Raising Kids to Thrive: Balancing Love With Expectations and Protection With Trust

Ginsburg

PREFACE

We all want our children to be happy, but we need them to be resilient. We wish we could guarantee a future for them with bountiful opportunities and manageable bumps. Because we lack this control over the future, we must prepare our children to successfully handle both good and challenging times.

I have been working to promote the healthy development and resilience of children and adolescents for more than 2 decades and have been fortunate to partner with the American Academy of Pediatrics to produce educational materials for both parents and professionals. My book Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings synthesizes the best of what is known about building resilience and offers many strategies parents can use to raise resilient young people.

If resilience were a trait, something you had or didn’t have, there would be little we could do to foster it in our children. Part of what is so exciting—and important—about the work of youth development is that children’s resilience is largely determined by how parents and communities raise them.

There are numerous strategies I and others have proposed, but there are 2 fundamental principles we all agree are at the root of resilience. First, a parent’s unconditional love is the most important force in a child’s life. It offers the unwavering security that helps young people develop the confidence to walk through life’s puddles. The unconditional love has to be coupled with high expectations for effort, character, and morality. Otherwise, a child will feel nurtured but not learn to hold himself to high standards. Second, a child will never learn life’s lessons if he is protected from experiencing them. This point has to be tempered with the fact that children need protection from challenges that can bring irreparable harm.

I have had the privilege of teaching resilience to parents and professionals throughout the world. The described principles are so fundamental to resilience that I teach them while standing on one foot to emphasize their simplicity. The clarity of this message resonates nearly universally; it tells parents what they already know in their parental bone marrow. Once they learn these core principles, parents understand that all other strategies are just details. This frees them to take comfort that they don’t need an encyclopedia of parenting to raise secure kids or the latest gadget to raise successful ones. To raise their kids well, they need to do what their instinct prepares them to do.

Once parents are grounded in these core principles, I go on to teach the communication and parenting strategies that flesh out a comprehensive approach to building resilience. Because the core of resilience building is so simple and there are so many strategies to implement them, my books and presentations focus on the details.

I have taught hundreds of thousands of parents over the years in my office, through my books, and during my visits to communities. Over time, it has become increasingly clear that the questions people have are rarely about those details. Instead, they struggle to better understand the simple points, because they recognize they are really anything but simple. They want to know how to apply these core principles in a complicated world. It doesn’t matter what they know to be right; what they wrestle with is how to do it.

I have come to understand there are 2 questions over which parents wrestle as they consider how to build resilience in their children.

How do I give my child the unconditional love needed to thrive while also holding him to the high expectations needed for success?

We know kids need both, but on some level these 2 concepts are in opposition to each other. Doesn’t holding expectations somehow undermine the unconditional nature of love?

How do I protect my child while letting her learn life’s lessons?

We parents all know intellectually that we have to get out of the way to let life be the teacher it is meant to be. We know coddled children lack the confidence to handle challenges. Yet it is absolutely our job to protect our children, and even letting our children experience emotional discomfort goes against our ingrained desire to protect them. We struggle with when to protect and when to get out of the way and watch from the sidelines.

Countless parents have asked for my guidance in reconciling their conflicting feelings about the core principles of resilience. Raising Kids to Thrive: Balancing Love With Expectations and Protection With Trust offers the answers parents seek. It takes a deeper dive into the essential building blocks of resilience presented earlier in Building Resilience. Raising Kids to Thrive will allow parents to think through how to put these 2 core principles into action while also learning concrete strategies to build resilience.

It will not always be able to offer definitive answers, because those answers are tightly tied to your child’s unique circumstances. But I believe it will frame all of the questions clearly, so you will be able to find your own comfort zone.

If you can resolve the tension these 2 principles of resilience pose, your child will have the security she can only gain from you and the confidence she can only develop from experience. She will be more than resilient; she will be poised to thrive.

INTRODUCTION

Tiger moms, helicopter parents, snowplow parenting, free-range parenting—these approaches grab headlines but are no way to raise your children. Other books often play on your anxiety by implying teens are out of their minds. Parenting is not a fad to be approached as the flavor of the month, and adolescence is a time to be celebrated, not feared.

When you approach parenting from the balanced perspective, you guarantee safety and foster independence, and you prepare your child to navigate the world and develop the parent-child relationship you both deserve.

