The A-Z Toolbox contains 26 parenting tools that contribute to successful parenting. By “successful” I mean parenting strengths or behaviors that are associated with building social, academic, emotional and moral competence in children and adolescents. Each of the tools has research (which is cited with links) which supports its inclusion in the toolbox. These tools can be interesting articles for your reading or they can inspire an action plan to invigorate your parenting with new vigor and skill. My goal is to show the importance of these family strengths in optimal family functioning and inspire parents to hone their skills where need be.

Most of the tools are mentioned in one form or another in our book Getting to Calm. However, this toolbox will be applicable to all ages of children (not just tweens and teens), and it can be a super-easy way to review your parenting strengths. Because the transcripts in Getting to Calm show parents how to interact with their children successfully, it should be considered the comprehensive training program for the toolbox list.

Just like any toolbox, the parenting tools can sit there in the toolbox list without their functions discovered, understood, or utilized. My goal in upcoming articles is to show the importance of these family strengths in successful family functioning and inspire parents to refine their skills where need be.

Before I get started on the tools, I want to offer a few explainers for the user’s manual.

I want to emphasize that we are all mixed bags as people and as families. We are bundles of strengths and weaknesses. Some of our strengths are so extraordinary that we can get away with a bunch of weaknesses and the kids come out just fine. Also, sometimes the children are born with so many genetic strengths—like a happy, flexible temperament and some smarts, good looks and sociability—that poorly tooled parents can still produce successful children.

Likewise in reverse, some kids that are so loaded with risk factors (e.g. learning difficulties, early trauma, biologically-based mental disorders) that they end up having terrible problems despite having fabulous parents. Many parents fail to receive the credit they deserve for parenting some very disadvantaged kids who don’t reach the Ivies but end up in decent shape thanks to their parents’ extraordinary efforts.

How kids turn out is an outcome of how biological, sociological, circumstantial and parental factors interact over time to create a person. As parents, we try to be the best parents we can be so that we can contribute our parental strengths to the equation. In brief, we try to control what we can control to help our children become healthy, successful, wise, and kind adults. The A-Z Toolbox is an effort to list some factors that parents can influence for the healthy outcome of their little beloveds.

Lest I give earnest parents a complex about making “straight A’s” on my Toolbox list, I want to emphasize a key parenting concept handed down over the decades called “the good enough parent”. D. W. Winnicott coined this phrase to describe how children adapt to the external realities of life in spite of their parents’ short-comings and imperfections, and because of them. Because parents are not available every minute to respond to their needs, children develop their own competencies to self-soothe, learn and be resourceful.

Although the concept of “the good enough parent” reassures us that we don’t have to be perfect, the goal of providing babies with “secure attachment” makes a lot of parents wonder how much responsiveness is the right amount. Babies become secure by having parents who are responsive, attuned and supportive to their changing developmental needs. Does this sound like double-speak? Not really. We want to find the balance between responding to their every single want or need and abandoning them when they really need us. Optimal child development involves encouraging independence, but being there when they truly need us in all the best ways. What do I mean by best ways? Now you know why I want to discuss 26 parenting strengths in the toolbox!

We can’t be, don’t want to be and won’t be perfect parents. But we want to be really good ones. I hope the A-Z Parenting Toolbox provides some helpful ideas of how to hone your ever-evolving set of skills.

A fine balance

By Laura Kastner, Ph.D.

When Henry got home from school, he went straight to his room to post a music review on his Facebook page, check ESPN for scores and watch some YouTube videos. Since the family rule is that there is to be no “play” or social time on the computer until homework is done, Mom’s blood started boiling the minute she heard Henry crooning along with his favorite hip hop artist. To cool herself off, she invoked her favorite mantra in meltdown moments: “You might be right, but are you effective?” She knew that to maintain her authoritative credibility, she needed to keep herself calm, firm and level-headed. Instead of barging into Henry’s room and yelling at him about the rule violation, she tried a different approach.

“Henry, what’s up with your breaking the homework rule?” Henry replied, “Mom, I’m downloading my history chapter, so chill out. God, you’re on me like a vulture.” Mom ignored the snarky reply and said, “Henry, I appreciate that you are downloading history text, but I expect you to turn off everything else anyway. You know the rule. I know that you can handle the independence of using your laptop in your room if you try hard enough. By the way, your voice is way better than that dude you’re listening to.” Then she made herself smile and exit. She heard him groan, exclaim and click off his fun stuff.

Henry’s mom is demonstrating authoritative parenting, which predicts adolescent achievement, emotional adjustment, competence and self-reliance in adolescents. If you did your own web search, you’d find that it’s the optimal parenting style for raising the kids that successfully launch to college at age 18. Authoritative parenting is composed of three critical dimensions (consider them the crown jewels of parenting):

• Warmth, acceptance, positive engagement and responsiveness; children feel that they can count on their parents and perceive their parents as loving and reasonable (more on this with the “Optimizing secure attachment” tool).

• Firm limits, supervision and reasonable discipline; parents have high but realistic expectations for behavior and when children make mistakes, their focus is on learning instead of punishment (more on this with “Competence building” tool).

• Effective communication and encouragement of independence; parents support individuality, listen to their children’s differing views, regulate their emotions while tolerating some give and take in negotiations, avoid intrusiveness and allow psychological autonomy (e.g. the parents focus on controlling their children’s behavior, not their feelings and thoughts).

The other parenting styles described by researchers who study childrearing types include: the authoritarian parent who uses a command/control approach to parenting and prioritizes obedience and subservience over caring about feelings, self esteem and empathy; the permissive/indulgent parent who may be warm but often caves to the child’s demands, does not require that the child behave well or self-regulate; and the neglectful parent who is disengaged, uninvolved and inattentive to the child’s needs. These parenting styles are associated with substance abuse, low self esteem, anxiety, dependency and emotional insecurity.

If Henry’s mom were authoritarian, she would have punished him for his breaking the homework rule, barked her orders and cared not a whit if Henry thought her a tyrant for rigid adherence to rules without considering his defense. Also, without a history of her commitment to warmth and relationship-building, he wouldn’t be motivated to cooperate.

If Henry’s mom were permissive, she might have tried to interact with Henry positively and may have reminded him of the rule, but she would have avoided putting her foot down when he resented her “vulture” like presence and been ineffectual in making sure he complied. Without the history of knowing his mom means business, he would have blown her off.

If Henry’s mom were neglectful, she would not have a rule about homework, nor monitor his computer use or the completion of his homework. Henry would be one of those kids who lives on-line and does pretty much whatever he wants.

