it took the talented Malcolm Gladwell three podcast episodes to do it justice. But here’s part of his explanation. He says, “When it comes to new problems, you can’t start by appealing to a principle. Principles don’t help. Because principles are the product of past experience, and they’re only helpful so long as you’re still living in the world those past experiences helped create. When you’re confronted with a situation you haven’t encountered before, then you’re in uncharted territory. In those situations, the Jesuits argue, you have to proceed on a case by case basis.” You have to, as Gladwell says, descend into the particulars.
One of the most obvious applications of this method for modern parents is parenting with technology. We’re making this up as we go. We have no precedent, no principles to fall back on. Our parents didn’t have rules about smart phone usage, because they didn’t exist, or for you younger moms, at least not in their current iteration. And this isn’t about to change any time soon. Phones keep changing, and so do the apps where teenagers hang out.
For example, when our oldest son first wanted an Iphone at about age 11, we looked around at teenagers who were getting into all sorts of trouble because of their phones–addicted to pornography, caught up in cyber bullying, or just withdrawing from face-to-face interactions into the world of their phones. We said, “No way. You can have a smart phone when you graduate from high school.” When he turned 12, we gave him a flip phone, so he could still call and text his friends.
Fast forward to now. Our son is 14, and we’re planning to fix up our old iphone to give to him in a couple of weeks. What has changed? The screentime app, for one. Now we can take the browser off completely and put all sorts of limits on apps, times he can use the phone, etc. We can even track his usage. As technology continues to change, we’ll probably have different rules for every one of our kids.
In addition to all the external circumstances that change the parenting game, each individual child is actually a novel problem too. You can’t rely on precedent, because every child that comes into the world is completely unprecedented. That’s why sometimes even the best parenting advice falls flat when applied to certain kids. It’s up to us as parents to try to figure out each temperament, each range of likes and dislikes, emotional needs, love languages, physical abilities and limitations–even things like what they can safely eat. All of their bodies and minds work differently.
One kid needs a curfew; one always lets you know where she’s going and comes home when she says she will.
One needs you to sit down and hold his hand to get homework assignments done, another is two assignments ahead.
One will let you teach him to play the piano, another needs a different teacher. One meters out his Halloween candy carefully, one binges it in one sitting until she throws up.
We know this, and yet we’re still surprised when our second child responds in a completely different way to the same approach we took with the first. Instead of falling asleep as soon as he gets in his carseat, he shrieks for the whole drive. When we give him a time out in his room, he doesn’t calm himself down and come out contrite and apologetic, he pulls every book out of the bookshelf and trashes the room.
We have to parent each child on a case-by-case basis. This is why all of those parenting books are helpful. We need a wide catalog of approaches so we can keep trying until we find something that works.
If a child isn’t turning in homework, for example, we could just ground her until she gets it done. Or we could dig in and descend into the particulars. Why isn’t she turning it in. Is she just lazy? Is there something she doesn’t understand? Is there an underlying learning disability? Is it an organizational problem?
Sometimes this approach looks like favoritism or unfair treatment, because we treat each situation differently, but that’s why I’m constantly reminding my kids that fairness is not a big priority for me. My mom always used to say, “If you want fair, go to Pomona.” (Pomona was the location of our county fair when I was little.) I don’t know why we instinctively have this idea that things should be fair, but it’s just not how the world works. Nor do we really want it to.
Instead of setting rigid rules and consequences, we need to descend into the particulars and find the approach that works for each of our kids—each of our novel problems.
Strengths-Based Parenting
The next game changer for me was the book Strengths-Based Parenting. There are so many books out there about different personality types and how to parent them, but this one really spoke to me. The basic premise is that we’re all born with unique talents, which we can cultivate into strengths. We’re also born with natural weaknesses.
Sometimes as parents, we focus most of our efforts on trying to help our kids overcome their weaknesses. We harp on them to clean their rooms and stop being such slobs. We spend hours slogging through math homework or practicing handwriting.
In this book, however, Mary Reckmeyer says, “There are things you’re naturally great at and things you’re not. You can try to improve in an area of weakness, and you can get better. But being mediocre may be as good as you’ll get. And wasting so much time and energy becoming adequate means not putting time and effort into an area of talent, where you could become extraordinary.”
I get chills every time I read that quote. Instead of cataloging our child’s weaknesses and spending most of our time trying to fix them, it’s much more exciting, rewarding, and beneficial to spend that time cultivating their talents and celebrating them.
That’s not to say you just let them flunk out of English if they aren’t natural writers. Reckmeyer says, “Do what you need to do so that weaknesses don’t get in the way of your goals….If [your child] has horrible handwriting, have her practice until it is legible and let it go at that. If she struggles with reading, find ways to help her, but be sure she gets to read things that interest her. If she’s disorganized, help set her up with an easy-to-use system. Let her keep her papers in one big folder, not an elaborate organizational system.”
Basically, you help them improve an area of weakness enough that it is not a stumbling block, but then you focus most of your energy on cultivating their strengths.
