22
Mental Monday: ‘Til Death Do Us Part
I walked along the beach with my 90 year old grandfather over the weekend. He lost his wife, my beloved grandmother, on January 1st of this year. The entire family has been reeling from her passing but, obviously, no one more so than my grandpa. As we walked along the water and watched young couples and families enjoy the beautiful sunshine, he reminisced about their life together. As a couple for 70 years, they spent a very active and full life together filled with the ups and downs of business ownership, moving across country, world travel and adventures, and the joys (and pains) of parenthood, grand-parenthood, and even great-grand-parenthood.
Now that my grandmother is gone, the grandfather I once knew is missing as well. A man who was quick to laugh and share funny stories has become more subdued. A man who worked well into his 70′s and prided himself on his excellent health is now slowing down quickly. He complains about the everyday life of living in an old man’s body. He can’t sleep and he doesn’t enjoy the same things he used to, like even a walk on the beach. That was something he and grandma would do together everyday. As we walked along, it was evident that all he could think about was her and their life together. “My partner is gone” he told me as we looked out across the ocean, “it doesn’t matter anymore.”
I didn’t ask him to elaborate what “it” meant. I knew.
His pain is the kind of pain that only the luckiest people in the world will ever know. It’s the kind of pain that I can only hope either the Dude or myself will actually experience one day, hopefully not until many many years down the road. To know this pain means that you have known a deep love that only partners in a very long and loving relationship can possibly experience. (continues…)
15
Mental Monday: What Kind Of Parent Are You?
Authoritative Parent, Permissive Parent, Authoritarian Parent, Uninvolved Parent, Over-Parent/Helicopter Parent, Attachment Parent, etc…
If you’re a parent, chances are good that you’ve heard about some or all of these parenting approaches. Parents may find themselves questioning which one works best or which one identifies how they parent. It can be easy for some parents to try and pigeonhole themselves into one of these categories or even attempt to extricate themselves from a certain style. As most parents know, the way you parent significantly influences the development and pathology of a child. Even a child’s personality is influenced by parenting style. Although parenting style has little effect on the basic disposition of a child’s personality, it can easily impact or transform behavioral characteristics. And, all too often, those changes are not in a positive form.
So maybe we know all the different styles out there and perhaps we even identify with one or two of them. But what really matters most when it comes to how you parent? Forget labels. Forget trying to pigeonhole yourself into one category or another. What matters most are three very simple and basic parenting characteristics. Evidence from longitudinal research studies have shown that these three parenting factors produce the most well-adjusted adults and create the most harmonious parent-child relationship (L’Abate & Baggett, 1997):
- Warmth Factor
Emotional warmth is consistently found in research studies to be the most important parenting style factor. This applies to both parents. Having emotional warmth towards your child includes praise, support, approval, encouragement, expressing terms of endearment, and physical affection. Warm, loving and affectionate parents are much more likely to raise well-adjusted adults who are mentally healthy, are psychologically mature, and have adequate coping skills. However, emotional warmth comes with its own balancing act. It is easy for parents to over-praise and/or not punish inappropriate or negative behavior. While it’s important to validate good behavior or accomplishments, it’s equally important to follow through with rules and (non-abusive) discipline.
- Control Factor
Parents who have a high control frequency raise their children with many rules and will often intervene in their children’s activities. On the flip side, parents with low control frequency are too permissive and, to the extreme, negligent. Parents with a balanced sense of control will intervene when their child needs help, guidance, and support and step back when their interference is not only not warranted but also counterproductive. These parents will also maintain reasonable and age-appropriate rules, boundaries, and disciplinary actions.
- Consistency Factor
Consistency is crucial when it comes to parenting and this goes for all communication exchanged between parents and children. Consistently displaying love and warmth and consistently maintaining control and following through with discipline are all imperative to the child-parent dynamic.
Some of this information may seem like common sense to you, but it’s not always easy to apply these three essential factors into everyday parenting practices. To be able to balance a healthy dose of warmth, control, and consistency doesn’t always come naturally and we will all fail at this balancing act at some point.
Many variables influence our own parenting style, such as the way we were parented and our sociocultural and socioeconomic influences. It’s not surprising that those of us with warm and affectionate parents are more likely to become warm and affectionate parents. And, of course, the opposite is true as well. That doesn’t mean that those who did not have warm and affectionate parents are not capable of growing up to become warm and affectionate parents. It just means that applying these parenting factors may prove to be more challenging.
