As an educator of more than 30 years, I am often in a position to give advice about raising children, or to be asked what I would do as a mother of two children of my own. I can pinpoint exactly when my parenting style pivoted away from the haphazard path that came before.
You see, I was the college-educated mom, the “older” mom, the mom who had way too much time to think and analyze and read all the books. My children’s father would often tell me to throw those books out, because I so often started sentences with, “Well, the book says…” He may not have had a degree in developmental psychology, but he had some smarts and his own beliefs about how children should be raised.
But too often I went to bed at night thinking I had not done enough. I was a working mom, and I usually compared myself and my mothering to the moms in my bedroom community. Many of them did not work full-time outside the home, and they certainly never had to drop their children off at the YMCA daycare at opening light, or pick them up at dusk or later during the winter. These women waited in their cars or outside the school, congregating in little huddles as the bell rang to release their precious ones back into their arms, then headed off to sports or music or art or scouts.
At work, luckily, I was surrounded by many women who were just like me. We worked 40-hour weeks and felt guilty when we had to call out to care for our sick children, knowing our colleagues were picking up the work we left behind. We would guiltily send our kids back to school, still with a cough or runny nose, because we simply could not miss another day at “the office.”
The Book That Changed Everything
Ten years ago, one of these amazing women handed me a book at the end of a long week, looked me in the eye, and made me promise to take some time to read it that weekend. Amy was a fellow assistant principal at an elementary school in an urban public school district. She handled mostly budget, curriculum, and teacher support, while I managed special education programming, compliance, and federal law. She also had two daughters within a couple of years of my own children’s ages. Needless to say, we both had our hands full at work and at home, but she always seemed so confident and casual about parenting.
So I decided to take a look at the book, even though it meant spending my precious “me” time on it after the kids went to bed. That book changed my life. The “Me, Me, Me” Epidemic by Amy McCready is billed as “a step-by-step guide to raising capable, grateful kids in an overly entitled world.” I have to admit, I read it out of sight of my then-husband, partly because I worried this book would turn out to be just more advice that made me feel like I wasn’t making the grade.
It actually did the opposite. From cover to cover, it became my go-to for handling modern parenting, with all of the overstimulated and overindulgent culture we were navigating, a culture that would have been incomprehensible to the generation of parents before us. In true “student” fashion, I highlighted that book, annotated the margins, and wrote notes in a notebook. Then I slowly began implementing the changes I aligned with.
At the core of it was the message that over-entitled kids become over-entitled adults, and boy, were my children headed that way. I was raised by Midwest-grown parents, so humility was a big character requirement, and I still live with that mentality today. Yet I was not expecting it of my children.
Mindshift #1: Letting Them Be Bored
I was so busy worrying about measuring up to the ever-present moms, and thinking it was a flaw that I wasn’t one of them, that I didn’t embrace my time away for what it was: an opportunity for my children to grow independence, resilience, and motivation. I thought I had to be their playmate and keep them busy all the time, when instead I needed to teach them that boredom is just as good. Out of boredom comes inspiration, creativity, and patience.
Mindshift #2: Retiring as Their Personal Servant
The next mindshift I tackled was being my children’s servant. By giving them mostly what they wanted, when they wanted it, I was slipping into the role of personal servant. And honestly, I’m going to tell you, that was much easier than setting strong boundaries.
One example helped set the standard for me. Let’s call it “the forgotten sweatshirt.” I’m embarrassed to say that on occasion, as I was dropping my children off at school, they would realize they had forgotten their sweatshirts. I would sometimes make the return trip home, pick up the lost item, and bring it back to school, setting myself up to be late for work and stressing the entire drive there.
But McCready gently suggests that this mini-failure on the part of my beloved child is not earth-shattering or life-threatening. Yes, the child may get chilled if I don’t go rescue them, but (and here is where I remind myself that I live in Southern California) they will not freeze to death. Hardly. In fact, the mild inconvenience of not being as warm as they’d like may actually be a lesson learned.
Without discomfort, we do not grow. Struggle is essential for learning new skills and patterns of behavior. I had to be uncomfortable with my own feelings of guilt for not being the mom who catered to every need, in order to let my children grow their independence.
Mindshift #3: No More Consolation Prizes
Furthermore, I had to stop providing a consolation prize whenever they experienced pain, failure, or discomfort. I did not have to make up for being at work all day by taking them out for a special treat. The special treat was just me being there.
Mindshift #4: Logging Off from the Facebook Moms
Finally, I had to embrace the fact that social media was a detriment not just to my children’s life experience, but also to me and my parenting. Keeping up with the Facebook moms had me fighting a war within myself. This is where I had to shed the worry about doing enough, being enough, and having my children be enough.
The idea that it’s OK to not be special, or win the award, or have the thing, or do the event was one of the hardest-won inner battles I fought, and it is what really led to my triumph over my own personal “me, me, me” epidemic.
Where We Landed
So where did all of this land us? My son is living in Nebraska and going to college, where, I’m happy to report, he has learned to remember his own sweatshirt, because there it actually might matter. My daughter turns eighteen next month and is in the middle of college applications, which she is handling like a pro because, like me, she loves a good planner, highlighter, and sticky notes.
Neither of them has a wall of trophies. Neither of them is a prodigy. They are, by every measure, normal kids. They can be bored without falling apart, they can hear “no” without a consolation prize, and they say thank you without being reminded. Most of the time.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to raise extraordinary children and started trying to raise capable ones. It turns out that was the bigger accomplishment, and it was theirs to earn, not mine to hand them. Ten years ago, Amy handed me a book and made me promise to read it. If I could hand you anything, it would be permission to let your kids be ordinary. That was the cure for our “me, me, me” epidemic.
