While I’m a child and adolescent psychologist, I also spend a lot of time working with parents. This is because it’s hard for young kids to change their thoughts and behaviors on their own. Instead, parents have to be the one to set the environment to help kids do that. During our work together, parents often tell me that they want to change how they parent, but that it also feels overwhelming because there is so much to keep track of! There’s no doubt - it is a lot! Parenting is a full time job and studies show that parents today are busier and taking on more responsibilities than parents of the previous generations. We are more engaged in play and activities and working longer hours, all while we are less likely to live in communities where we have family members to help and support us.
When working with parents, I try to simplify all the steps they are taking into big picture principles. One of the most important ones is the Principle of Modeling. A lot of the smaller changes I try to implement can fall under the category of Modeling, which basically means to show your child how to behave in a way that you’d like them to behave. In other words, model for them the behavior you’d like them to learn and repeat.
This Principle can apply across many domains or problems. For example,
If you have an anxious child, you can show them how you too may have fears, but that instead of avoiding them, you face them and are working on tolerating your anxiety.
When you are angry, you can model taking a break or deep breaths instead of yelling or hitting.
If you tend to eat the same foods, that you try tasting different cuisines or flavors.
If want your child to use the cell phone less, make sure that you put the phone away during family time (e.g., meal times, movie night, etc). Put away your own phone while driving and in the evening hours. This can be an especially helpful way for parents to model ways of reducing cell phone consumption, without explicitly telling them what to do (which can be a huge source of discord between parents and kids). It also avoids the classic “Well, YOU DO IT” argument.
When you are hurt or sad, you practice talking about your feelings, instead of withdrawing or stonewalling.
Now, the catch of the Principle of Modeling is that it can also applies to less desirable behaviors.
Take a study recently published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology by Setoh and colleagues (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S002209651830540X). This study found that parents who were lied to by their parents, even if the intent was innocuous (e.g., if you swallow bubblegum, your belly will explode from the gum and you will turn pink) tended to lie more themselves as adults. Now, this is pretty scary stuff - parents tell little fibs all the time, sometimes because it’s just an easier way to get maximal impact (and cooperation), but also sometimes because it’s hard to tell our kids the truth (think the birds and the bees conversation). The point of this article isn’t to say that avoiding an honest answer here or there will cause ruination in our kids. I think of it more as a gentle nudge to remind parents to think big picture - what behavior am I modeling here, what is my kid learning from me, and what behaviors do I want them to learn?
As for how to answer tricky questions, I will get to that next time. But for now, the idea isn’t for parents to be perfect models. Mistakes will be made, guaranteed. Just sometimes though, if your kid is acting in a way you don’t approve of or like, take a pause and honestly examine- just where did they learn that behavior from? And what could I model differently for them?