The Social Trends Parenting System

A grandmother in Texas wrote, “The ten-year-old son of one of my fellow volunteers at church is whisked from home to school, then school to basketball practice, then to a snack at a Taco Bell drive-through, then our 90-minute church program. This doesn’t include homework and tutoring. What this kid needs is time to chill out in the backyard. Just because all these school and other programs exist, doesn’t mean the family needs to sign up for all of them!” Another mother wrote, “When my children were young (they are now in college), I realized they were overstressed. So we decided to make a big transition as a family. We saw that for years we had pushed them into a lot of activities we thought would help them in future society, but the kids didn’t seem to enjoy them as much as we did. We decided to give them support for a few activities they wanted to engage in, and we supported them when they decided not to participate in an activity that became too demanding on their schedule.” These moms, and many other parents I hear from, are wise. Parents, other family members, and professionals are “taking back” their kids— removing them from a social trends parenting system that has subtly told these parents they are bad if their kids are not stressed. These parents recognize that our society has developed an unnatural and artificial approach to the needs of the child.

Social Trends Parenting
What do I mean by the social trends parenting system? It is an entrenched social system that conditions us to basically obey unscientific and untested ideas about how to help our kids succeed—ideas based on assumptions that all kids should be a certain way and be tested to prove it. This emphasis on social trends and pressures often leads us to raise children in ways contradictory to their nature. That is a pivot point of the chronic stress our kids (and we) get into. Living within this system, our families move farther away from feeling safe, whole, protective, and successful on a daily basis. To see if this system is operating in your life and the life of your child, please take a moment to ask yourself a few questions. I constantly revisit these in my own life and family.

Do I neglect my natural instincts as a parent, believing that everyone else—experts writing in books and magazines, family, friends, or neighbors—knows more than I do?

Am I looking for answers to my parenting questions from ever-changing theories about how a mother, father, grandparent, teacher, or child should treat my children—rather than seeing both the question and the answer within my own child?

Do I tend to apply negative, deficit-based approaches to my children’s development? For instance, do I find myself saying or thinking things like “You won’t make it in the world unless you get up to speed right now!”

Do I try to compensate for not having enough time with my children by constantly trying to keep them stimulated and appeased with material goods, competitive activities, and technological “friends”?

Do I focus on the latest fad in “emotion talk” and “feelings talk”—often neglecting the equal importance of universal moral and ethical values in family life?

Do I put a lot of pressure on teachers, coaches, schools, physicians, other professionals, and children to produce only the highest levels of competition and perfect success, when realistic expectations of excellence—tailored to my child—would be more of a blessing to his or her development?

Am I isolated and alienated, feeling immense pressure to solve all parenting problems on my own?

I confess to having experienced each of these with my own daughters at one time or another. We’re all part of this vast social system, and we’re all beholden to a social trends–oriented parenting and family system. We all look outward, listen to trends, hope to hear “the perfect plan” for child raising. We all want to get ahead, have children who get to the top, and experience for ourselves the social perfection “everyone is talking about.” We are loaded up with constant information about children, and that information can come to run our lives. Social trends parenting is a systemic response, I think, to the complexities of ever-changing family systems largely rooted in the increased mobility and major social changes instigated by the Industrial Revolution—which is one of the reasons I am calling for a “revolution” now, to take our children back. The Industrial Revolution created a cookie-cutter kind of existence, at least in many aspects of life. Our whole society tried to meet the new demands of factories. Our families became economically tuned, highly mobile, out of touch with natural roots. As a society, we grew a system of caring for children that focused on the so-called social and technological perfection of the human child. As our society moved gradually into the information age, we carried the industrial values forward into an outward-looking, informationbased social trends parenting system. This system creates serious stress in our children’s lives.