None of us are perfect parents and we will come up short at times. Just remember that although it’s important to recognize and own up to our parenting errors, it’s equally important to recognize that it’s not the minor parenting errors that have the greatest impact on our children. It’s the overall dynamic between parent and child, one that is filled with love, kindness, respect, support, rules, boundaries, and affection. There is little doubt that a childhood and adolescence filled with those essential components will likely transition into a well-adjusted adulthood.
Questions? Comments? Please share.
08
Mental Monday: In The End
everything will be okay in the end.
if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
— unknown origin
01
Mental Monday: Dating Other Couples
No, not THIS kind of couples-dating!
In a perfect world, all of our friends partner up with people that we adore. In a perfect world, we meet other couples that we both really like. In a perfect world, we get together with our couple-friends and we enjoy spending time with both of them. Equally.
We all know this ain’t a perfect world.
One potentially challenging aspect about becoming a couple is finding other couples that you both enjoy. From both personal experience and from talking to many other couples, it’s really-really-really difficult to find other couples to date. It’s usually the same story – either we like the wife and not the husband, we like the husband but not the wife, or we like one partner but not the other. In some cases, we don’t care for either one. And, admittedly, sometimes they don’t like one of us. Or both of us. Hard to believe, right? Right?!?
Finding other couples to hang out with be just as nerve-wracking and emotional as actual dating. When you’ve got four different personalities to contend with, the dynamic either meshes or it doesn’t. We’re lucky that we have a few couples to hang out with and that we enjoy getting together with every once in a while. It’s good to have other couples in your life, especially when they are in healthy and positive relationships. Nothing bums out a couple more than hanging around other couples that don’t get along very well. And nothing can help boost the energy within a relationship more than hanging out with positive couples that show love and respect for one another.
There are now *dating* sites that cater to couples looking for platonic friendships with other couples. The Dude and I have not used these sites so I can’t vouch for any of them. But, if you and your partner are having trouble finding other couples, maybe it’s worth a shot to check one of them out! Millions of people find compatible dates through the Internet, so I can’t see why couples can’t find compatible couples to date, too.
Do you and your partner have great couple-friends to hang out with or have you had problems finding compatible couples? I would love to hear from you.
01
Mental Monday: A Lifetime Sentence to Worry
Now that I’m a parent, I often look back at all the crazy/dangerous antics that I put my own parents through. I was not alone. My sister and brother were often as reckless and carefree as me.
From speeding tickets (all of us) to falling out of a 2nd story window (my sister) to getting hit by a car while riding a bike (my brother) to splitting a forehead wide open by falling on a step (my sister) to skydiving in our late teens (me, my brother), to getting into a bad moped accident in Ibiza (me) to traveling to scary foreign lands (all of us) my mom and dad became accustomed to the anxiety-induced adrenaline rush generated by the wild and accident-prone behavior of their children.
I had never really thought too much about this until I became a parent. I’ve worried about my baby boy before I even knew he was a boy. I’ve been worrying before, during, and every minute after he breathed his first breath. I think about how much I worry over him now and what it will be like in the future, when he’s driving for the first time, when he’s off to school, when he goes off into the world. I had assumed that the feelings of anxiety will only get easier.
My parents have informed me otherwise.
It’s been 30+ years since they have brought three children into the world and they still don’t have it much easier.
My brother is a psychologist in the military, a position he opted to take during this time of war. He does not currently work in a war zone, but that could change any time. My sister, a civilian lawyer, works in Afghanistan. My parents are besides themselves with worry. They scour the news everyday. Their heart skips a beat before every phone call, especially those from an international number. My sister has learned to check in with e-mails, even just to say nothing more than “hi.” She has learned to send an “I’m OK” mass e-mail to her immediate family before we hear about attacks in her area. Those e-mails bring most of her loved ones temporary solace during a constant state of turmoil. But, for my parents, the e-mails only validate their anxiety and fears.
I suppose it doesn’t matter if your child is 2 days, 2 months, 2 years, 22 years, or 32 years old. It doesn’t matter if your child is always with you at home, away at college, works in a “safe” city, or works in a war zone. As a parent, you will worry. A lot. It doesn’t always get easier. And, for some parents, it only gets harder.