How times have changed
It’s a Friday morning in November and the 100-plus folding chairs set up at Temple Emmanuel in Kensington are rapidly filling up with moms and at least a dozen dads. The draw: Nationally acclaimed parenting expert Adele Faber, author of How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. The two-hour workshop sponsored by the PEP is the second of Faber’s three Montgomery County appearances. All are sold out.
“When it comes to parenting, it takes more than love,” says PEP’s marketing director, Robbye Fox, as she introduces Faber. “It takes skill.”
For the next two hours, parents volunteer their struggles with their young children—arguing over what’s for lunch, tears at the day-care drop-off, and getting frustrated while cutting out an octagon for a school project. A mom proudly tells how she reminded her forgetful second-grade son he needed to remember his spelling book. “Instead of saying ‘You did this again, you always do this,’ I just said ‘spelling book,’” the mom said, demonstrating how she practically sang the words. “I got this little smile from him,” she added, as Faber nodded enthusiastically. One dad said he worried that he was relying too much on rewards to motivate his son. The proof? “My son told us, ‘If you go a few days without arguing, I’ll give you a Popsicle,’” he says. The audience laughs knowingly. “
Rewards accomplish the opposite,” Faber warns. “If you want to reward a kid, open your mouth. The best reward is recognizing a child’s strengths and struggles.” And if you’re in the midst of a struggle or meltdown, “acknowledge their feelings,” Faber says.“ And substitute choices for threats. They just want to know you are in there for them.”
Afterwards, Faber—herself a grandmother—and PEP’s Wicker chat about how different parenting is today. “I talk to parents all the time,” Wicker says, “and they wonder, ‘Why is it the things that worked for our parents aren’t working in this generation? What has changed in the world?’ Parenting is more complex now.”
“I think it’s harder,” Faber replies. “The pace of life is so accelerated that we’re often out of sync. Working parents are under such time pressures. Plus there is such pressure on parents to be good parents. There’s this feeling that if I do it right, my kid will come out right.”
While the definition of “right” varies by family, the desire to excel at parenting is universal and has spawned an ever growing industry—one in its infancy when our parents raised us. “My mom had Dr. Spock and her mother-in-law saying, ‘Spank that child,’” says Williams, the Silver Spring mom. Adds Beckert: “There was a lot more conformity. There were not as many ways to parent.” Today, fueled by three decades of research into child development and growth, we have an avalanche of self-help books, parenting magazines, Nanny 911 television shows, toys designed to spark baby IQs, seminars and parenting classes.
We’re more intellectual about parenting
All these resources—and growing awareness that parenting doesn’t always come naturally—have changed the way we think of parenting. “I am more intellectual about parenting,” says Bethesda lawyer Amy Mertz Brown, 44, who has two sons in elementary school. “I do all the research and try to think about the best thing to do. My parents’ generation, they didn’t give it that much in-depth thought. They didn’t worry about how the kids will turn out. We obsess about it a little bit,” she laughs. It’s okay—even expected—for parents to ask for help, from moms sharing advice to parents seeking professional aid for children’s social and learning problems, as well as their own parenting abilities. “Years ago, they would have seen that as stigmatizing,” says Ingersoll.
Williams’ husband David Todd, 49, publications director at the National Alliance for Mental Illness, remembers a night last fall when Avery would not go to sleep. “We had read the story, turned the lights out and sang the song,” Todd says. “Then he decided he needed the Pokemon card he’d left in his pants. Then he got up again to get a stuffed animal. The whole day had been like that. Then he got up a third time to get a race car and I could feel my heart rate increasing when I heard him thumping on the floor. I was ready to yell, ‘Stay in bed! I’m going to take that toy car away forever!’ But therapy and The Mankind Project (a national men’s support, empowerment and therapy program) made me aware I was at risk of copying my father (who had angry outbursts).And I remembered from PEP that if you yell, they won’t hear what you are saying. So by the time I got up to his room, I was able to say, ‘Son, you’ve got a little cold and if you get too sick you won’t have fun playing tomorrow. The only way to get well is to sleep.’ It worked!
“I don’t think I am a better parent in my intentions or in my heart,” Todd adds. “But I have more tools and I hope, because of that, I’ll be a better parent.” Adds his wife, Shellie Williams: “We are so totally different from our parents. Mine was 21 when she had me and I’m 41.We are further along in our careers, more financially secure. What a luxury.”
Like Todd and Williams, 1,800 parents a year attend PEP classes with titles like “Putting an End to Whining” and “Thriving with Teens.” Executive director Wicker says she’s even fielded calls from people who don’t have children yet. “It’s amazing how interested people are in getting off on the right foot when it comes to parenting.”
Last fall, Montgomery County Public Schools started Parent Academy, which offers free, academic-oriented classes about bullying prevention, how to succeed in middle school and how to successfully conquer homework. More than 500 parents signed up for the first sessions, “more than we expected,” says Deirdria Roberson-Hudnell, then-director of the schools’ family and community partnerships, which launched Parent Academy. More classes are offered through The YMCA—word spreads through school listservs—and as many as 200 parents attended a session at Suburban Hospital on angry children/angry parents last fall.