The Anxiety of External Success Goals
We’re conditioned to create families whose standard of success is how a child will function as a competitor at the highest level of the competitive hierarchy. In the shadow of this stressor, we hyperprepare children from prebirth for entrance into “the best” college or highest-paying job even though we know that (1) most children will not achieve this top-end acquisition, nor need to in order to be successful and happy; and (2) that we and all other adults end up most successful and happy by living and growing in sync with who we really are, not by making huge amounts of money or fitting a rigid mold. The disconnect between our individual natures as growing human beings and the monolithic expectations of society causes both children and parents to become anxious. Parents become anxious not only to make sure their kids are recognized as super-smart achievers who conform to “perfect” standards of financial success, interpersonal relationships, and self-esteem but also to define the “perfect” child by whatever latest definition has come down the pike. When we feel we have failed as parents in our society, it is often because our children don’t do well on a kindergarten entrance exam, or get what they think is enough ice time on the Pee Wee youth hockey team. These “small slights” come to hurt immeasurably; further, the information that creates the sense of failure is impossible to keep up with. A prime example is the issue of breast-feeding. It was “out” for over a decade. Now it’s back. Another example: sleeping with your child is out now, but once was encouraged. Lately the huge growth of the Baby Einstein–type tapes has swept the country, creating new anxiety among parents who want to buy more and more of them to make sure their kid grows up smart. But stay tuned, because recent studies show that some of the claims for these tapes are unrealistic; perhaps next year this fad will become obsolete also. High-stress consumerism has also infiltrated every aspect of our society. The constant push to buy, buy, buy the next best thing for your baby/toddler/child fuels and feeds on the social trends parenting system. Aren’t we constantly deluged with the latest trends in parenting and relational development? One day we read that parents don’t matter—it’s only friends who influence our impressionistic young kids; the next day we hear that constant emotion talk or giving kids their space or toughlove intervention is the only and best way to parent, or that if we don’t 36 nurture the nature play Mozart in the nursery, our kids will fall behind. We see the morning TV shows, and every year dozens of new books are published, adding to the burden and stress, piling on more pressure and anxiety. Many of these books contain wonderful insights, but they add up to a kind of “nervous wreck” atmosphere and to off-center parenting. We are constantly being told how to be perfect parents and have perfect winner kids, and meanwhile we are exhausted. How do we parents keep up? We can’t. So we constantly fail. And in raising kids through the following of social trends, we tend to listen less to wise ancestors or our own instincts and instead take our cues from test makers, psychological theorists, personality-based gurus, morning show sound bites, and magazine advice columns regarding all children in general. Our children thus get pulled in many directions, often far away from their own core nature. One clear example of the symptoms of social trends anxiety has been the school system. Filled as it is with wonderful teachers and many other excellent resources, our educational system—primary and secondary—is so swamped with children (even in crowded preschools) that it must socialize boys and girls with differing learning styles as though they were all of one single type in terms of their social capabilities, socioeconomic status, and psychological makeup. Many of the children educated through this approach are often unable to achieve basic levels of reading, writing, math, and science learning; even worse, many with naturally diverse learning styles are pathologized, labeled, medicated, and ultimately lost. They are captives of a monolithic system that many of them simply come to hate.

Losing the Nature of the Child
By participating in the social trends parenting system, we are taking our eyes off of what our children, our family, our schools really need. The outside-in model of society-as-guide for parenting cannot do otherwise than take our eyes off the deep and complex nature of our child. Although setting high goals for our kids is crucial for their thriving, what is problematic is the lack of attention to understanding and nurc01. turing who our specific children really are—so that we can help them set the right high goals for themselves! Certainly, many social trends are wonderfully helpful. Many parenting experts are immensely helpful. Some surveys are very helpful, as I found in providing surveys and results in this chapter: we need to listen when parents talk. But in overrelying on social trends to help us raise kids—and in neglecting the individual and inborn nature of each child— we are overstressing millions of children toward anxiety and other disorders, toward painful labels and misdiagnosis, toward antisocial behavior and unhappiness. It’s time for parents to act on behalf of the human child in revolutionary ways.

