Poets and Parenting
I can't remember if I've written about this before. It happens.
We've been together a long time.
DQ Resident Poet Eduardo Gabrieloff was discussing parenting via email and he used the phrase "Guide, don't control."
That, in essence, is parenting.
It reminded me that I had a story to write from my time at Meijer Gardens (I still haven't visited since March, due to Damn It 2020).
All I did at Meijer Gardens was write. It was my office. I never even saw the gardens (which, by all accounts, are fantastic). However, because there were people coming in and out of the cafe, and lots of parents with children, I saw things.
I would also walk for around ten minutes an hour inside the building (upstairs, downstairs, meeting rooms), so I saw more parent-child interactions there, too.
There were, broadly, two parenting styles. The first was the parent that constantly corrected their children. They couldn't go fifteen seconds without correcting something.
The second style was the parent that set clear boundaries on what was okay and what wasn't, and then left their children alone (in terms of guidance) unless they went outside the boundaries.
The difference was striking.
I think every parent understands that the second style is far, far better for a child's development, but in practice, it can be difficult to do. There's a fine line between a child doing something that needs to be corrected and something that is just annoying to the parent.
I think it's also hard for high-achieving parents to parent in the second style, because high achievers tend to have a high degree of control over their own lives.
The difference in child behavior, though, was remarkable.
Children who were constantly being corrected were much more active, almost frantically so. They were all over the place. Almost every interaction the parent had with the child involved some sort of command.
The children being parented in the boundary style were much calmer. They were much more likely to be focused on a single thing, instead of everything. The parents were also more likely to just be hanging out with their child, talking to them about all kinds of things.
You may think that it's the children driving the parenting style, but from what I observed, I don't believe so. I think it's the parents who drive their child's behavior (absent some kind of medical issue).
Think about it in terms of your boss.
If your boss is constantly correcting you at work, it's annoying as hell. It will make you anxious, and it makes it hard to focus, because you feel like you have to concentrate on everything all the time. You feel like you're always defending yourself.
If your boss just sets boundaries, though, that's a great boss. You can do your work, set some of your own priorities, and manage yourself. You're more confident, and you do better work.
It seems like it would be the same way with children. If they're never given an opportunity to manage themselves, they never learn those skills. There are so many rules that they never feel like they know all of them, and that creates anxiety.
The children that have clear boundaries, though, are free to explore. They're given a space to learn how to manage themselves, and they also interact in a far more relaxed way with their parents.
It's easier for a parent using the boundary style to lapse, of course, but just thinking about boundaries instead of micro-management is a good thing, both for parents and children.
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