Authoritative parenting is a lot harder than I have made it sound. It requires picking your battles, monitoring without hovering and being realistic about the fact that teenagers will never be perfectly compliant. Although flexibility is required so that life with a teen doesn’t become a war zone, consistency with policies and routines is paramount so that you’re prioritizing a constant march toward competence, responsibility and health maintenance.

The love and acceptance part is equally challenging. Even though we want our children to feel accepted while being the messy, immature beings that children inevitably are, every parent should be a “C.S.O”—Chief Socializing Officer. It’s endless—manners, good behavior, homework, chores, rule-enforcement, and monitoring their whereabouts. We also know we need to maintain a mostly positive and loving relationship. After all, why else would they listen to us and absorb our influence? Tyrants don’t inspire good behavior—they just alienate.

Permissive parents want their children’s love, happiness and delight so much that they can’t tolerate their children’s inevitable vitriol when rules are being enforced. These parents give into their kids’s protests, become inconsistent and fail in their attempts to hold the line. Neglectful parents are usually so overwhelmed with other parts of their lives they just plain don’t parent. A sub-group of these parents are very invested in their children, but their crazy-busy life styles make them “neglectful” of  the necessary discipline involved in responsible childrearing.

Those crown jewels of authoritative parenting—warmth and affection, firm limits and reasonable discipline, and effective communication allowing psychological autonomy—require enormous energy, focus and determination. Virtually all parents want their children to become competent, productive, and loving adults. But somehow, this “A” tool can often be lost in the shuffle.

Fences and Freedom

By Laura Kastner, Ph.D.

The parental control and socializing agenda discussed in the "A is for Authoritative parenting" tool couldn’t get very far without strong boundaries and a big campaign for independent functioning. A paradox in the boundary-making mission is that it relates to both protecting children from excessive freedom of action (e.g. rules related to curfews, bedtimes, and media exposure) and nudging children toward responsibility for independent action (e.g. rules related to chores, self-reliance, and expectations for autonomy).

Picture the long, rocky and wending road of child development. If we put fences up on either side, especially in the beginning, the child is likely to stay on track. But we want to remove these borders increasingly so that the child can negotiate the road independently. The child will fall down, go off-track, and encounter many obstacles, but by managing these dilemmas and problem-solving opportunities with our assistance when needed, the child will develop increasing competencies.

Throughout my career I’ve been asked the question, “How does a parent know how much freedom and responsibility to give children as they grow up?” Obviously, there is no “one size fits all” answer, because children vary so much in the independence they can benefit from and handle responsibly. Of course age is a factor, but children who have built-in (biologically-based) abilities to self-manage can handle surprising amounts of independence while others with novelty-seeking, rambunctious personalities often require a taxing amount of parental supervision and monitoring.

The word “boundaries” refers to limits both in behavioral and interpersonal realms. In the parenting world, it refers to setting limits on children’s rights and privileges, establishing rules and structure, and protecting children from excessive and harmful freedom or indulgence. In the psychology community, personal boundaries refer to the emotional and physical distance between people that can run the gamut from too detached to overly-enmeshed.

Parents with firm parent-child boundaries (neither rigid and detached, nor permeable and enmeshed) are capable of making the best decisions about behavioral boundaries for their children because they are involved and empathic parents but don’t get overwhelmed by absorbing their children’s emotions. To be effective with carrying out most childrearing responsibilities, parents need firm personal boundaries so they can stay calm while enforcing rules and discipline even when their kids exhibit typical negative emotions or tantrums.

Providing boundaries and encouraging independence are tightly connected parenting goals. Children become competent by having rules and limits about behavioral expectations, and they survive and thrive by being both protected from too much and pushed toward enough independent functioning. Parenting involves a constant weighing of costs, benefits and risks when figuring out the balance of boundaries and freedom for each individual child.

By providing behavioral limits and structure throughout childhood, children internalize boundaries and become increasingly responsible. External rules ideally become internal rules as the child becomes socialized over the years. Naturally related to this goal is the degree to which parents create boundaries for themselves, e.g. rules for their own conduct, self-management, and values-based life style. In other words, parents need to be self-organized in order to organize their children!

Let’s take the example of creating boundaries and encouraging independent functioning during morning routines. It’s a good idea to establish a regimented schedule in which family members follow the same routine every morning with age-appropriate expectations for waking, dressing, chores, breakfast and preparation for the timely exit for school.

When children go wayward with their morning routine, parents need to prioritize the boundary agenda to get things back on course. Optimal guidance involves positive support, patience and consistency. When nagging or arguments take over, parents need to devise more positive strategies. Nagging is likely to backfire, result in less compliance and worsen the morning wars. To employ more successful approaches, parents can instigate star charts or rewards temporarily to get the independent behaviors up and running again.

Another approach to morning course correction can be “natural consequences”. For instance, a consequence for the teenager who ignored his alarm clock and missed the bus can be that he must ride his bike to school, even if it makes him very late and suffer the detention penalty. This handy boundary-making exercise (i.e. the parent sets a limit by refusing to be the alarm clock, the hustler and the shepherd) can work wonders for increasing teen compliance and independent functioning. However, many parents can’t tolerate their kid’s freak out, the detention consequence or the bad grade in the first class of the day.

A mom I know imposed this consequence once last year with her sophomore. Her daughter pitched a fit and loathed biking in the rain, but never again slept through the alarm or lagged through the morning routine. An alternative natural consequence for a younger child might be chores to pay back mom for her cab service to school—say, 15 minutes of weeding or housework for every minute it takes to drive—after all, there is the hassle, return trip and gas to pay for too.

The parent who refuses to be the teen’s alarm clock illustrates the link between setting boundaries for children and a firm parent-child interpersonal boundary. The parent who prioritizes the rocky road of building self-management over the road more easily taken (which would be avoiding the intervention) has a strong internal boundary between herself and the child. The teen screams “I hate you” as she bikes away to school and the mom remembers the importance of “getting to calm”. She self-soothes by reassuring herself that: (1) It is her job to teach her child about responsibility; (2) She has a good enough relationship with her daughter to withstand some temporary loathing; and (3) She needs to avoid resenting her daughter for what is normal teen sluggishness, even if it has gotten out of control lately. This parent tolerates the short term cost of a pretty bad day for the long term reward of building greater responsibility in the teen.

