Article appearing in The FRIENDS National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention (CBCAP) Parent Advisory Council Newsletter Fall 2017, published with permission of the author.

Parents and those working with parents often lament that “kids don’t come with instructions” and it’s true: we get more documentation when buying a microwave than we do when welcoming a baby into the world. How can we square that reality with both the rising tide of parenting advice and the growing rates of depression and other mental health concerns in young people?

Let me suggest a solution to all three challenges: the kids-don’t-come-with-instructions lament, the tide of parenting advice and the increasing distress we see among children, one that is simpler than you might imagine: Remember to breathe.

You have probably heard that “Hurt people hurt people” or “Victims become victimizers,” truisms that evoke the tragic reality of child abuse and intimate partner violence. Murray Strauss, a major contributor to our understanding of abuse in families, told the Boston GLOBE in 2012: “For parents who spank their children, over the long term, there are greater odds that your child could become everything you don’t want your child to become – an abuser, a depressed person, a person with temper-control issues.”

We can keep effective parents on the good path they are following and, at the same time,

break the cycle of intergenerational transmission of violence in families, if we make a fundamental, well-coordinated shift in pediatric, public health and social services policy and practice toward positive and preventive parenting programs.

But what is the essential element in such programming? In any interaction with one of my sons, now grown, or my grandchildren, saying those three words, “Remember to breathe,” lets me consider my own state of mind and heart. It then also gives me a chance to consider what might be in their mind and heart. Isn’t patience what we want for our children? When we have it for ourselves, we are more likely to give to our young people.

Education for parents – on child development (what to expect of children at each stage), parenting skills (what to do about that?!) and social emotional learning (how to manage internal and interpersonal conflicts) – can help fathers and mothers develop positive attitudes and behaviors. We must make parenting education available, accessible, affordable and attractive for all parents.

We must also acknowledge that boys and girls, and fathers and mothers, have different needs and sometimes divergent communication styles. While the women’s movement in the United States has brought amazing social progress, a few advocates have taken it to extremes, with some devastating consequences for boys. One consequence has been that standards for classroom behavior and academic achievement are now those more natural for girls than for boys.

Physicality is a feature of boys’ natures, not a flaw! Boys generally need more exercise than girls do. We need to recognize this on an individual level, in our families, and on a social level, in schools, as well as in parenting programs that will engage dads, by offering more physical activities and allowing more time for them.

If we do better by parents, parents will do better with their kids. In the references below you will find perspectives supporting “Our Call” for universal parenting education: http://bit.ly/2huhjtI. Through both policy and practice, parenting education has tremendous potential to reduce, even eliminate, the underlying causes of child abuse and domestic violence and to support the many wonderful parents who are doing their best and raising optimistic, resilient children in warm and loving homes.

Submitted by Eve Sullivan

Founder, Parents Forum

Cambridge, Mass.

References

= Books

The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children, 2016, Alison Gopnik

Love Me This Way: a guide for nurturing self-confidence and joy, 2012, Lee Ellen Aven

The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men, 2013, Christina Hoff Sommers

Where the Heart Listens, 2010, Eve Sullivan

= DVD

The Mask You Live In, 2015, Jennifer Siebel Newsom (TheRepresentationProject.org)

= Organizations

Advancing Parenting (advancingparenting.org)

National Parenting Education Network (npen.org)