Wherever there are extremes, the truth is usually found somewhere in the middle. Parenting is about finding the approaches that fit your child’s temperament, needs, and circumstances. So you shouldn’t hover like a helicopter, but you should watch carefully. You shouldn’t pressure like a tiger mom, but with respect to your child’s capabilities, you should hold her to high expectations. You shouldn’t clear an obstacle- free path like a snowplow, but you must look ahead for dangers. You don’t want your children to encounter the world freely with limitless freedoms, but you must understand their ingrained need to forge their own paths successfully.

Child and adolescent development has its fits and starts, but never interpret that as craziness. Never forget that each child possesses the inner wisdom to navigate life’s journey. We, however, are blessed to be their guides.

We should be like lighthouses for our children—beacons of light on a stable shoreline from which they can safely navigate the world. We must make certain they don’t crash against the rocks but trust they have the capacity to learn to ride the waves on their own.

Sometimes striking the right balance is harder than choosing an extreme position. The lighthouse metaphor serves as a reminder of the type of balanced parenting known to lead to the best behavioral outcomes and strongest parent-child relationships. Balance means you want to be consistently loving but authoritative when necessary. Balance means you always have to be thoughtful of and responsive to your child’s needs, as well as prepared to consider an adjustment in your practice to meet changing circumstances. Sometimes balance means negotiating with another person who also cares deeply about your children but doesn’t fully agree with how to raise them. In this book, we dive deeply into 2 of the toughest questions with which we parents wrestle.

1.How do I give my child the unconditional love needed to thrive while also holding him to the high expectations needed for success?

2.How do I protect my child while letting her learn life’s lessons?

If we can strike the right balance when answering these questions, we will raise resilient children who are poised to thrive through good and challenging times.

I wish I could promise you that after reading this book, you’ll get everything right because I had delivered the definitive answers to these overarching questions. But these questions are far too complex to have universally appropriate answers. And nobody gets everything right, partly because there isn’t always a right. Cookbooks for parenting almost always fall flat because the authors know neither your kids nor your circumstances. Only you can make decisions responsive to the needs of your child and household. My daughters and I, therefore, hope to further empower you to give thoughtful, informed consideration to these toughest of questions.

And for the record, I write books on parenting, but I don’t get everything right…not nearly so. Ask my girls.

This book offers 3 approaches to help you build the perspective that will allow you to make well-informed decisions.

It offers you science. There are real answers to some of these questions. We know how some approaches to parenting affect children’s emotional and behavioral well-being.

It offers clearly framed questions. We hope the clarity with which these struggles are illuminated will foster reflection and start honest conversations in your home and community.

It exposes you to adolescent viewpoints. Adolescents are the people who are experiencing your parenting right now. They may not have lived many years, but they understand the world they interact with better than we ever could. They know when they feel supported and when they feel controlled. They know what they need to thrive. Sometimes our own kids do a good job of communicating in a way that shuts down our ability to hear them. Here is an opportunity to listen to youth and imagine your child sharing his thoughts and experiences. You’ll be surprised by how thoughtful kids are when they are given an opportunity to be our teachers, as well as how much easier it can be to hear other people’s kids when what they say doesn’t feel quite so personal. That doesn’t mean you’ll always agree with their views, but it may be helpful to hear their thoughts as a starting point for better communication with your own child.

Why Include Adolescents as Experts Here?

Parenting books rarely, if ever, include youth insights and perspectives, but this one does.

Kids have a real stake in parenting. They may not have gone to parenting seminars or read volumes on raising children, but they know what it feels like to be parented. They know what they need. Kids may not grasp the worry we feel and why we so desperately want to protect them. They may not comprehend the guilt so many of us feel for not being able to be as available to them as we had hoped. They may not understand the fear we have for their futures and our desire to give them a leg up, but what they fully grasp is their own lives, the environment they need to plot a course through, and how they react to our guidance, support, and criticism.

Put simply, youth lack the wisdom of years but nonetheless are the authorities on their own lives.

This book is about exploring 2 fundamental questions with which we struggle. There is some useful information to guide us, but these questions are so vast that good parents will continue to wrestle with them on a case-by-case basis. None of us are alone. Parents before us and alongside of us have considered these same issues and did the best they could, sometimes striking the right balance and sometimes missing the mark entirely. Each parenting decision ultimately had its greatest impact on children and youth.

When parenting styles miss the mark wildly, the next generation raises their children in a way that tries to correct for the failings of their parents. (As they do so, they may learn their parents didn’t fail as much as they had thought, as well as discover that parenting is the most challenging, gratifying job imaginable.) There are serious limitations to drawing from the successes or challenges of our parents. First, it takes a generation to make the corrections. Second, we are putting too much emphasis on our personal experience. Third, we sometimes overcorrect, going in an opposite and uncharted direction.