Since sloppy habits are part and parcel of everyday life with kids, parenting involves a steady practice of tightening up boundaries or making adjustments—be it boundaries about belated bedtimes, homework fights, potty mouths, lapses with chores or cheating on screen time limits. Setting boundaries can result in aversive stuff in the short-term—like wrath in the child or big life disarray—so much so that parents frequently end up taking the easy way out by avoiding and postponing this necessary task. Sadly, everyone loses in this scenario—the children become indulged, incompetent and irresponsible, and the parents dislike what they see in their children and themselves.

Boundary decisions are part of every aspect of childrearing. When should we let the toddler negotiate stairs on her own? When should he be encouraged to ride a bike, and how far, and where? When should children be allowed (or pushed) to walk to school? When should they ride buses to their music lessons instead of having their parents schlep them? How much independence do you give children who never opt to check, edit or review their homework? How much supervision do you give a child who has just acquired access to Facebook or a cell phone? What do you do when your 17 year old claims that all the parties involve alcohol? As much as we want to protect our children by holding them close and preventing risks, children do not develop competencies clutched in our arms.

In consultations with parents, I pose this question: “What is best for your child in terms of expanding competencies while also protecting him or her from harm?” Then we examine the child’s issues (e.g. track record with independent functioning, temperament strengths and weaknesses, desirable next goals for competence-building), parent issues (e.g. philosophies about child-rearing and attitudes about independence and protection, anxieties and fears, conflicts between parents about these issues, cultural norms) and circumstantial issues (e.g. perceptions about danger in neighborhood and school, available opportunities for expanding independence, peer dynamics, etc.).

These family and context factors determine perceptions about what is desirable for the child’s independent travel related to stairs, bikes, buses, homework, cyberspace and dubious parties. A rule of thumb can be letting out the boundary leash as the child demonstrates increasing levels of competence and pulling it back in when the child messes up. For instance, if the child doesn’t stick to agreements about cell phone use or visits to the mall, privileges are revoked and rules are made stricter temporarily. Children range in their appetites for independence—some want more and some want less. Parents will be holding back the bucking broncos and nudging forward their timid tortoises.

A big fly (or beehive) in the ointment occurs when parents disagree or when parents’ personal baggage derails their measured approach to deciding on how to adjust the leash. In other words, the question of “what’s in the interest of the child” gets mired and muddled in the mishmash of messy human life.

Anxious, overprotective parents often have difficulty with the premise that children may need to struggle, suffer or make big mistakes as an intrinsic part of developing self-reliance. It is one of those strange twists in parenting that anxious parents who are motivated to do the very best for their children end up placing their children at risk by trying to prevent risk.

The process of creating, maintaining and adjusting behavioral boundaries for children requires enormous energy, vigilance and tenacity. Parents who stick with rules and routines while staying positive and supportive are truly practicing the fine art of exquisite child-rearing. Above all, a huge amount of parental self-discipline is involved in prioritizing the boundary agenda—we need to impose on ourselves and our kids the “short term costs” of incurring bad days and bad moods for the long term benefit of building competent kids. No wonder the rocky road is often the one less travelled. But the slog is worth it—there is nothing more gratifying than helping children to develop into competent young people.

checked your list?

by Laura Kastner, Ph.D.

I was preparing a keynote speech for the 180th North Pacific Pediatric Society today and it occurred to me that I should share the highpoints directly with parents. Have you read about the research which shows how much medical care can be improved in intensive care units when checklists are followed? With the complex and emotional realities of home lives, why should we expect raising rascals to be any less mentally taxing than the average surgery?

Research has documented that most teens will experience more moodiness, emotional reactivity and risk-taking, all of which can be very challenging for parents. Tweens and teens can drive their parents crazy with the way they argue for the sake of arguing, lapse into illogical thinking and dramatic interpretations of their plights, have meltdowns over what seem like small inconveniences, find fault with everything (especially their parents), and become maddeningly self-centered. Power struggles and arguments mushroom on the home-front, and parents wonder where their sweet child disappeared to.

I want to provide parents with a checklist of parenting strengths (of which there is an expanded version in my co-authored book, Getting to Calm) which is associated with academic, social and emotional competence in maturing teens. My hope is that parents of 4th and 5th graders can institute as many of these practices as possible as they ready themselves for the “molting age.”

1. Control media and electronic use and avoid giving into excessive materialistic desires. Keep TV’s out of bedrooms, limit screen time, monitor initial cell and social networking to track rule compliance, and remember how hard it to get the genie back into the bottle. A focus on character development and working hard for goodies needs to trump the thrill of getting and spending.
2. Don’t let up on family dinner rituals. Family dinners are probably associated with success for teenagers because they reflect a family’s level of organization, family priority, healthful values and follow-through. The dinner experience can be miserable with moody teens, so no wonder people scrap them all too often. But by random chance, sometimes they can be a blast.
3. Keep chores a priority—they are a vital preparation for life. Kids are only “spoiled” if they are allowed to be. Too many parents think a tween’s “busy” life is an excuse to let chores go by the wayside. American teens are often indulged and entitled; helping with family chores, errands and meal preparation is a way that they learn to take responsibility for themselves, others and community needs.
4. Let your kids struggle, fail and learn, both socially and academically. One of the hardest parenting calls is to figure out how to let children be challenged but not overwhelmed as they practice their own problem solving. Parents need to rescue when necessary, but remember that struggle builds competence and confidence.
5. Keep having fun and building the family bank account of positive emotions. Due to the moodiness and negativity that erupts naturally from teen brain and pubertal development, the tween and teen will be constantly making withdrawals from this account, to no fault of their own. Thus, parents must figure out ways to infuse this account with laughter, joy and frolic. Since kids are nastiest with their own parents, invite family and friends over regularly to keep the good times rolling.
6. Support your tween’s academic development. Disallow any electronic other than music for homework time. Go to school events and conferences and demonstrate a value on the connection to school that should prevail through high school. Middle school is the time to establish a high value on achievement—but not perfection! Teachers should be consulted if you have concerns.
7. Insist that your tween participate in athletic activities over the full year. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a full hour of physical activity per day for tweens and teens. The easiest way to approach this standard is participation in team sports at school, and you get the bonus of “bonding to school” which is one of the determinants of positive teen adjustment.
8. Encourage at least one extracurricular activity at all times and keep this expectation intact through-out high school. Although we’ve all heard of the “overscheduled” child syndrome, just as concerning is the other end of the spectrum, which is the child who is not developing pro-social hobbies, talents and skills in public service.
9. Practice authoritative parenting, which includes firm limits and boundaries, warmth and connectedness, and effective communication. Parents of tweens in middle school should monitor and supervise their children closely, keep a mostly positive and loving connection, and be skillful in “picking their battles” and eliminating unproductive arguments and stalemates with surly tweens.
10. Role model skills in emotional regulation. Teens lack emotional self control due to both the immaturity of their prefrontal cortices and the impact of hormones. Therefore, parents are on the line to role model their own self calming. During meltdowns, a skillful parent does not talk “under the influence” of intense negative emotion and postpones problem solving to calmer moments.
11. Be proactive about talking to your teens about sexuality, substance use, violence and media literacy. Don’t be one of those parents who wants to, intends to, needs to…but doesn’t. Ignore the rolling eyes, and “just do it.”
12. Build family resilience and spirituality by your own conduct and values. Life is composed of an endless series of problems and challenges to all of us. We develop a sense of purpose and integrity through our efforts to cope with adversity, meet challenges with compassion, and demonstrate acceptance, optimism and commitment in our relationships.

