Wednesday, July 4, 2007 at 2:02am
Peer into their lives a little
Column: Life at First Sight
You can learn a lot about effective parenting from a parole officer. (Preferably not from up-close experience, of course.)
I had the chance to listen to one who obviously likes kids and chose his job because he'd like to see fewer of them find their way into the criminal-justice system. That means helping change the way they think, and the way that their parents take responsibility for them.
The best advice he has about all this isn't anything new. It's reflected in a series of recent commercials in which a parent gives an older child the "who-what-when-where" interrogation before the kid leaves the house. As every parent knows, or eventually finds out, it's really the who in that equation that matters the most. Few things play as significant a role in a young person's decisions and ideas about life as friends and associates.
When he conducts counseling groups with inmates and those on parole, this officer always asks them what they plan to do so that they won't have to return to jail. Almost without exception, they tell him, "Change who I hang around with." Plenty of studies document how much people can be influenced by criminal behavior — or any sort of behavior — among their peers, and that these are the ones they most often turn to for direction.
The truth of this was first brought home to him when he was serving as a camp counselor for teenagers. He was teaching a class about tying flies for fly-fishing, a hobby about which he was pretty passionate and knew a lot. Knowing that the kids knew nothing about it, he asked for a volunteer and then, gesturing to the wealth of materials he'd laid out for the kids, told him, "Try anything you want and if you want help, just ask."
The boy then turned to his peers and asked, "What should I do?"
This same thing happened with each of the volunteers invited to try it. They didn't ask for the expert's help but turned immediately to their friends and peers, who knew nothing about what they were trying to do.
Too many parents, he believes, don't take this reality seriously enough and are often lulled into a false sense of security about their kids, whose activities they actually know very little about.
He's also come to the conclusion that a kind of "socialization myth," which says kids need to spend a lot of time with other kids in order to develop good social skills, has resulted in many kids who are almost pathologically peer-dependent, who spend all of their time with their peers, and are isolated from adults, especially their parents. As a result, they're actually developing very limited social skills.
His suggestions for increasing the odds that kids will follow a more balanced path and make good choices include:
* Offer the fair, consistent role of authority, not buddy. This, he feels, is the best kind of friendship a parent can offer a child. Parents have a right to know who their kids hang out with and where they go, and to play a role in those choices. If they're smart, they'll befriend the friends, too. (Such interest, and demand for information, will go down a whole lot easier with kids if parents also pay particular attention to the next suggestion.)
* Build a lifestyle of being present, and know your kids like they're your favorite subject in life. Quality time's been overemphasized at the expense of encouraging quantity of time, too, he says. This kind of attention is a lot more important than keeping current with the daily news, yet many parents give kids less genuine time than they do a 30-minute news program. Know everything you can about kids, from what they like and dislike to how they express feelings, and make a habit of looking into their eyes. As a probation officer, he knows this is obviously one way to detect drug use, but it's also an important means of making real emotional contact, as well as watching for changes and being equipped to respond.
* Teach them to surround themselves with those they want to be like. This requires thinking about qualities and behavior, not possessions or social status, he says. One of the best ways to foster this is to create ways for young people to apprentice together with helpful and influential adults. And again, in these days, especially, when trust is breached so often, and by so many, parents will want to be as knowledgeable about these adults as they are about their children's friends.
* Don't rescue your child from the natural consequences of poor choices. If you only follow one piece of his advice, make this it, he says. It's critical that kids learn that if they break rules and laws or make other bad choices, suffering follows. Without this, they're in for a life in which they'll really make others miserable, as well as themselves.
As the Baha'i Writings state, ""Every child is potentially the light of the world — and at the same time its darkness. ... "
Let us do all we can to bring out the light in each one of God's children.
— — —
Phyllis Edgerly Ring, mother of two, is a writer and editor. Her current book project addresses how adults can recognize and nurture children's spiritual nature. She is a former program director at Green Acre Baha'i School in Eliot, Maine, and has been a member of the Baha'i Faith for more than 30 years. Email her at {email columns@bahai.us}columns@bahai.us{/email}. See the website of the Baha'is of the United States for more information. © copyright 2007 by Phyllis Edgerly Ring.