Real-life decisions have to be made in real time. You do not have a generation to correct ill-fated approaches; you will make decisions today for your child’s tomorrow. Why not get immediate feedback from those who can directly report how different approaches to parenting affect kids?

Ultimately, I want you to get to the point at which you and your own children can have thoughtful discussions about these issues. A step in that direction is hearing from other kids first. More than 500 young people participated in writing this book. My 18-year-old daughters, Ilana and Talia, synthesize these young people’s views in Chapter 16 and 17. Simultaneously, these young people’s ideas float throughout the book. They are there to reinforce points, give an alternative view, or offer a poignant moment of reflection. Let me underscore the point: although I am generally humbled by their wisdom, I do not always agree with everything these young people say. Regardless of whether or not a given point of theirs reinforces my views, I know a critical step for each of us in reaching our own child is understanding how she views the world. The breadth of views in this book may help you better understand your child’s vantage point. (If you wish to learn about how the youth were recruited, as well as read some descriptions of who they are before you take in their thoughts, see Chapter 15.)

When Is the Right Time to Read This Book?

Now. Whether you have a toddler or a teen, this book can offer insights and information on how to be the kind of parent you want to be.

Many points we discuss come to a head during adolescence. It is during the teen years you’ll have a sense of whether or not your child is poised for success. It is then you’ll know whether or not your child can bounce from adversity and grow from failure. Any behavioral concerns take on more dangerous proportions during this time. For this reason, many of our examples are drawn from the teen years.

If your child is an adolescent now, your added support can make a big difference in guiding him in a positive direction. Never believe it is too late to reboot your relationship. This book ends with thoughts on how to improve communication between the 2 of you and increase your potential to effectively guide your child.

If you have a toddler or young child, now is the time to put into place the parenting style and communication strategies that will prepare her for happiness and success far into the future. Now is the time to help her develop a wide repertoire of coping strategies to manage life’s stressors. Equipped with those healthy means of managing life’s challenges, she will be less likely to turn to worrisome quick fixes later. Now is the time to create the kind of relationship that assures safety while honoring her growing independence. Children who feel secure, without feeling controlled, have less to rebel against in the teen years and may be more comfortable managing their own lives throughout adulthood.

It is never too early (or too late!) to put into place the parenting strategies that prepare your child to thrive far into the future.

Thoughts From Teens

My mom always says, You are who you hang with, You are what you eat, etc. She says it so much that those sayings pop in my head all the time. My advice is for parents to say your sayings; know I listen, even though you think I don’t.

—16-year-old female, Alaska

Please, please, please be patient with [your kids], and don’t yell at them or show that you are exasperated with them. Just take a deep breath and get through it. Please love them with all your heart.

—13-year-old female, Illinois

If I am standing on the cliff of my wildest dreams, please let me jump. I know I might get a few cuts and bruises along the way, but at least I had the courage to jump. And that courage comes from knowing you will always be there when I need you.

—15-year-old female, Kentucky

I hope that I can always be that rock for my children, as my mother has been for me. I hope to be a role model of feeling. As much as I share joy, triumph, and accomplishment, I also want to share tears and sadness. I want them to understand that I am not someone who wants to control them; I am here to guide them through the crazy journey of life. I will support them no matter the situation, because I know the importance of having support when I was trying to figure out who I was in this world.

—Stephanie Lefthand, 19-year-old, Texas

I want to be the kind of father who has a son that says, I want to be the kind of father my dad was.

—18-year-old male, Texas

I want to be the kind of parent that…leads by example, not by threats and disappointment.

—17-year-old male, New Jersey

I want my children to be able to tell me EVERYTHING and ANYTHING. I never want them to feel like I am not there for them.

—15-year-old female, California

Sometimes a parent just has to listen. Make sure they have someone to talk to. Sometimes I say, Mom, I need you to shut up and just listen to me, because I need someone to talk to. Parents have to be more willing to listen and judge less.

—Anonymous

PART

1

Unconditional Love Versus High Expectations

How do I give my child the unconditional love needed to thrive while also holding him to the high expectations needed for success?

We know our unconditional love is the fundamental protective force in our children’s lives. We also know that because kids live up or down to our expectations, we had better set them high.

These 2 forces seem to be in direct opposition. Doesn’t our need to set expectations mean we must apply conditions? Let’s reconcile this contradiction.

What You Will Learn

We hope to build the case that you can give unconditional love and hold your child to high expectations. It is about what those high expectations are and how they are conveyed. I invite you to wrestle over the points I make and to discuss them with your partner, relatives, friends, and children.