The family dinner, structure and routines are all associated with optimal child development, but they couldn’t happen without a parent’s organization, ability to execute a plan and values-informed judgments. These sentinel cognitive capacities are related to the DNA of success in modern life—and they are key parts of every parent’s executive functioning.

I consider executive functioning to be the DNA of parenting because it determines so much of how we run our lives, including prioritizing dinners, creating structure and maintaining routines. It’s our cognitive CEO—it allows us to plan ahead, problem-solve, meet goals and make discerning judgments. The evolution of the prefrontal cortex (packed into that big forehead of ours) made these analytic skills possible. And of course, some of us are better than others at developing them to our advantage in parenting children and running an orderly home.

No wonder only highly functional families seem to pull off the magnificent achievement of family dinners, consistent chores, prompt bedtimes, and media control! How else could parents manage grocery shopping, preparation of healthful meals, wise decisions about evening activities, carpools, and kids’ compliance with chores, rules and other responsibilities? Parental executive functioning makes possible authoritative parenting, boundaries, skillful negotiation between spouses and effective leadership in family matters.

Family dinners have become symbolic of wholesome family life. Articles in newspapers, journals and websites document their importance in contributing to child health. Researchers find that regular family dinners are associated with less alcohol abuse, drug use, eating disorders and depression in teens and lower obesity and better reading preparedness in preschoolers.

Are these fabulous findings related to a secret sauce in the dinner per se or the fact that kids are at home with their families benefiting from routine? Probably both, but let’s tackle the dinner part first. Communal eating as a family and tribe goes back as far as recorded history. Eating food together means we are looking into each other’s eyes (an opportunity for empathy!), enjoying nourishment as a group (allowing us to associate gustatory pleasure with family in our emotional brains!), and learning about each other’s lives (even our teenagers’ lives on occasion!)

One study documented that family dinners predict reading skills in young children better than parental bedtime reading. It was speculated that children’s language capacity was enhanced by their parents’ rich vocabulary and the interactive way that they answered their children’s questions and delved into their interests.

Now let’s unpack the magic of routines. Don’t you love it when you see your child automatically perform the duties that used to be a struggle (e.g. seatbelt buckling, clearing their dishes, getting ready for bed, etc.)? As creatures of habit we benefit from the fact that “the neurons that fire together, wire together”. Neural connections are  created by what we do, learn and get rewarded for. The learning process helps create super-highway paths in our brains so we can switch into an “automatic pilot” gear, ideally helping families move through morning and evening routines more smoothly if they are practiced consistently enough.

Routines help organize our children’s lives and give them a sense of predictability and security. Practicing routines over and over helps kids learn math facts, basketball skills and good dental hygiene. As parents establish certain good habits in their kids, they can expand the scope of their responsibilities. Some kids can actually make the family dinner, clean it up and self-govern themselves all the way through their evening routine!

Imposing the structure that allows children to practice routines should be considered one of a parent’s favorite tools because conditioned responses (“automatic pilot” functioning) do some of the heavy lifting of socializing kids. With young children, if we follow the daily sequence of bath, teeth-brushing, books, songs /blessings and kisses/hugs every night and exit their room at 8 p.m., then they (and their brains) will expect this routine and do it fairly automatically. If we vary the routine a lot in response to protests and whining, we are rewarding these behaviors and welcoming chaos into our evening.

It shouldn’t be surprising that research has demonstrated that family routines and rituals predict better grades, social competence and even better management of chronic illness among children. The parent with a high level of executive functioning is more likely to produce a kid that learns those same skills.
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Still, in the hurly burly of modern family life, it can be really tough to figure out priorities around the “dinner-structure-routine agenda”. It requires “big picture” analysis of what’s most important to children’s health, development and long-term welfare. It takes well-developed executive functioning!

Here are some typical questions that parents bring to me in consultations:

• “Are regular chores really worth the trouble of star charts, squabbles and continual re-negotiation?”
• “Is there an advantage to conducting young kids’ morning routine the same way everyday?”
• “Since my husband travels a lot, we like to loosen up the rules and enjoy our quality time when he comes home. However, the kids turn to beasts afterwards—wanting fun every night. Is it worth giving up one of our favorite pleasures for a bedtime routine?”
• “If my teenagers can get on selective sports teams, is it really that big a deal that they eat food in the car and skip the table time so that they can get right to their homework?”
• “Should dinners together be enforced even when the kids tend to fight the whole time?”
• “My kids are juggling impressive amounts of homework and after-school activities. Even though I think they’re kind of spoiled, should I really figure out a way to inject chores into their schedule too?”
• “Because my spouse and I disagree about how much structure kids need, we seem to lapse into inconsistent structure and fighting about it. Should imposing evening structure and routines really be a top priority item, especially with grades and rudeness causing us such grief lately?”

The short answer is “yes” to all of these questions. To master these challenges, parents will be employing their executive functioning skills and the tools described in my posted articles entitled “A is for Authoritative parenting” and “B is for Boundaries”. Even if grades, rudeness and sibling quarrels are also on the “to do” list, parents need to be good CEO’s, authoritative and maintain good family relationships to be effective with just about any other childrearing agenda.

Teens need routines as much as younger children do. And they need almost as much sleep! (I’ll provide more data on that later with the “H is for Health maintenance” tool). Routines change over time as children take on more responsibility for managing their homework, media and chores, but parents will still need to monitor and enforce the rules when the kids hit the bucking bronco stage of adolescence.