In another take on this issue of weaknesses and strengths, Wendy Mogel, the author of one of my favorite parenting books of all time, “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee,” says that sometimes we can find our child’s greatest strength by looking at their most difficult traits. She says, “It’s essential that you learn to see those intense, often irksome traits as the seeds of your child’s greatness.” She then provides a great list. She says,
“Try thinking of:
· Your stubborn or whining child as persistent.
· Your complaining child as discerning….
· Your argumentative child as forthright and outspoken.
· Your loud child as exuberant.
· Your shy child as cautious and modest.
· Your bossy child as commanding and authoritative.
· Your picky, nervous, obsessive child as serious and detail-oriented.”
Perhaps the best outcome of using this approach is that we’re always on the lookout for strengths, rather than focusing on weaknesses. That’s good for us, for our child, and especially for our relationship.
The Explosive Child
This segues nicely to the next book, “The Explosive Child,” by Ross W. Greene. I may or may not have a few children that fit that description. Sure, I learned some good techniques from this book to help minimize the explosions. But the most interesting takeaway has more to do with Jane Goodall than defusing bombs.
Greene’s main premise is that kids do well if they can—if they’re equipped with the right skills. They’re not behaving badly because they want to be bad. He says, “Dealing more effectively with such kids requires, first and foremost, an understanding of why they behave as they do.”
He suggests you start by identifying your child’s lagging skills and unsolved problems. That means going beyond the bad behavior and trying to figure out why the behavior occurred—kind of like being an anthropologist in your own home–studying your children like Jane observed her chimps. To identify the cause behind the difficult behaviors, he uses the Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems, a list of lagging skills, such as: “Difficulty maintaining focus… Poor sense of time… Difficulty seeking attention in appropriate ways. Difficulty shifting from original idea, plan, or solution.” I’ll include a link to the whole list in my notes.
I used the list, and it was helpful for our behavioral situation, but the most helpful takeaway from the book was the mindset shift to an anthropological approach to parenting. It can be applied in so many ways—not just behavior. Trying to figure out what your kids are passionate about, for one. It’s really fun to get curious about your kids, and just observe how they act and react in certain situations–what excites them and what bores them, what they’re good at and what they struggle with. It really helps you see how interesting and unique each kid really is. And—back to the last book—it helps you steer them in the right direction to develop their strengths.
The Five-Minute Time In
The next book is The 5-Minute Time In, by Brittney Smart. You all know by now that I love a good parenting case study. This one was such a delight. It’s about an experiment she tried to bring back the magic to motherhood and her relationships with her kids. Brittney decided to dedicate just five minutes a night to real, focused conversations with her kids. I’ll have her on the podcast soon to talk about her experiment and how it changed her family, but again, I’m going to go off on a side tangent in this episode. One of the biggest takeaways I got was what a treasure Brittney created for herself when she recorded the content of her conversations with her kids.
It’s the next important step in figuring out these novel problems that are our kids. Keeping a record of what is important to them at the current stage of life. She didn’t just write up a summary of each kid. She recorded the things they talked about in their nightly conversations. As an outsider who had no idea who these kids are, I started to recognize their unique personalities and grew to love them over the course of this short little book. If that happens when I’m reading about strangers, how much more precious will a record of my own children be for me.
Monster-Free Mothering
And finally my new friend, Karly Allen, founder of Monster-Free Mothering.. Karly came into my life at a perfect time this fall. She was getting up the nerve to start a business as a behavioral consultant and I was on my last nerve trying to figure out how to solve some really difficult behavioral problems and sibling conflict. She came into my house, led a family meeting for us, and helped us develop a family behavioral plan. This was all super helpful.
But then came the revelation. She also met individually with a couple of kids who are having a hard time and came up with individual plans. I’ve always launched new behavioral systems or chore charts family wide (again back to our weird natural inclination to fairness). This doesn’t make sense at all. My daughter Claire loves a good checklist. Abel is surprisingly neat, but on his own terms. They’re all motivated by different rewards and incentives.
You’d think I would have realized earlier that I needed to personalize my approach, but it took Karly doing it for me for me to realize that’s exactly what I needed to do.
Clearly I can’t manage different chore systems for each of them, or have wildly different expectations for all of them, because I don’t have the time or energy. But there are subtle shifts I can make in my approaches to day-to-day systems with my kids.
However, for the big problems, like behavior, it’s definitely worth the time and effort to create highly individualized plans to help them through it.
You all need someone like Karly or even Karly herself in your life (as long as you don’t make her so busy she doesn’t have time for me anymore). You can follow her on Instagram @monsterfreemothering or at her website, monsterfreemothering.com, where you can read her posts, sign up for her classes, or schedule an appointment (she’ll Skype you in if you don’t live nearby).
The fact that each of our children are so different is one of the most challenging things about parenting. But it’s also the most exciting thing about parenting—watching these people unfold right before your eyes and seeing who they become.
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