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Parenting
With Passion: Part 1 - Do What You Love, the Children Will Follow
There is no right answer to these questions. Attachment parenting can be wonderfully freeing to parents who aren't comfortable with the standard recommendations of the medical model. It can be a burden to other parents. The way you find your path through these many options is to do what you love. Do what feels most alive to you. If you are running your kids around, frantic with fear that they will fall behind, they will learn to live a life motivated by fear. In evaluating what you are teaching your kids, remember the cliché, “They will learn what you do, not what you say.” They will pick up on the deeper vibe of how and why you are leading your life the way you are. If running around is motivated by competition with other parents, then your kids will learn the importance of keeping up with the Jones'. If you drag yourself to activities just because everyone else is doing it, you are teaching your kids to follow the crowd. They will pick up on the vibe of why they are doing what they are doing more than the purported benefits of whatever the activity is. This doesn't mean you have to sit around all day. It just means you have to do things that you love, and that stimulate you. Then your kids will learn that life is about doing what you love and exploring the world. Sometimes I take my kids to many activities a week. I love the feel of using my kids as an excuse to pretend I'm at summer camp. Of course, they get to go along and be exposed to many things and their minds are stimulated. Most of all they pick up a vibe of fun and excitement about trying something new. When
I tell my son we're going somewhere, he always asks why. I just say, “For
fun.” I hope that I am teaching him that fun is a good reason to do things;
that having fun is just as important as doing things well. Fun is what
makes life worth living. As a parent, you might be fearful that fun won't
pay the bills or that fun won't get your child through school. That's
not entirely true. Even for a doctor or lawyer, fun can help pay the bills.
A lot of experts are saying that doing what you love is the path to worldly success. There is also evidence that emotional intelligence is a robust predictor of success in life, more so than IQ points. Maybe you can take some of this research to heart and learn to honor your own interests as you parent your young children. Focus
on Fun
There are many reasons why focusing on fun is essential to your child’s health and development. First, the best way to fuel attention and focus is to let your child channel their love into developing specific skills. My son loves Thomas the Tank Engine. Because he loves it so much, he begs me to read books on Thomas every day. He loves to build puzzles with images of Thomas the Train. He likes to play matching memory games with Thomas on the computer. He loves to color in drawings of Thomas. He builds so many skills and develops his capacity to pay attention by following his love. Second, there are many amazing career choices that involve fun, not just clowns and entertainers. But as a parent you should never write off clown and entertainer as legitimate career options for your kids. The pressure we feel is often caused by having such narrow ideas about what we want our kids to be when they grow up. Give yourself permission to think about what a successful business or life your child could have with the amazing capacity to have fun and be fun. He could become a guru in marketing or promotion by generating tons of buzz about cool clients. She could start her own business of running tours of fun places. The possibilities are endless. A person who is fun to be around will get hired easily, and attract clients to whatever pursuit they may choose. Another reason for focusing on fun in your child’s development is that your child is . . . just a child. Because of the way your child’s brain develops in the earliest years, what she is learning is a general background feel for the world. The older your child gets, the more legitimate it is to put emphasis on gaining skills. But for younger kids, particularly five and under, one of the important things they are learning is what the world feels like. Most people don’t have any memories from before the age of five. This is because the frontal brain isn’t well enough developed to translate experiences into concrete, specific retrievable memories. Mostly, they learn a feel, a vibe about the way the world feels. They will carry this with them most of their lives. Finally, another great reason for making fun a centerpiece in parenting is because fun is fun. You don’t need a reason to have fun. Fun is its own goal. It doesn’t have to be a steppingstone to something else. If you can realize that fun is just for itself, you can teach your kids a powerful lesson: Now is the greatest time of all. We live for now, we enjoy now in the now. We don’t always live for some other time in the future. We live in and enjoy this moment. If you teach your kids this through who you are, you can save them a lifetime of yoga, workshops, books and meditation disciplines trying to figure out how to live in the now. Just be it – and they will be too. As a parent, you can cut to the chase by teaching your kids how to relax, how to have fun, and that life is bigger than achievement and performance. This doesn’t mean you don’t respect high achievements or instill in them the value of working hard. It just means that you give them a sense of perspective. Building
Joy Muscles
Many parents are narrowly and obsessively focused on developing their children’s intellectual skills. While this is important, it is equally important for parents to focus on building their child’s joy muscles. Even at the earliest months out of the womb there is pressure for parents not to fall behind – whether it be mommy and me music classes or teaching your baby sign language. Why do we run around working ourselves into the ground so we can give your kids everything? Why do we run our kids around so they don’t miss out on any activity that can give them the edge they need? Why do we spend all our money so our kids can have every opportunity? We do it all so our kids will be happy. Why don’t we just take the quick route and teach our kids to be happy? If we show them how to have fun, how to be joyful, we can accomplish our mission to make our kids happy the easy way. Don’t worry, be happy. Deep down we know that a happy child will find their way through the world, and find a way of making a contribution that would make any parent proud. But at the end of the day, our children have their own destiny and making us proud shouldn’t be their reason for living. What can you do to build your child’s joy muscles? The most important thing is to make sure that the reasons for the activities you pursue with them is to have fun. Make sure to take your ego out of it. If your kid wants to play soccer, try to restrain yourself from evaluating if she’s the best on the field. Is she having fun? If not, don’t sign her up again, unless she expresses interest. To read part 2 of this series click here. To listen to Dr. Honos-Webb's internet radio interview with IP Editor in Chief, Sandie Sedgbeer, click here... SPECIAL NOTE: As an expert in ADHD, Lara has created a number of FREE video tips and tools and uploaded them to YouTube. To access these, please click on the links below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyD41IhOqsY © Lara Honos-Webb, PhD, 2008
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What's
a mama to do with so many parenting philosophies to choose from and activities
available to keep your kids up to par? You can't possibly take your child
to swim lessons, music classes, soccer games, and boy scouts every single
week. In regards to parenting philosophies, most parents come up against
the debate of attachment parenting vs. mainstream discipline.
LARA
HONOS-WEBB, PhD., is a clinical psychologist licensed
in California. She is author of The Gift of ADHD and Listening to
Depression: How Understanding Your Pain Can Heal Your Life which
was selected by Health Magazine as one of the best therapy books of
2006. The Gift of ADHD Activity Book: 101 Ways To Transform Problems
into Strengths and The Gift of Adult ADD were released
in 2008. Her work has been featured in Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal,
The Chicago Tribune and Publisher's Weekly, ivillage.com, msn.com, abcnews.com
as well as newspapers across the country and local and national radio
and television. Her books have over 125,000 copies in print. The American
Psychiatric Association included The Gift of ADHD (2005) in
its recommended reading list in their “ADHD Parents Medication Guide.”
She specializes in the treatment of ADHD and depression and the psychology
of pregnancy and motherhood; she speaks regularly on her areas of expertise.
Honos-Webb completed a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at
University of California, San Francisco, and has been an assistant professor
teaching graduate students. She has published more than 25 scholarly
articles. Visit her website at