This is not a suspense novel, so here is a summary of the points I will make over the next few chapters.

Love does not spoil kids; it only makes them sweeter.

Unconditional love is a protective force that is the foundation of emotional security.

When conditions are put on love in the home in which we are raised, they can make us question our worth over our entire lifetime.

No parent intentionally makes love conditional, but if we are not thoughtful about how we communicate our expectations, it can feel judgmental. Judgment, by its simplest definition, sets a condition, acceptable or not.

Our connection to our children is the most protective factor in their lives. But a connection that makes them reliant on us to meet their every need undermines their long-term well-being.

To wisely convey expectations, it is important first to remind ourselves that our goal is to raise a child who will become a successful, moral adult.

Unrestrained praise is not the way to show our unconditional love. It can make kids anxious about disappointing us and worried about trying things that may not gain accolades.

We should hold our children to the highest expectations in terms of character. By doing so, we help them remain stable, centered, and self-aware as they navigate life’s waves.

We must be careful when we use performance standards as expectations. A focus on grades, scores, and awards can make a young person feel as if she is not acceptable unless she meets those standards. This unstable footing can undermine the key ingredients needed for success and even for healthy moral development.

When we accept that people are uneven and learn to celebrate our children’s strengths and accept their limitations, those areas in which they are destined to make their greatest contributions will naturally reveal themselves.

Sometimes children who are not meeting our expectations are reacting to standards they cannot achieve and choosing to pretend they don’t care. More pressure doesn’t help.

We want our kids to know our expectations include setbacks, even failures, and all we want is for them to grow from each stumble. Our expectation is growth, not perfection.

When we expect our children to put their greatest effort toward all endeavors, they will develop confidence in their talents and learn to accept their unevenness (if we do).

We must expect behavior that is safe and moral, no exceptions. The borders must be clear. Children will have the opportunity within those boundaries to take chances, so they can learn self-control and how to recover from inevitable mistakes.

CHAPTER

1

The Protective Force of Parental Love

From the moment your baby grasped your finger, you knew you were forever connected. You felt a kind of love people tried to explain to you but was unimaginable until you held this sacred being in your arms. As you put your child in the infant seat to leave the hospital, suddenly you became instinctually aware of your baby’s vulnerability and knew it was your job to protect her. Any dreams you ever had for yourself paled in comparison to those you now held for your child.

A supportive nurturing connection between parent and child offers the deep-seated security so critical to well-being and healthy development. This connection is the bedrock of the serve-response relationship that starts in infancy. First, babies (toddlers, children, and even adolescents!) do something to get our attention (serve). Then, when we respond to their action, they learn what they do matters, and this is an underpinning of the sense of control over their lives that healthy children need. As we respond with awe to the miracles of development and affectionately to the excitement our children experience with every new discovery, we reinforce their curiosity and love of learning. In turn, their passion for knowledge will build their intelligence. Parental nurturing has even been found to be highly protective through the worst of times. Adverse childhood experiences have been shown to negatively affect health and well-being far into adulthood, unless a responsive loving adult stands solidly alongside the child through even traumatic circumstances. This makes our parental role as resilience-builders crucial to helping our children remain strong, and even to gain wisdom, through life’s challenges.

"Always promise love. That’s the promise you made when you decided to have a child."

—16-year-old female, New Jersey

Love Without Conditions

Love only offers security if it is given without conditions. This is certainly true for children, but it remains true for people throughout their lifespans. When children are loved unconditionally, they know they are worthy based on their being, not their doing. Unconditional love allows people to take chances when they need to adapt to new circumstances because they needn’t fear disapproval, recrimination, or abandonment. They are safe. They are acceptable. They are valued, even when they doubt themselves. Ideally, parents are an unwavering source of this essential ingredient of stability and well-being, but the more supportive adults are in a child’s life, the more firmly rooted and unshakeable his security.

Unconditional love doesn’t mean unconditional approval. Part of being a loving parent is being clear about what is acceptable and what is not. But we can reject a behavior entirely while simultaneously loving the child fully. Love must never be withdrawn or threatened to be withheld based on a behavior or disappointing performance. Rather, part of loving is being present to mold our children into their best selves—not our vision of who they should be but who they are. Unconditional love is not based on performance; it is based on a child’s inherent worth. Our children cannot be seen as reflections of us. Frankly, when we see them as representing us, we may never find them satisfactory, especially if we have doubts of our own value. We must be proud of who they truly are and not of the bumper stickers we place on our cars based on what they do.