Nurturing Your Child’s Nature
Perhaps in the last week, month, or year you’ve heard a whisper from your child: “Look, here is the person I am. Look into my eyes! Pay attention to me. All the other stuff you are throwing at me? I’m trying to do it, but what I really need, what is essential to me, is for you who love me to help me become who I am already trying to be.” My experience, research, and theoretical analysis tells me that this whisper is not some fantasy—it is the voice of nature in the child. This chapter has asked you to look at some profound issues you might be facing as a parent in this society. I hope you’ll take awareness and vigilance of the issues—of chronic stress and social trends—into the rest of this book. I hope you’ll join me now in discovering the fruition of your needs, hopes, and dreams in a parenting revolution: a refocus of parenting away from ephemeral social trends and on to the core nature of the individual child. Focusing on that unique temperament, personality, and genetic disposition leads to your trusting your instincts about what is essential for your child and family. Focusing on that core nature will help you raise your child to adapt to anything. A child whose parents nurture the nature grows strong and learns how to flourish in any future circumstance, wherever the child may find himself or herself as an adult. The remainder of this book proposes a new model of parenting that includes not only old wisdom but new science—science that focuses specifically on the nature of children. The psychologist Kurt Lewin taught that there is nothing so radical as a good theory. I hope you’ll find in the remaining eight chapters of this book a nature-based theory that you can apply in your home. By the time you end this book, I hope you will have in hand an essential parenting blueprint. What is an essential parenting blueprint? Nurture the Nature provides not only theory and insight but also practical tools by which you will develop a clear sense of your child’s nature and, in that context, a blueprint of what is essential if you are to nurture the nature of your child. This blueprint is a plan of action that will grow from your understanding of your child’s innate talents and skills, temperament and personality. It will allow you to understand the strengths of your child and to waste no more time on focusing on social, educational, or media trends that aren’t right for his or her unique nature. This blueprint will develop organically in your relationship with your child and also in the many wisdom-ofpractice strategies of other parents, shared with you in this book. Your blueprint will make it a lot easier to make good choices. For example, if the Baby Einstein approach to parenting is right for your child, you’ll be able to make that decision from within the truth your child is living. If it’s not right for your child, you won’t need to feel guilty that he or she is no genius at science. So it is with all potential activities, missions, ideas, media—the hard work of the essential parenting blueprint really pans out once you look back after a month or so of developing it and a month or so of applying it and are able to say, “Now I understand this child. Now I see how to do right by him, by her. Now I have in place the safe life, the right teachers, the successful pathway for the person I love more than myself.” Here’s an example. Karen, a mother of two in North Carolina, wrote, “When I started focusing on the actual strengths and real vulnerabilities of my two children—their core personalities, their genetics, their real abilities, strengths and weaknesses, warts and all—I discovered a deep sense of peace in my family and myself. My husband and I even changed my son’s school. This had to be done. We developed rituals and relac01. tionships that make it possible to really love our kids. These wisdomof- practice strategies, as you call them, really work.” Allan, a father of four in San Jose, wrote, “The key for me was understanding who my daughters were. I discovered your nature-based theory when I started coaching girls’ soccer. My first three kids were boys, and I understood how to help them. With my daughter, there’s a whole other world. When I saw who she and these other young girls are from the ‘inside out,’ I started knowing how to encourage them and help them succeed. It’s a real good feeling, I can tell you.” As you develop your essential parenting blueprint, don’t be surprised if you have times when you feel reluctant to step away from social trends parenting. There is a lot of pressure in this society to be a social trends parent! We all can feel afraid sometimes that our children will not succeed in school, relationships, future work, and life. I hope you’ll stick with this book. As its research will show you, when we pay attention to the nature of children, the children succeed! The Gurian Institute has trained tens of thousands of parents, teachers, and other caregivers in nature-based theory and its wisdom-ofpractice strategies. Kids do better in school, act out less at home, and feel better when we nurture their nature rather than try to superimpose trendy expectations on them. Many parents’ stories of success and innovation appear as Wisdom of Practice sections between the remaining chapters of this book. My team and I want to extend our gratitude to the parents and caregivers who have sent their stories to us so that we can show you the revolutionary steps others are taking toward real childrearing success.

Getting Started
Let’s move forward now into the positive, hopeful, and practical work of this book. Each chapter will provide you with essential steps you can take immediately to incorporate nature-based theory into your present parenting work. As you use this book in its entirety, I hope you will find wisdom and practice that inspires you to base your family’s life in loving attention toward the sometimes hidden and always beautiful assets of your child whether he or she is newborn, school-age, or adolescent. Let us now begin in Chapter Two by looking through both a loving and a scientific lens into exactly who your child is, from the inside out— this amazing asset, your child, whom you as a parent have only borrowed for the few years of childhood and adolescence from the natural and social world in which he or she will ultimately flourish.

Wisdom of Practice
as far back as i can remember, my son, dan, has had a passion for cars. As a toddler he went from playing with small cars to fire trucks and then to construction trucks. When he was four we would take him to the local fire station and sit and look at the different trucks, where he would entertain the firemen with all his knowledge of the equipment. In the summer, we would take him to the local fair, and he would check out the farm equipment and impress us all with his knowledge of what the machinery was called and how it was used. Every time we traveled in our car, he would find construction trucks working and identify them as well. As Dan continued to grow, so did his passion and love of cars. Lucky for Dan, both his father and I enjoy seeing his eyes light up when he follows his passion. Many nights at the dinner table we have discussed carburetors, new models, car production. As the years went by, we helped Dan look at a career in engineering. He saw that this career would mean he had to get good grades. This helped him stay motivated in school. One year for Christmas I purchased a car designer art kit made by a company called Career Builders. It was the best gift he received that year. He spent several hours that day drawing different designs of cars. It was amazing to see, for a child who doesn’t like to sit still. Years later I found another car drawing book that came with special stencils that you can use to draft and design your own car. It is still his favorite pastime to draw and design cars. Dan now wants to study aerodynamics and solar energy. He talks about developing alternate fuel sources to reduce our dependence on oil and help the environment. Dan has taught me many things, but maybe one of the biggest is that if I just focus on what he wants to focus on, he’ll show me what he needs in order to succeed.

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