Why Can't Johnny Jump Tall Buildings?Parents expect way too much from their kids.
By Alan E. KazdinPosted Friday, Nov. 7, 2008, at 12:47 PM ETWhen your child fails to meet a reasonable—specific, clear, flexible—request and it's a one-time occasion, try to let it go if you can. But if the request is not met and it's not a one-time event, then it's time to begin shaping the desired behavior. Start with a lot less than you will eventually settle for: less behavior, for less time, less often. Ten minutes of homework, not the full hour right away; putting the forks on the table, not setting the whole table. Then work up to the desired level. And, once you get close, remember that getting a behavior to occur most of the time, as opposed to every single time, is probably good enough. Exceptions are usually not a problem; they're normal. As is the case with your own efforts to exercise and eat properly, if it's a habit, and if you do the behavior most of the time, that's good enough.
I know that you feel that you're helping your child set habits now that will last all of her life, and sometimes that's exactly what you're doing, but often, it's not the right model to keep in mind. Yes, when it comes to, say, developing vision and language, childhood habits set the pattern for life, but in a lot of other cases, they don't. Little kids will lie, cheat, and steal, for instance, and still grow up to be scrupulously honest adults. Don't crank up the pressure unnecessarily by making every single one of your child's behaviors into a slippery slope, a domino, or an occasion to draw a line in the sand.
Finally, bear in mind the cholesterol-stroke caveat, or the principle of the U-shaped relation. Most of the time, we think about cause and effect as a linear relation. That's because it often is. If you do X, Y happens. If you do X a lot, Y happens a lot, so more X equals more Y. It works for, say, pressing on the gas to make your car go fast, or drinking alcohol to get drunk, or the correlation between high cholesterol and the risk of heart disease. But some relations are U-shaped. One of them is that between cholesterol and the risk of stroke. People with high or low cholesterol have a higher risk of stroke, and those in the middle have the lowest risk. It can be the same with expectations. Both chaos (not enough expectation: feel free to watch TV and play computer games all day, go to bed when you want to, do or don't do homework and chores as you see fit) and regimentation (too much unreasonable expectation, too little allowance for variability, unrelenting "tough love" that's too heavy on the "tough") can have a similar negative stressing effect on a household and put children at greater risk for problem behavior: tantrums, fighting, and the like. Variations in children's and parents' temperaments can make it hard to give blanket advice, but the trick in each case is to find the individual child's sweet spot, the point between too little and too much expectation.
The good news is that you're the world's leading expert on your child, the one person in creation best equipped to find that sweet spot. Just remember, as you go about it, that it's only human for parents to tend to expect that our children can do more than they can really do. Even slight adjustments of your expectations to compensate for that tendency—a little more emphasis on shaping, a little more patience, a little reflection on what's really important to you as a parent and what behaviors can be left to disappear or develop on their own—can produce surprisingly excellent results.
Alan E. Kazdin, who was president of the American Psychological Association in 2008, is John M. Musser professor of psychology and child psychiatry at Yale University and director of Yale's Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic. Illustration by Rob Donnelly.
Call me old fashioned, but isn't it a parent's job to teach children how to act like a civilized human being? So yeah, you might expect that your 3 year old will have difficulty not acting like an ape in play school, but shouldn't you still punish them for bad behavior? I'm not advocating violence or medication, but I know when I was fussy as a child my parents made damn sure I knew it was unacceptable so when I could control myself, I did it.
I remember my mom telling me I was tired and crank whenever when I acted up when I was little and that meant I went to B-E-D, which I hated. And I would cry and cry, but since I was tired and cranky, that pretty much put me to sleep and I'd wake up refreshed and ready to get into more trouble. Even if it was 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
--stackey-ackey
(To reply, click here.)
Kids these days have it tougher. In the past, our parents could only use us to compare and compete within a smaller group. The worst shame you suffered was a wrong note at the piano recital, not at what age to meet the "PlayItWithMeNow toy piano Milestone." Now, with the ease of access to information, every kid is graded against a "milestone" even though more parents do not understand that the milestone is just the mean of child behavior. Most parents are emptying store shelves of Baby Einstein DVDs in hopes that will cultivate their genius.
