Features: The Heart of Parenting

Parenting With a Light Touch

November, 2005

One day, when I was about 14 years old, my mother casually asked me, "Do you think you are pretty?"

What I thought I heard my mother asking was, "Have you deluded yourself into mistakenly thinking that you are even a tiny bit attractive?"   Consequently, I was devastated.   But I bluffed my way out of the conversation by replying "OF COURSE I DO!" and stormed off.   Inside, of course, I was outraged and hurt.  

It's not that I needed my mother to tell me that she thought I was attractive.   But like many teens, I was ultra-sensitive and unsure of myself.   What I heard in my mother's simple question was a full scale challenge to my own shaky self-confidence.   Without knowing it, with a few simple words she all but knocked me off my feet that day.

Unfortunately for both of us, my mother didn't explain to me that day why she had asked her question or what she really was thinking.   And, as an insecure adolescent, I wasn't confident enough to ask her why she would ask me such an odd question, because I was so quick to assume that she must have been thinking the worst.  

I had unknowingly granted my mother this "power" over me because I cared so much about what she thought.   My parents were the two of the most important people in my life at that point, and their opinions carried enormous weight with me, for better or for worse (in this case).  

Of course, every parent has this kind of power over their children.   From their earliest days, children are frequently looking to their parents to see if they are smiling or frowning, confident or alarmed.   Even as children enter adolescence, and begin to develop their own opinions and ideas, they'll continue to care deeply about what their parents think about them.

It wasn't until years later, when I remembered my mother's question that day that I was finally able to appreciate how much I had overrated my parents' influence on what I chose to think about myself. It wasn't until many years afterward, when I became a parent too, that I began to realize how frequently we parents underestimate our influence over our children's thinking and behavior.

The funny thing is that most parents seem largely unaware of how much influence we really do have with our kids.   And that's a shame, because our influence is ultimately the most effective parenting tool we have with our children.  

Another popular parenting method, control, is also very effective--but only in the short term.   Ultimately, control always fails because (as children are quick to remind us) no one can really make them do anything!   Once parents begin to realize that they are losing control of their kids, they often crank it way up and use more and more control to make their children be "good."   Unfortunately though, as parents lose control they also lose their children's respect.   That's too bad, because, once parent's have lost their children's respect, they have lost most of their influence as well.

Relying on your influence as a parent is really about having the confidence to trust yourself as someone who truly matters to your child.   It is also about trusting your children to want to do the right thing--because they want to and because they care about you and what you think.   Once parents begin to recognize how much influence they have with their children, they no longer need to muster maximum parenting energy for the maximum impact.   Instead, parenting through influence requires using the lightest possible touch for the maximum positive effect.

I think of the differences between the two as parenting with a hammer or a paint brush.   You can use the hammer to pound your kids: "There is money missing from my purse, and I think you took it!   You better give it back to me right now!   I don't think I'll ever be able to trust you again!"   Or you can softly use the paint brush to encourage your kids: "There is some money missing from my purse.   I believe you are a basically honest person, and if you know anything about this money, you'll come and tell me.   I also believe I can trust you to make a good decision."  

In the first example, the parent wants to make the child behave honestly, and uses the "hammers" of blame and shame to accomplish those goals.   In the second example, the parent wants to inspire the child to do the right thing, and uses the "paint brushes" of respect, encouragement, and trust to influence the child's thinking and behavior.   Which approach do you think will be the most effective, now and in the long run, to help the child be the kind of person that the parent hopes they will be?