Parents of teens may not be the omnipresent shepherds they are for their younger children at bedtime, but hopefully they’ll still take advantage of the sacred moments around bedtime for relational closeness—yes, even for teens. However, some of the kisses may get swapped out for a good foot massage. If you don’t try to talk or pry too much, sometimes those foot massages can act as truth serum.

Millennial living is busy and stressful. Family dinners and evening routines can go out the window with the demands of jobs bleeding into every hour of the day and the almighty kid activity schedule mattering more than family togetherness. You can see why parents’ executive functioning seems to be a key to just about every aspect of running the home and making a priority of relationships.

Making family routines and rituals a priority usually involves sacrifice. These days parents have to exert tremendous self-discipline to be unplugged at home, follow their own rules watch out for some of those impulses that are so tempting—like falling asleep in your child’s bed during story time, watching a special (but late) show together on TV, and getting lost in email-land which can throw off the evening schedule.

Privileged people have a zillion important meetings, athletic work-outs, lessons, appointments, commitments and obligations (for themselves and their children). Poor people are overwhelmed with getting the money to put food on the table and pay the bills. Middle class folks are doing a bit of both. While people everywhere seem to say that they’d like to have more family R & R and dinners at home, they cite the obstacles mentioned above as insurmountable barriers.

What is the solution? Constantly honing that parental executive functioning! Making family dinners, structure and routines happen requires huge doses of it. It’s hard to emphasize the importance of the DNA of parenting too much—it creates the architecture of family life.

NEWS FLASH! Twenty years of research has established that emotional intelligence—social and emotional skills—truly does foster success in kids. Parents should be craving this stuff for their kids more than perfect SAT’s and Olympic level athletic skills! In fact, it’s so integral to educational achievement and mental health that congress is funding “social and emotional” learning programs for school classrooms and war veterans.

Why aren’t parents buzzing about this? Why is there still more obsession with grades, AP class enrollment and talent development than sharing intimate and positive moments in the family? Is emotional intelligence just “too mushy” a concept, since you can’t measure it as easily? Perhaps—but I think the big rub is that it is best developed in the home. Many parents would rather go “buy a package” than be accountable themselves for demonstrating healthy social and emotional behaviors for…hmmm…a couple of decades.

What is the parenting package that helps to develop this vital essence?

I have created an acronym (RELATE) to identify the emotional and social skills we want to model and encourage in the home. These skills predict higher achievement, better emotional adjustment and more successful relationships in your child’s future.

R Remain calm so that you can interact with loved ones in respectful ways.
E Express emotions appropriate to the situation and the child’s age.
L Label emotions, giving your children a broad vocabulary for expressing their own.
A Acknowledge the cause of your emotions, without blaming, just describing.
T Take responsibility for managing your negative emotions, especially while in conflict.
E Empathize with your child’s feelings genuinely.

Remember that empathy does not imply agreement or giving into a child’s rage, protest or demands. Capable and authoritative parents are compassionate, but they don’t spoil their kids. They appreciate that children can be wildly intense, disappointed, anxious, angry and irritable, but they don’t react to these emotions. They hold the line on behavioral expectations, but accept that children have messy feelings.

Kids can be quite disrespectful when they experience their messy and negative feelings. Even tweens and teens can’t regulate their emotions consistently due to the immaturity of the prefrontal cortex (the “thinking” and “impulse control” center of the brain). Neurobiological maturation is a long term project that takes over twenty years. As the parent, you are the one who is supposed to have self management skills up and running, not them. Being patient and skillful with children who truly are “works in progress” is what our book, Getting to Calm, is all about.

What is “good enough” parenting and why is it harder to achieve these days?
Let me reassure you that when psychologists implore families to think more consciously about how they are interacting with their children at home, we are only aiming for good enough. Still, it can be a monumental task to slow down in our modern lives so that we can behave in thoughtful, authoritative and loving ways which support secure attachment. The key is balancing discipline, wholesome fun and attuned, responsive interchanges (henceforth here, called “good enough” parenting). As children morph into tweens and teens, living these values and deciding priorities becomes increasingly complex.

By the time your kids are tweens (ages 8-12), good enough parenting represents a decade of skillful, executive decision-making and a heck of lot of self-discipline. What does it look like in normal life? First and foremost, it requires turning off electronics (yours and theirs) and being home so that you can have relational time—listening, laughing, admiring, playing, appreciating, and sharing thoughts, feelings and experiences. If this kind of quality time doesn’t involve a lot of money and gadgetry, and is either activity-oriented (bikes, walks, or games anyone?) or conversational face time, good for you. We develop empathy through looking at one another and activating mirror neurons with kindly moments together.

We need to read to our children as much as possible during this decade. This portion of the evening evolves increasingly into homework and study time in the second decade. Parents of young children fret too much about creating early readers and focus too little on oral reading, going the library and enjoying fabulous books together. Reading together is so nurturing, free and simple, and so immensely important to educational success, we must ask ourselves why it is often a lost art in family life. It has a simple and complicated answer: it represents a parental commitment of time—and lots of it. Time is a finite resource and most of us feel like we don’t have enough of it. We have a million and one excuses for why so many of us wish for but don’t achieve enough quality relational time with our families, but it comes down to prioritizing it.

Before you write me off as a Luddite, let’s get back to the endgame here.

Parental love, college preparation and a transition to adulthood

Most parents agree on what we want for our children. For starters, we want them to be successful, independent and well-adjusted. By the teen years, achieving these goals means that your child makes the academic grades which result in college admission, is capable in relationships, copes with stress in adaptive ways and feels secure about launching from the home.

Parents also want their children to be healthy, happy and wise. By the teen years, optimal health certainly includes a certain amount of athletic, social and extracurricular activities (See my blog on a checklist for parents of teens). It also means (ideally) not abusing drugs, not becoming depressed or anxiety disordered and not making stupid mistakes that get them thrown out of school or into the slammer. Notice the “not’s”? By the time you’re parenting teens, you know how critical mental and physical health is to everything else.

What parents seem not to realize is how much these goals rely on relationships in the home and their own social and emotional functioning during the first decade of life. You can “get away” with over-busy, electronic-laden and entertainment-filled years, but it is dreadfully hard to pull the plug on tweens and teens and start learning RELATE skills in the second decade without a firm grounding in the first.

