If
you don’t get anything else from this book,
get this: Our biggest struggle as parents is not with
the television; it’s not with bad influences;
it’s not even with drugs or alcohol. Our biggest
struggle as parents is with our own emotional reactivity.
That’s why the greatest thing we can do for
our kids is learn to focus on us, not them. Instead
of anxiously trying to control our kids, let’s
concentrate on what we can control–calming our
own emotional, knee–jerk reactions.
What’s
so damaging about being too reactive? Keep reading.
The next couple of chapters will make it clear. For
now, consider this: How can we have any influence
on our children’s decision–making if we
don’t have an influence on our own? When we
get reactive, we get regressive. That is, we shrink
back to an immature level of functioning. Think of
me at Waffle House. In an effort to get my two-year-old
to stop acting so immaturely, I became just as immature.
How effective
can that be? I’ve come to realize that if I
get loud and scary and intimidating, I may get compliance
eventually, but at what price? I may have screamed
my son into submission at Waffle House, but what type
of relationship will I have with him if I continue
to parent by reactive intimidation?
If we want
to be influential, then we have to first bring ourselves
under control. Only then can we choose our response.
Only then can we choose how we want to behave, regardless
of how our children choose to behave.
So if emotional
reactivity is our biggest enemy, where does it come
from? More important, what can we do about it? Most
of us cannot think of a more terrifying emotion than
feeling overwhelmed. We can feel scared, exhausted,
worried, or angry, but nothing shuts us down, stops
us in our tracks, and causes us to throw up our hands
in futility like feeling overwhelmed. When we feel
incapable of coping with, handling, or accomplishing
all we have to do, we are overwhelmed. When it seems
as if even if we weren’t so tired and so frustrated
we still couldn’t keep all the plates spinning,
that’s about as scary as it gets. When we feel
stretched beyond our limits, that's when we just want
to quit.
And I can
think of no more accurate description of how most
of us parents feel far too much of the time. Far too
often, we feel overwhelmed. We feel overstretched,
overcommitted, underprepared, and underappreciated.
That’s a recipe for feeling overwhelmed. As
a result, most of us feel a gnawing sense of inadequacy.
We don't just feel like bad parents, we feel like
failures.
Parents
feel overstretched, overcommitted, underprepared,
and underappreciated.
And
unfortunately, our role as parents is the one area
of life where we cannot afford to fail. If there is
one area where we feel the pressure of absolute success,
it is with our parenting. After all, we are bombarded
with messages about the importance of time with our
kids, involvement in our kids’ lives, and putting
our family first among our priorities. Magazines are
crammed with articles dispensing the newest parenting
techniques and advice. Studies consistently show the
ill effects of bad parenting. Churches preach the
need to put families first. With all of this pressure
comes just more fear and feelings of inadequacy.
And then
there’s the most intense pressure of all: How
we do as parents will reverberate throughout history.
We are raising the next generation, and they will
either continue the success and progress of past generations
or they will erase it all.
Anyone
feeling overwhelmed?
Parenting
is serious business. The stakes are unbelievably high.
The cost of failure is unimaginable. I know you feel
the intense weight of performing as a parent. You
may wonder if you're the only one who sometimes feels
inadequate, even inept. You may wonder: Is it supposed
to be this hard? The answer is yes. And no. Yes, parenting
is hard, and it’s supposed to be. We’ll
get to that in the next few chapters. But no, we don’t
have to feel this much pressure. We don’t have
to feel overwhelmed.
The Most Damaging Lie About Parenting
The reason
we feel so overwhelmed is because most of us are attempting
to follow an impossible model. And it is fueled by
a dangerous lie. Here is the most damaging lie about
parenting: We are responsible for our children.
I know
that to even question such a statement sounds ridiculous.
“Of course I’m responsible for my kids…who
else would be?” I can only ask you to bear with
me and keep reading.
You see,
most people would define parenting like this: “It
is our job as parents to get our children to think,
feel, and, especially, behave the right way. It is
our job to get our children to be good.” Of
course that’s right, right?
Wrong.
Now, let
me be clear. In my experience working with families,
I’ve seen the devastating effects of terrible
parenting on now–grown adults. Certainly we
have a profound amount of influence on how our kids
turn out. This book will illustrate the power we have
to shape our children. In fact, I don’t think
we can overestimate this influence we have on future
generations.
But what
that really means is that we have a far greater responsibility
to our children than we have for our children. Let
me say that again, so it will sink in. We are much
less responsible for our children than we’ve
ever been told. However, we have a far greater responsibility
to our children than we've ever realized.
Most of
us feel like we’re responsible for our children.
Sure, they’re totally dependent on us right
from the beginning. But let’s think about that
for a moment. If we are responsible for our children,
then we have a really big problem. How long did it
take you to realize that your child had a mind of
her own? Early on, our children start to make their
own choices. This is part of growing up. In truth,
this is growing up. Even in infancy our kids start
to embrace their natural ability to make decisions
about what they will and will not do. They begin to
choose how they feel, how they think, and how they
behave.
I know
this concept is simplistic, but it carries all the
seeds of our frustration in raising kids. They simply
make different choices than we want them to make!
They choose to yell and scream in the grocery store.
They choose not to do their homework. They choose
to break curfew and disrespect our rules. They choose
to throw their waffles on the floor in front of a
restaurant full of people!
If you are responsible for your children, then you
have to figure out how to program them to make the
“right” choices. And you need to do it
quickly. You have to learn the right techniques to
get them to think, feel, and behave according to your
definition of “good.”
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by Hal Edward Runkel Copyright © 2007 by
Hal Edward Runkel. Excerpted by permission of
Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All
rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may
be reproduced or reprinted without permission
in writing from the publisher. 