All of the toys are colored so brightly that a parent is unable to identify them. Yet, my one year-old picks up the remote control, cell phone and spends his time pulling out pots and pans and all of those child-proof outlet plugs as well as any device plugged into the wall. What is up with this baby industry?
--Ian Blokesworth
(To reply, click here.)
Thank you for this sensible and compassionate article. Since my daughter's birth I've let my "baby's first year" books get dusty and "milestone" newsletters from various websites go directly to my spam folder. Once I let go of what "should" be happening and embraced what is happening, my parenting life improved so much. Yes, I wish my daughter would take naps that lasted longer than 30 minutes and didn't require my presence (or breastfeeding!!) 100% of the time when she was 6 months old. But fighting it would have made things a lot worse and added to the stress level. Here we are 3 months later and those things are now happening by itself, without a fight, and without frustration. Your point about parental frustration stemming more from expectation than from children's abilities is spot on. I don't expect her to sleep through the night -- maybe not for years. I don't expect her to be quiet, play on her own, etc -- maybe not for years. It's really sad to me that people have babies and then expect them to never act like babies. Why is she crying all the time? Why does she always want to eat and be held? Why won't she sleep more? Because she's an infant. Our job is to conform to them, with total surrender at first and then increasing boundaries as appropriate later on. I loved this article, thank you!
--lolacat
(To reply, click here.)
The truth is, kids develop at their own speed, in their own directions. The leading scientists of the 20th century didn't go to kindergarten, much less get "coaching" or constant checks on their homework. It's pure vanity to think that you really "raise" your kids. They spend most of their childhood trying to shake you off - and that's a good thing.
--JonFrum
(To reply, click here.)
I can't argue with the story as a whole because I think kids are over-coached and asked to grow up way too fast nowadays. But, the question it asks early on of "Shouldn't a child be toilet trained by the age of 4?" is a poor example, given that this is one area where kids' development has actually stepped considerably BACKWARDS over the past few generations. Prior to the super-absorbent, disposable diapers of today, kids knew they were wet and felt discomfort, leading to their being potty trained at a younger age. In the 1960s, 95% were toilet trained by the age of 18 months. It used to be almost unheard of for a 4-year-old to still be in diapers, but today the average for potty-training is 37 months and they make diapers to fit 5- and 6-year-olds.
--Sundown
(To reply, click here.)
Being a teacher for 20 years, the opposite problem seems to hold true. Parents' expectations of their children's behavior is too low. We have children misbehaving at school. When we visit with parents about these disrespectful behaviors, generally parents shrug, "Yeah, they do that at home, too. They're kids, what we can do?" What? Be a parent!
--KKB
(To reply, click here.)
This is really a big problem. A lot of parents come in with highly unreasonable expectations for their child. Often, it is the parents who enforce "study time" but who do not actually "go over" the work with the kid that do the best.
In my experience, when parents get overly involved (and want to say, look at EVERY problem the child does and critique it) everyone suffers. The parent may want to teach their child differently from the way I do it, which can create conflicting impulses. Also, much of what makes testing difficult is the perceived stigma and heightened consequences of the exam. Parents with too-high expectations and an overbearing demeanor just reinforce the fears that the child already has.
In all, I think it is important that parents maintain an active role in the schoolwork of their children, but that role should be encouraging, not one of micro-management.
--morphicresident
(To reply, click here.)
(11/08)
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Call me old fashioned, but isn't it a parent's job to teach children how to act like a civilized human being? So yeah, you might expect that your 3 year old will have difficulty not acting like an ape in play school, but shouldn't you still punish them for bad behavior? I'm not advocating violence or medication, but I know when I was fussy as a child my parents made damn sure I knew it was unacceptable so when I could control myself, I did it.