I admit that face time and dinners with kids are often boring, filled with fracas and packed with emotional button-pushing. No wonder we turn to email, TV, “look good” child activities, and work, and let them have access to on-line everything—all in our own private spaces. It’s easier! Way easier. But then, what about the big chunks of time we need for investing in RELATE skills so that kids can develop emotional and social competence? And of course, only by committing to family time do we encounter those magical moments of loving bliss.

Lest you think that those in need of this emotional intelligence agenda are “those other high risk” families (you know—the ones suffering from poverty, abuse and other social ills), think again. Compared to less privileged families, research has documented that affluent teens have higher levels of depression, anxiety, and drug abuse, which is associated with academic pressure and disconnection from parents. If that isn’t an endorsement for enhancing the quality of family time and watching your word count related to haranguing about school, grades and tests, I don’t know what is.

The winners in the end will be those children with parents who RELATE to them

Summarizing this important information is the easy part of public health promotion. What psychologists like me muse about to no end is how so many well-intentioned, loving parents stray off the mark in achieving “good enough” parenting because they haven’t prioritized family connection. Exclusively pursuing high grades, premier athletics and talent development just seems so much more enriching for child development than making time for some hanging out at home. And we’ve become so accustomed to being distracted and over-wired, we don’t know how harmful it is to emotional and social learning. Affiliating with family and friends—faces turned toward one another and smiling, responding and even quarreling—has become a profoundly endangered resource, even though we evolved doing just this in our social circles for millions of years.

Parental modeling of emotional and social skills sounds simple, but today it represents a hot commodity. It’s harder than it sounds. It requires canceling some lessons, night meetings, and HBO. It means banning on-line access for everyone during your “special time”. Who would ever have imagined when we were kids that “the next big thing” would not be a technological breakthrough but instead a family sanctuary?

Do you have F.A.D.D.?  Family Attention Deficit Disorder? Oh, no! Another shrink identifying a deficit syndrome! Yeah, well, it’s true. We have a severe shortage of quality time filled with fun, laughter and engaged family interactions without screens. Teens report that they want more time with their families. But they say the same thing about sex ed. And yet when parents kick start either agenda, teens will roll their eyes, groan and try all kinds of avoidance. It takes a huge commitment to overcome teen resistance and create good times at home without screens, but it’s worth it. Here’s why…

Research studies on the parent-child love bond have associated “warmth”, “cohesiveness”, “secure attachment” and “connectedness” with healthy child development. Loss of this “good feeling glue” exposes your kids to all sorts of problems. Once the reservoir of good feelings in a family dries up, everything else starts shriveling up too—like children’s cooperation, self esteem, academic achievement, resistance to negative peer influence, and the impact of your discipline.

While boundaries, discipline and other resources are also related to optimal healthy development, the parent child relationship is critical, and it needs to be nourished with good times together. The parent role of civilizing kids is so onerous that we must have happy times to compensate for all the drudgery!

So, what are some ideas for how to spend quality time with tweens and teens?

• Volunteering—search the web and find activities you can do together. Trail or park maintenance, kitchen help at shelters and helping at food banks are always good options.
• Preparation of family dinners—rotate the head chef role; on your teen’s night to be head chef, invite his or her friends.
• Backrubs—most teens participate in athletic activities (or should) and can always enjoy a back or foot rub (better yet, take a massage class together first).
• Music tutorial—have your teen teach you about his or her music collection and then get help loading your favorites on to an IPod for you.
• Board games—Taboo is our family favorite. We love buzzing each other obnoxiously when we make mistakes.
• OK, OK, watching a video together with pizza and root beer floats can be great bonding, even if is a screen thing. At least you’re together…just try to go bowling, biking and skating another time.

It’s harder than it sounds. Life is horrendously busy, packed with work, kid activities, socializing, chores and way too much media. Like a stealthy infectious disease, electronic devices (T.V., internet, cells, video gaming) have invaded our homes and stolen from us our sacred, direct connection with one another. We’re so used to these electrical separators that we don’t even know how dangerous they are. Plus, pulling ourselves off these rewarding dopamine machines can render us screaming meanies.

Kids can deep six even our best efforts to instigate good times. They’re so good at it that parents often simply give up. YOU CAN’T! Parents must invest in efforts to infuse the family bank account with good feelings and positive emotions, because kids (especially teens) will be making lots of withdrawals when they have their negative moods. They can’t help it. Negativity and turmoil just naturally stem from puberty, brain remodeling and stress from school, peer dynamics, and growing up. Our only recourse to build the bank account up again!

As a psychologist, I work with struggling families that have serious deficits in their levels of happiness, positive engagement and laughter. Like any canary in the coal mine, this deficit serves as a warning for how bad juju can infect even an ordinary world-weary family if your resistance is down.

Life has many unanticipated slings and arrows that make the going tough, especially in a recession. The path to seeking any rosy time together can be thorny indeed. But as Mark Twain said, “The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”

"Mom, you're ruining my life!"

by Dr. Laura Kastner, Ph.D.

One of the hottest topics in clinical psychology these days is what we psychologists call “emotional regulation” You might know it as “self control” or “emotion management” and understand that it’s important, because without it, kids would not be able to handle disappointments, follow rules and adapt to upsetting circumstances—and neither would we!

Dealing effectively with negative emotions is important for kids. It helps them deal with mean peers, painful break-ups, and unfairness or misunderstandings.

Self control is a powerful predictor of future success. Young children who can control their impulses and delay gratification end up having better lives and becoming big achievers.

How do kids develop this wonderful skill? Effective emotion management is partly determined by genetics, but a lot depends on what happens in that most intimate, important and labor-intensive relationship with parents. So let’s start with the parent part of the equation.

We like to focus on the loving times we spend with our kids, but let’s face it, we all lose it sometimes. Everybody has tempers that flare and buttons that get pushed—some more than others—and it causes neurons to fire in the most primitive part of the brain (called the “amygdala”). That’s why parents often start acting and sounding like children themselves!

“Flooding” occurs when people get anxious, fearful, or angry. They report that they “lost it” (their mind, temporarily), “melted down” (like a nuclear reactor), and “hit the wall”(and they might have). Brain scientists call this an “amygdala hijack,” which is an apt term, since the emotional brain truly does ambush your thinking brain (the “prefrontal cortex”) and holds it hostage until you cool off.

This hijack is why good parents end up yelling, criticizing, swearing, belittling and threatening, even though we all know that communicating this way doesn’t help us get through to our kids — and can hurt our relationship.