The message: More than ever before, we have a license to be interested in our children, advocate for the mand relish the time we spend together—from going on special outings to cooking together to just getting silly.
“It’s really wonderful,” says Gerber, the Bethesda mother of two teens. “Not a week goes by that we don’t do something as a family…As far as nurturing our children as individuals and being more family focused, I think we are doing a better job” than our parents.
Des Roches remembers that she pulled out the shaving cream the day her son wanted to be a graffiti artist, and they created sidewalk masterpieces together.
We embrace the values we treasured as children—but at times with a modern twist. “My mother really listened to me,” says Helen, a Chevy Chase stay-at-home mom of two who asked that her real name not be used. “She was around for all of us when we got home from school. She made us feel like we could tell her anything. I want my kids to be able to do that with me.” But, she adds, “I felt like I had to start talking with them younger because, with drugs and alcohol, things are going to start earlier with our kids. We haven’t had any major issues yet, but when my son was 5 he innocently asked me about a litany of curse words. He’d learned them from a friend’s older brother.”
We also don’t hesitate to reject some of our parents’ choices. Says Beckert, the Montgomery Village mother of two: “Sometimes my mother will say to me, ‘He just needs a spanking,’” when Beckert’s 4-year-old son Sam melts down. “I’ve asked her, ‘What for? Because he’s having a tantrum? If I want to raise a son who doesn’t believe in violence, is hitting him a good way?’ She saw my point and doesn’t say that anymore.”
Williams remembers going to the beach in South Carolina when Avery was about 4. When Avery started jumping in mud puddles, she didn’t fret, but her mom did. “She said, ‘You just let him run all over you,’ and I said, ‘No, it’s a dumb rule (don’t jump in puddles). I think my mother and father think we are more permissive.” Brown works full time as her own mother did, but says she focuses on being really engaged with her sons when she has time with them, including cuddling with the mat bedtime as opposed to her mother’s habit of a five-minute bedtime routine, then lights out. “Those opportunities to be with the kids make them feel more connected to me as a mom than I did with my mother,” she says.
Raising children together
Parenting today also means moms and dads are raising the children together. “Every decision is made jointly and certainly my husband changed diapers,” says Helen. It’s not unusual to see dads at the playground or sporting events with their kids. Dads are volunteering in the schools and attending parent-teacher conferences. Some PEP classes are 80 percent men. On a winter day, Mark Grannis, a 44-year-old lawyer from Chevy Chase, took a break from work to take his 5-year-old son Will out to lunch. Later, as he chats about parenting, he talks about how much he enjoys leaving work on Thursdays in time to coach 11-year-old daughter Elizabeth’s soccer team.
Says Feldman, who raised her three kids in the ’60s and ’70s: “The dads are much more involved in infant care and changing diapers. When I was raising my kids, that was women’s work.” One of her grown sons now has two children of his own. “He is very involved in their lives,” she says. “It’s swim lessons and ice skating and taking them places and doing things. I used to play board games with my children, but I’m not as athletic. I didn’t participate as much.”
Beyond spending time with their parents, our children have more opportunities than we had—many starting at infancy and, for older kids, all levels and kinds of sports, art classes, drama, dance, music, language classes, tutors and an endless list of after-school clubs. Not only do these opportunities exist, many of us have the means to provide our children with these extras. “As kids, we were all musically inclined but I gave it up early,” says Gerber. “I wish my mom had emphasized it more with me. I made it a point to make sure my kids had piano lessons until eighth grade. I am trying to expose them to a lot of things and then let them choose where they want to put in the time.”
But for every plus, there is a downside. “There is a danger in every form of parenting,” Eist warns.
We revel in our children’s myriad opportunities, but lament the loss of free time. We praise our children’s achievements, but worry about the constant pressure to build the perfect college-student-to- be resume. What if they make a mistake or fail? There’s a reason why our generation inspired the term “helicopter parents.” We love having 21st century gadgets, such as cell phones, BlackBerries and laptops, that allow us more family time. But the same technology that allows us to work while we parent is dividing our attention. We are thrilled we can provide our children with the good life—the exotic birthday parties, amazing trips, latest electronic toys—but worry they feel entitled to, rather than grateful for, what they have. Like our own parents, we want to provide a better life for our kids, but how do we do that when they already have so much? “What’s left, except the moon?” asks Ingersoll, the Bethesda psychologist.
Affluence has changed the dynamics of parenting, social worker and Chevy Chase mom Elizabeth Spencer says. “I don’t think I’m a better parent than my parents,” she says. “But we worry. Will our kids be able to have the same kind of lifestyle? And we are looking for more outstanding in our kids. We can’t just say our kids are fine. There is so much competition in the adult world, and we are translating that into the kid world.”