I had the chance to listen to one who obviously likes kids and chose his job because he'd like to see fewer of them find their way into the criminal-justice system. That means helping change the way they think, and the way that their parents take responsibility for them.
The best advice he has about all this isn't anything new. It's reflected in a series of recent commercials in which a parent gives an older child the "who-what-when-where" interrogation before the kid leaves the house. As every parent knows, or eventually finds out, it's really the who in that equation that matters the most. Few things play as significant a role in a young person's decisions and ideas about life as friends and associates.
When he conducts counseling groups with inmates and those on parole, this officer always asks them what they plan to do so that they won't have to return to jail. Almost without exception, they tell him, "Change who I hang around with." Plenty of studies document how much people can be influenced by criminal behavior — or any sort of behavior — among their peers, and that these are the ones they most often turn to for direction.
The truth of this was first brought home to him when he was serving as a camp counselor for teenagers. He was teaching a class about tying flies for fly-fishing, a hobby about which he was pretty passionate and knew a lot. Knowing that the kids knew nothing about it, he asked for a volunteer and then, gesturing to the wealth of materials he'd laid out for the kids, told him, "Try anything you want and if you want help, just ask."
The boy then turned to his peers and asked, "What should I do?"
This same thing happened with each of the volunteers invited to try it. They didn't ask for the expert's help but turned immediately to their friends and peers, who knew nothing about what they were trying to do.
Too many parents, he believes, don't take this reality seriously enough and are often lulled into a false sense of security about their kids, whose activities they actually know very little about.
He's also come to the conclusion that a kind of "socialization myth," which says kids need to spend a lot of time with other kids in order to develop good social skills, has resulted in many kids who are almost pathologically peer-dependent, who spend all of their time with their peers, and are isolated from adults, especially their parents. As a result, they're actually developing very limited social skills.
His suggestions for increasing the odds that kids will follow a more balanced path and make good choices include:
* Offer the fair, consistent role of authority, not buddy. This, he feels, is the best kind of friendship a parent can offer a child. Parents have a right to know who their kids hang out with and where they go, and to play a role in those choices. If they're smart, they'll befriend the friends, too. (Such interest, and demand for information, will go down a whole lot easier with kids if parents also pay particular attention to the next suggestion.)
* Build a lifestyle of being present, and know your kids like they're your favorite subject in life. Quality time's been overemphasized at the expense of encouraging quantity of time, too, he says. This kind of attention is a lot more important than keeping current with the daily news, yet many parents give kids less genuine time than they do a 30-minute news program. Know everything you can about kids, from what they like and dislike to how they express feelings, and make a habit of looking into their eyes. As a probation officer, he knows this is obviously one way to detect drug use, but it's also an important means of making real emotional contact, as well as watching for changes and being equipped to respond.
* Teach them to surround themselves with those they want to be like. This requires thinking about qualities and behavior, not possessions or social status, he says. One of the best ways to foster this is to create ways for young people to apprentice together with helpful and influential adults. And again, in these days, especially, when trust is breached so often, and by so many, parents will want to be as knowledgeable about these adults as they are about their children's friends.
* Don't rescue your child from the natural consequences of poor choices. If you only follow one piece of his advice, make this it, he says. It's critical that kids learn that if they break rules and laws or make other bad choices, suffering follows. Without this, they're in for a life in which they'll really make others miserable, as well as themselves.
As the Baha'i Writings state, ""Every child is potentially the light of the world — and at the same time its darkness. ... "
Let us do all we can to bring out the light in each one of God's children.
— — —
Phyllis Edgerly Ring, mother of two, is a writer and editor. Her current book project addresses how adults can recognize and nurture children's spiritual nature. She is a former program director at Green Acre Baha'i School in Eliot, Maine, and has been a member of the Baha'i Faith for more than 30 years. Email her at {email columns@bahai.us}columns@bahai.us{/email}. See the website of the Baha'is of the United States for more information. © copyright 2007 by Phyllis Edgerly Ring.