I remember my mom telling me I was tired and crank whenever when I acted up when I was little and that meant I went to B-E-D, which I hated. And I would cry and cry, but since I was tired and cranky, that pretty much put me to sleep and I'd wake up refreshed and ready to get into more trouble. Even if it was 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
--stackey-ackey
(To reply, click here.)
Kids these days have it tougher. In the past, our parents could only use us to compare and compete within a smaller group. The worst shame you suffered was a wrong note at the piano recital, not at what age to meet the "PlayItWithMeNow toy piano Milestone." Now, with the ease of access to information, every kid is graded against a "milestone" even though more parents do not understand that the milestone is just the mean of child behavior. Most parents are emptying store shelves of Baby Einstein DVDs in hopes that will cultivate their genius.
All of the toys are colored so brightly that a parent is unable to identify them. Yet, my one year-old picks up the remote control, cell phone and spends his time pulling out pots and pans and all of those child-proof outlet plugs as well as any device plugged into the wall. What is up with this baby industry?
--Ian Blokesworth
(To reply, click here.)
Thank you for this sensible and compassionate article. Since my daughter's birth I've let my "baby's first year" books get dusty and "milestone" newsletters from various websites go directly to my spam folder. Once I let go of what "should" be happening and embraced what is happening, my parenting life improved so much. Yes, I wish my daughter would take naps that lasted longer than 30 minutes and didn't require my presence (or breastfeeding!!) 100% of the time when she was 6 months old. But fighting it would have made things a lot worse and added to the stress level. Here we are 3 months later and those things are now happening by itself, without a fight, and without frustration. Your point about parental frustration stemming more from expectation than from children's abilities is spot on. I don't expect her to sleep through the night -- maybe not for years. I don't expect her to be quiet, play on her own, etc -- maybe not for years. It's really sad to me that people have babies and then expect them to never act like babies. Why is she crying all the time? Why does she always want to eat and be held? Why won't she sleep more? Because she's an infant. Our job is to conform to them, with total surrender at first and then increasing boundaries as appropriate later on. I loved this article, thank you!
--lolacat
(To reply, click here.)
The truth is, kids develop at their own speed, in their own directions. The leading scientists of the 20th century didn't go to kindergarten, much less get "coaching" or constant checks on their homework. It's pure vanity to think that you really "raise" your kids. They spend most of their childhood trying to shake you off - and that's a good thing.
--JonFrum
(To reply, click here.)
I can't argue with the story as a whole because I think kids are over-coached and asked to grow up way too fast nowadays. But, the question it asks early on of "Shouldn't a child be toilet trained by the age of 4?" is a poor example, given that this is one area where kids' development has actually stepped considerably BACKWARDS over the past few generations. Prior to the super-absorbent, disposable diapers of today, kids knew they were wet and felt discomfort, leading to their being potty trained at a younger age. In the 1960s, 95% were toilet trained by the age of 18 months. It used to be almost unheard of for a 4-year-old to still be in diapers, but today the average for potty-training is 37 months and they make diapers to fit 5- and 6-year-olds.
--Sundown
(To reply, click here.)
Being a teacher for 20 years, the opposite problem seems to hold true. Parents' expectations of their children's behavior is too low. We have children misbehaving at school. When we visit with parents about these disrespectful behaviors, generally parents shrug, "Yeah, they do that at home, too. They're kids, what we can do?" What? Be a parent!
--KKB
(To reply, click here.)
This is really a big problem. A lot of parents come in with highly unreasonable expectations for their child. Often, it is the parents who enforce "study time" but who do not actually "go over" the work with the kid that do the best.
In my experience, when parents get overly involved (and want to say, look at EVERY problem the child does and critique it) everyone suffers. The parent may want to teach their child differently from the way I do it, which can create conflicting impulses. Also, much of what makes testing difficult is the perceived stigma and heightened consequences of the exam. Parents with too-high expectations and an overbearing demeanor just reinforce the fears that the child already has.
In all, I think it is important that parents maintain an active role in the schoolwork of their children, but that role should be encouraging, not one of micro-management.
--morphicresident
(To reply, click here.)
(11/08)