Marilyn Heins: Who grades our parenting?

One cute fifth grader I know told her parents after they tangled over TV time and she lost, “If I were grading you two as parents, you just flunked!”

How do parents know what their parenting grade is? Or what kind of job they are doing? Who grades them? The child? The neighbors? Relatives? Society? When? Yearly? When the parenting job is finished?

“Parenting is the most important job we do but we get precious little or no training for the job. We get little or no feedback along the way and do not know how good a job we have done until the child is grown and on his or her way.” I wrote these words over 20 years ago but they still pertain.

I also wrote a Parenting Job Description because no one gave me one before I got pregnant. Parents must be responsible and able to postpone gratification. They have to know how to provide nurturing care and must have the capacity to love and enjoy their children, the guts to be an in-charge parent, the ability to cope and be flexible, a passion to teach, as well as empathy, patience, a sense of humor and confidence in your self as a parent.

A parent needs a few basic skills: knowledge of children and how they develop; communication skills; how to control yourself and your temper; how to make a living; how to reach for and accept professional help when you’re stuck; a willingness to let go.

Sounds fairly easy. People have been parenting forever and the human race is still here. However parenting advice changes like hemlines and the world now changes at a dizzying speed. The internet, for example, over which I shall submit this column and check numbers, facts, and spelling, is only 30 years old. Yet it has already revolutionized our lives.

The internet has had a big effect on parenting education. Much information is online and free and can be accessed anywhere with a smart phone. Some information is good, some ranges from not so good to dangerous and some is contradictory or worthless.

Despite the internet, or maybe because of it, parents I talk to still seem to have the same major worries they had when I became a parent and when I started writing about parenting: 1) I will do something wrong that will have adverse and permanent effects on my child. 2) I am not spending enough time with my kids.

Some parents have come to believe that they, and only they, can and should make all decisions pertaining to the child. But parents alone cannot raise a child. School and society play a huge role in how a child turns out.

Parenting advice itself can lead to parental fears and guilt. In days of yore when we lived with our extended family in villages, parenting was a community endeavor. New parents learned by watching others. More important the others helped the new mother.

Delivering a baby has been compared to playing a professional football game. An exhausted new mother needs care for herself and help in care of the baby.

Today we may live far from our extended family and neighbors. Grandma and Grandpa may be working or elderly, especially these days when women postpone pregnancy to finish college or work. Parents are bombarded with “expert” advice and it is easy to understand why they do not feel confident in their parenting skills.

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Experts imply or stress that 1) Parents must do the right thing at the right time or their children will not thrive as kids and become well-adjusted and successful adults. 2) If parents follow our advice they can raise superior children who will become superior adults. Thus if the kids don’t turn out OK, who is to blame? The parents of course.

Parenting advice often overlooks the fact that parenting is bi-directional, the kind of child born to you determines how you parent. Also parents are not the only influence on their children as they learn much from their peers and, alas, the internet.

I found from my own experience, augmented by watching my children parent my grandchildren, there are a few skills and strategies that help parents get through the day:

Guilt-free parenting: Do the best you can.

Joyful parenting: Read to your kids because it’s fun not because the early development police are after you.

Skillful parenting: Learn the best way to help a child get over a tantrum today, without worrying about whether the kid will be an out-of-control adult tomorrow.

In-charge parenting: Whether a toddler or a teen, every child needs to know the parents are in charge. Don’t be a parent wimp.

Realistic parenting: Accept the fact that there are five things a parent cannot make a child do: eat, fall asleep, poop, be happy, or turn out the way you dream they will. But you can confidently help them become grownups.

Today parenting: Stop anguishing over what you did wrong yesterday and worrying about how your kids will turn out tomorrow. Just parent today.

The late Judith Rich Harris, author of The Nurture Assumption writes, “…the notion we can make our kids turn out the way we want is an illusion. Love your kids because kids are lovable, not because you think they need it. Enjoy them. Teach them what you can. Relax ... You can neither perfect them or ruin them. They are not yours to perfect or ruin: they belong to tomorrow.”

Joshua, age 6 and three quarters, recently went up to his father and said, “I love you Dad!” When asked why, Joshua thought and then said, “Because you love me, you make me laugh, and you never give up on me.” Any parent who gets this sort of loving and appreciative feedback can relax and say, “I must be doing something right.”