Wall-to-Wall” Parenting: Part 3

"Cutting Back (Continued)"


Divorce statistics suggest that parents have focused too much on their kids—the second highest divorce rate is found in the years just after the kids leave home. These parents over-invested in their kids and under-invested in their marriage. So, what other ways should parents scale back?

You aren’t shirking your parental duty if you let your child work out her own social difficulties. When psychologist John Rosemond’s daughter was in middle high, she experienced agonizing social rejection—primarily because she still looked like a little girl. Rosemond explained how he and his wife responded: “We wanted desperately to solve this problem for her. We thought of calling some of the mothers of the more popular girls and asking for their help. We thought of throwing a big expensive birthday party for Amy and inviting all of the popular girls.... We finally came to our senses. We could not solve this problem for Amy.” As a result, the Rosemond’s shifted their strategy from the short-term goal of helping Amy elevate her popularity quotient to the long-term goal of raising an adult who did not depend on other people’s approval in order to feel that her life was in order.

Instead of trying to solve the problem for her, they chose to give her the tools to solve it herself. They told her: “Amy, we know this is painful, but you will not be thirteen forever. Some day, you will be thirty, and all this will seem unimportant then. Furthermore, what you are experiencing today is helping you learn how important it is to never treat another person the way these girls are treating you. It’s also helping you learn to stand on your own two feet, to not depend on other people for a sense of well-being." Though Amy wasn’t thrilled by the speech, she later came to see the wisdom and rightness of her parents’ counsel.

You aren’t shirking your duties as a parent if you don’t help your child with her homework every night. Our culture’s worship of achievement has led many parents to assume a major role in their kids’ school work—checking assignments, reviewing for tests, searching for resources, editing papers, and more. This can be very effective in the short term (i.e., good grades) but what are the long term consequences? Ultimately it produces a de-pendent child and an exhausted parent. Parents justify their efforts by claiming their child would fail if he didn’t receive help. But what is so crushing about failure? A failing grade can be one of the most powerful incentives for change. Ultimately, a child has to learn to take the initiative and solve his own problems—unless you plan to be his roommate in college!