Your child must know that you are not going anywhere, no matter what. Your presence is the one thing to be counted on, even if the rest of the world seems unpredictable.

"Remind them that you loved them from the moment they were born—when they were tiny, feeble, and useless. If you loved them then, you can love them now."

—18-year-old female, Texas

What Happens When We Put Conditions on Our Affection and Attention?

Just as unconditional love is the root of security, questioning whether one is genuinely loved is a source of pain and uneasiness. We are designed to need others; we are driven to reinforce the sense that we belong. From the moment children gaze into their parents’ eyes, they need to draw the comfort that comes from a stable attachment. When we were infants and toddlers, we did whatever it took to gain our parents’ attention. We did the same as teenagers, for better or worse. Our fundamental need was to know we were cared about. Our moments of greatest angst, or perhaps ongoing sources of internal conflict, derive from questioning whether we were acceptable.

We hope children perform well because it generates self-satisfaction. Ideally, they put in their greatest effort because they are internally motivated to achieve growth. When, on the other hand, their performance is to gain approval, it generates anxiety. This unsettling anxiety might translate into perfectionism or a young person choosing to feign indifference. Perfectionism destroys many of the elements a person needs to be successful. On the other hand, young people who invest their energy in pretending they don’t care, usually because they care too much, will shun the very effort needed to ensure their success. Or worse, they will take on risky behaviors that deaden their senses so they need not experience their real feelings.

It Is Not About What You Feel But Rather How Your Child Interprets Your Messages

There is not a single parent reading these words who does not deeply love her child. Not one reader is intentionally putting conditions on his love. To the extent that any of us are holding our children to strict standards, it is undoubtedly with the best of intentions to make our expectations clear.

The last thing I would ever do is imply I could offer you advice on how to love your child unconditionally. The best I can do is underscore the vital importance of such love and gently guide you to reflect on the possibility that your child may be misinterpreting your intentions as you guide her toward success.

"Families should make time to be together. They have to slow down and get back to basics."

—14-year-old male, Texas

Your love is not in question. But you may want to consider if the way in which you convey your high expectations might inadvertently convey a message of conditional acceptance. Your messages of disappointment can be conveyed by word, deed, or body language. Your intention is the starting point, but what really matters are the messages your child receives.

If your child feels like his behaviors elicit judgment, good or bad, he will feel his relationship with you is on shaky ground; he will view the security of his connection as dependent on his performance (for more on the importance of not judging performance, see Chapter 5, High Expectations Gone Awry: The Problem With Focusing Mainly on Academic Performance). I am not suggesting you can never praise or criticize but that you do so in a way that is loving and honors the potential for growth.

It Is Not About What You Feel But Rather if Your Child Knows What You Feel

Some parents feel love is something that is shown, never discussed. They worry words such as I love you will spoil their child. Rest assured that loving words and displays of affection do not spoil children; they only make them sweeter.

One mother shared a story of why it is so important to her that she consistently and clearly communicates her affection toward her teenaged son and daughter:

As a child, I never heard the comforting words I love you from my mother, and I missed them terribly. After I became a parent, I summoned the courage to ask her why she never told me how she felt. She replied, Well, my mother taught me to never say that to your child. If you do, your child will take advantage of you. My mother went on to tell me that she showed me she loved me by how she cared for me. That may be, but I remember longing for those words as a child. I choose to tell my children I love them every day, and as a result I have 2 beautiful, confident children. There is no price tag on the words I love you. Today, as adults, my mother and I now say, I love you, to each other every day. I believe she is now no longer afraid to say it because she saw how secure and gracious my kids turned out to be.

"Parents should always have love that’s unconditional for their child. It doesn’t matter what their kid did or does; a parent should alwaaaaaaays have unconditional love for their child, and they should tell them that."

—17-year-old female, Pennsylvania

"Unconditional love should always be there, no matter what they do, because if children’s parents don’t love them, they might think that they are unlovable and that if no one loves them there is no point in living. Children should feel that no matter what they do, their parents will always love them, because that is what parents are for."

—14-year-old female, Massachusetts

Men, in particular, might have trouble with the language of love. There is no doubt in my mind that men have the same capacity to love their children as women do. Nevertheless, society’s traditional views of masculinity do not include nurturance. Thankfully, our culture is evolving, and men are now freer to show the intensity of their feelings toward their children. In my view, we will have a stronger and emotionally healthier society when caring for and about children is considered the pinnacle of masculinity.

Many men were raised