What’s a good parent to do? Try the C.A.L.M. approach:

• C—Cool down (get your heart rate down, self soothe, breathe deeply).
• A—Assess your options (What are the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches
  you might take for patching up the spat and problem solving? Talk now or later?
  This step automatically engages the prefrontal cortex so that good judgments can be
  made right after the cool down).
• L—Listen with empathy (When re-engaging your child, acknowledge your child’s
  feelings first, without any “but’s”. Empathy doesn’t mean approval or agreement,
  but it does open up communication channels).
• M—Map a plan (Use your calm and wise mind to figure out realistic goals and how to reach them).

You’ll need to role model this hundreds – maybe even thousands! — of times before you can expect your kids to do the same! Read more about it here.

Parents often neglect their own health while caring enormously about the health of their children. Since children and teens learn from and model their parents’ behavior, parents’ personal health behaviors can be critical determinants of their children’s health profile. Furthermore—and this is a “duh”—parents make decisions related to their children’s health every day.

Since health guidelines are a dime a dozen, let’s get that easy part over first, and then I want to address the nitty-gritty of why optimally healthful lifestyles are so hard to come by, even for the most competent, loving parents among us. First, a checklist for you and your child or teen:

don’t smoke
don’t drink
use a seat belt
eat balanced and healthful meals, avoiding junk
sleep 7-8 hours a night
practice firearm safety
exercise 30-60 minutes a day
practice safe sex
seek health advice when needed
? think carefully about health decisions

(For nine other measures parents can take for strengthening a family’s psychosocial and immunological health, check out my acronym “REAL STRONG” in the blog article posted on 9/8/09 addressing flu resistance.)

Creating a checklist is easy. Doing it is another. Rather than citing research on fitness and kick-starting new healthful habits (also easily accessible on the web), I am going to focus on the role of emotions in decision making.

The checklist is evidence based and fairly non-controversial. Since practicing these habits is associated with significantly better health, we must ask ourselves, for the sake of ourselves and our beloved children: “Why don’t we do what is good for us to do?”

Adults have a tough time doing what is in their interest health-wise, and of course children and teens have even greater difficulty. Young children reason that “good is what I want”, which is the first stage of moral reasoning. Basically, kids are hedonists. Luckily, parents control a lot of the decisions related to a child’s food intake, athletic commitments, seat-belt usage, and sleep routines.

By the time teens are mature enough to control these decisions, they have better cognitive equipment for this deliberation and ideally, established good habits to draw on. Given that parents model, teach, decide and broker health decisions in such a central way, they can be considered the lynchpins for family health practices.

The excuse many people give for failing to give adequate emphasis to health—say, exercise, healthful meals, and sleep—is “not enough time”. However, we know that we have choices of how we spend our time and money, so isn’t our health emphasis just a matter of choice?

Yes, and no. It depends on what you mean by “choice”. Neuro-imaging and cognitive science research shows us that emotions dictate a lot more of our choices moment to moment than we ever imagined. Do you think you made a purely cognitive choice (e.g. contemplating the costs, benefits, risks and the consequences) when you clicked on the TV, ate those cookies or hit the snooze button to avoid your exercise class? Think (and analyze that “choice” idea) again.

The emotional centers in our brain often have more power over our behavior than our reason centers. Neurons in the emotional “old” brain, whether reacting to danger or pleasures, trigger faster than the neurons in the analytical parts of the neo-cortex. And when we are faced with personal pleasures like a new love interest, favorite junk food, or compelling acquisition, the emotional centers are fueled by the powerful neuro-chemical dopamine.  Dopamine sends the message, “Go get it now!”

The draw of sex, food and novelty may have insured our survival over the millennia, but our pleasure drive may also represent our modern undoing. Let your mind roll to obesity, addiction, greed, and all manner of hedonistic impulses for musing on that last sentence.

No wonder reasonable people philander, watch too much TV, over-eat and drink too much. Our brains remember pleasurable things; it often just wants what it wants when it wants it. Our only protection is the “executive functioning” capability of our prefrontal cortex, which allows us to recognize and inhibit the impulses of pleasure gluttony. The thinking capacities of our prefrontal cortex made the development of our moral compass possible. That is—when it is fully engaged. Oh, but then again—I already emphasized that emotions can trump reason and judgment—frequently.

Too bad for us that emotional urges are often stronger than our moral and cognitive judgments and frequently operate underneath our “conscious” decision-making apparatus. Remember how much we used to laugh at that old monologue of Flip Wilson’s when he said, “The devil made me do it!”? In this brain research era, will we grab the chips and remote control (for hours), and declare, “My nucleus accumbens and dopamine reward pathway made me do it”? Perhaps, but we also need to acknowledge that we didn’t full engage our thinking brains and activate self-restraint.

Our health decisions also get bogged down by the “danger” triggers in our emotional brains. For instance, if we perceive that we’ll lose our job if we don’t spend six extra hours on a project tonight, forget the priority of healthful food, exercise and sleep—not to mention playing and reading books with Johnny.

If our brains are triggered emotionally by the perceived dangers of neglecting our work demands, they certainly can—and do—become triggered when it comes to our children’s need to stay up late due to homework and extracurricular activities. Our emotional brains perceive the consequences of not acting on these needs as practically life threatening: “They can’t sleep as much as they need to because of the importance of homework, three athletic teams and developing their resume for college!”

We could argue that with chronic stress and the damage done to health, we can’t function optimally at our jobs and our children won’t thrive in college. And in these shaky economic times, our anxiety-saturated decisions to prioritize job retention and scoring A’s in school do seem to have a top priority. However, we’ve just re-created our pretzel thinking—to be healthy, we need to balance our lives with a value on health, but to survive, thrive and excel, we must stay on the fast-lane treadmill, which means mania, stress and the time famine for health pursuits. Argh.

The “health-indulgence-mania” trifecta means we must choose our priorities carefully. We must understand emotions and how they can trump reason and wise judgment. Only then can we understand how our daily lives can fall so short of our stated values about the importance of health.

With our emotions influencing so many of our health-related decisions, what can be done? Choice architecture enthusiasts would say we need “default settings” to steer us toward better living. We probably need to sign up for “AA” type public meetings to declare and get support for our intentions, receive regular rewards for following through, and buy computerized filter systems that shut down our various distractions at home so we can eat, sleep, and enjoy our family members in more healthful ways.

At the very least, we need to think deeply about how we set up our daily lives for success—for our own health and our children’s. We can use our top notch executive functioning skills (posted on www.gettingtocalm.com  9/25/10), review the psycho-neuro-immunology boosters (posted 9/8/09) and brush up on the parenting checklist (posted 2/26/10) to organize our lives for health. Then we need to forgive ourselves for coming up short, because no one is perfect and curve balls happen every day to throw us off our schedules. But the checklists are good reference points, and after that—well, I guess it’s up to you and your prefrontal cortex.

Is it a surprise to anyone that helping children do well in school is part of successful parenting? Virtually all parents want to reach this goal. As with so many noble parenting goals, the devil is in the details. Many well-intentioned parents do too much, too little or bark up the wrong trees when it comes to school support. I will summarize the basics succinctly so that I can focus on some of the subtleties of the support role which are misunderstood by even the most competent of parents.

Many studies have shown that parental involvement with children’s learning predicts school achievement, which in turn predicts how well they thrive in life. The key ingredients include:

• High (but not unrealistic) expectations for school achievement
• A home environment that supports learning (e.g. setting aside homework time, preventing distractions like media, mandating bed times, maintaining good family relations and positive affirmations about work efforts)
• Involvement in the school and community
• Parents who role model intellectual curiosity, rich conversations at the dinner table, reading for pleasure and lifetime learning interests.

These recommendations are ubiquitous and uncontroversial. Now for the nitty-gritty of how the parent role can go haywire.

The student’s performance, attitude and feelings about school

As students proceed through elementary school, parents should expect their child to do satisfactory work, like school and feel comfortable there (mostly). If not, parents should consider meeting with the teacher and doing some problem solving, so that this pattern does not become entrenched. Children develop what I call an “academic identity” early in childhood: “I am a bad,/adequate/excellent student.” When children report that they hate school, it means that they are not thriving there, and the “hate” is a defense against the terrible feeling of vulnerability.

Concerns about learning problems, disabilities and attention deficit disorder can surface at any point in a student’s life. Children can  struggle or underachieve for many other reasons, including complications of their temperament, social or emotional issues, school context or family dynamics. Parents should seek the help of teachers and specialists to address these concerns. It is the parent’s responsibility is to help address these problems.

One of the developmental tasks of 6 to 12 year olds is to feel competent about what they do academically and socially. Hating school or doing unsatisfactory school work should be considered as perilous as being diagnosed with an illness. You’d take your child to a doctor wouldn’t you? He’s got the school blues? Schedule a meeting with the teacher!

If your child’s teacher advises an assessment, tutoring or any other recommendation, follow it unless you have a really good reason not to trust the teacher’s opinion. Parents that jump in, mobilize action plans, cheer on their kids, avoid blaming and take a problem-solving approach are heroes in my book. If the best of plans results in B’s and C’s (due to the complexity of the achievement problem) and the parents stay positive and supportive of their children, then they are super-heroes. It’s a crying shame how often well-meaning but anxious parents end up blaming their children for “poor motivation”. Negativity eats away at the parent-child relationship and does not enhance that flagging motivation.

Poor parental responses to school problems

Poor academic performance, the “I don’t care” identity, or its nasty twin, the “I hate school” feeling, all constitute a slippery slope into the danger zone. Although parents should arrest the downward slide as soon as possible, emotions and the complexity of underachievement often throw families off course.

The three most common dysfunctional parental response patterns to this slide are: “The Ostrich” who under-reacts and doesn’t deal with it; “The Anxious Aggravator” who over-reacts with anxiety, negativity and future forecasting of doom and gloom, which interferes with effective problem solving; and “Polarizers”, the parents who react to each other and fail at unified teamwork, thereby sabotaging their efforts to help the child.

All of these unfortunate patterns stem from complicated origins. Some Ostrich parents have had bad academic experiences themselves as children or have magical thinking that the school performance will correct itself. The Anxious Aggravator parents may be flooding with anxiety about their children blowing their chances for getting into certain colleges. The Polarizer parents may have all sorts of feelings about their child doing poorly at school—anger, anxiety, fear, confusion, indignation—which are channeled into blaming instead of an effective intervention.

Sometimes a student’s downward spiral can correct itself. Friendships can improve making school a happier place to be. A child might discover the rewards of a strong work ethic overnight. A new school or teacher may provide a better learning environment. But parents usually do not have control over these dynamics. They do have choices about how they relate to their children and seek consultation.

The “Back off! Be involved!” message to anxious parents

When schoolwork is substandard, parents have a range of options. Recommendations to parents may include hiring a tutor, controlling media and social networking, mandating a minimal homework time period, making weekend privileges contingent upon completion of weekly school work, or strategies for improving organization and study habits. In Getting to Calm, we’ve outlined detailed ways that parents can help their children improve their school performance.

One of the hardest lines to walk is the dual message parents receive about being involved but not overbearing. Once parents fulfill their responsibilities listed in the bullet points above, school is chiefly the student’s responsibility. Anxious parents may have a hard time accepting  B’s and or C’s on the report card, especially from the teen with “potential” for much higher performance. Understandably, they see the college options become reduced, only raising their blood pressure higher. The problem is that expressed parental anxiety does not enhance school motivation.

Anxious parents may say, “I’ve given my bright son every opportunity and advantage, so there is no excuse for these B’s and C’s”. Tweens and teens are complicated people. Like adults, there are lots of reasons why they may not be motivated to work really hard, despite others imploring them to do so. Developmentally, they don’t understand the full consequences of slacking off. But telling them over and over won’t jolt them into action.

A question I pose to anxious, over-talking parents of B-average students is, “You may be right, but are you effective?” The “back off” message to parents relates to nagging, over-interrogating and stalking them with homework haranguing. Parents are right about school work being of the utmost importance, but we all need to remember Einstein’s famous quote: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” (The ideas for jump-starting scholastic improvement in Getting to Calm’s chapter on academics represent “action” approaches rather than lectures).

In affluent homes, perceived academic pressure from parents is associated with depression, anxiety, and drug abuse. Parents may mean well by showing a value on achievement, but the kids hear: “All my parents care about is grades and getting into a good college.” Children need to feel that their parents love them, believe in them and empathize with their struggles first and foremost. Collaborating on an academic “action” plan without the over-talk comes second.

Stay positive and supportive

With the recession, outsourced jobs, and global competition, parents have never before in history been more worried about their children’s educational performance. Social commentators warn us that if our kids can’t compete in the global economy, they’ll be lackey assistants to the high achievers in China and India. Staying cool-headed, strategic and effective in supporting lackluster students seems like an impossible goal for parents. But nothing is more important than maintaining a good parent-child relationship—out of that garden, everything else has the potential for growth—even improved academic achievement.