Some parents subscribe to the input/output theory of parental influence and responsibility. Put in "good" parenting and a healthy, successful child and adolescent will result.
Effort equals outcome, they believe, because quality of parenting makes most or all of the difference in how a young person "turns out." This is not exactly the case.
For openers, consider some "partly" facts of parenting during one's son or daughter's adolescence.
1)Adolescents lead double lives, growing up partly within and partly outside of parental rules and limits.
2)Adolescents are selective informants, telling a parent partly, but not entirely, about everything that is going on in their lives.
3)Adolescents are partly honest, not telling parents the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth all of the time.
What these "facts" mean is that a parent of adolescents never plays with a full deck of cards. The dealer sees to that. And the best hand an adolescent deals a parent contains some good information, some missing information, and some false information. The result is, no parents know it all. And since they don't, they can't bear full responsibility.
Parents who assume responsibility for everything that happens to their child become bound by a false equation: parents = child. This linkage ties adequacy of parenting to performance of the child, how well or badly a son or daughter does becoming a measure of the parenting received. Bound by this belief, when the child makes a bad choice, parents must fault themselves, asking: "What have we done wrong?" Now they blame themselves for their adolescent's bad choices.
At worst, they even ask the teenager "what did we do wrong?" only inviting the young person to escape responsibility by blaming them. "If you hadn't have divorced, I never would have gotten messed up with drugs this way." No, the young person must be held accountable for her choices. Unlike younger children who often idolize their parents, unrelentingly critical adolescents can be hard on parental guilt and self-esteem.
Better for parents to break this equation and maintain a realistic perspective instead. To that end, here is a mantra worth repeating. "Good parents have good children who will sometimes make bad choices in the normal trial and error process of growing up. A bad choice does not make a bad child any more than a badly acting child makes a bad parent. Nor does a bad choice now guarantee a bad future for the child later on."
In counseling with parents who feel bound by the parent = child equation my first job, before I can even get to helping with the child problem of concern, is to first dispel them of these beliefs in "bad child" and "bad parents" and "bad future." Vilifying the child or guilting themselves or dooming the future does none of them any good.
A bad adolescent choice just means that a mistake or a misdeed has occurred, and that now parents have to help the young person learn from the error of his or her way. After all, some of the most important education in life for parents as well as teenagers is not before the fact in preparation, but after the fact in recovery, when facing hard consequences from an ill-advised choice become the best teacher.
The power of parental influence comes down to this. There is the example parents model (who and how they are). There is the instruction parents provide (what knowledge, skills, and values they impart.) There is the family structure they set (how parental rules, limits, and demands prescribe conduct at home and out in the world.) And there is the treatment parents give (how they choose to act and react with their child.)
Certainly parenting matters - the time and energy and loving dedication invested in one's mothering or fathering task. However, many other sources of influence also shape the course of a child's growth. Consider just a few of the more influential factors over which parents have no control.
Parents don't control the larger CULTURE and the onslaught of media messages that it sends - the experiences it glamorizes, the ideals it presents, and the motivations it encourages.
Parents don't control the child's inborn CHARACTERISTICS -- the temperament, personality, and aptitudes that genetic inheritance endows.
Parents don't control the CHOICES the child makes -- they can inform those choices, but final decisions are up to him or her.
Parents don't control the CIRCUMSTANCES to which a child is exposed away from home - the unfamiliar and challenging situations he or she gets into out in the world.
Parents don't control the child's COMPANIONS and the pressures they can bring to bear - inviting opportunities for risk taking, for experimenting with adventure and the forbidden.
And parents don't control CHANCE events - how luck can favor, spare, or victimize a young person's life.
Within the large array of significant influences affecting a child's growth, parenting is only one, and keeping that perspective is particularly important when traveling through the normal ups and downs of their son or daughter's adolescence.
Parents need to limit their sense of responsibility. They can never know enough. They cannot fully protect any more than they can fully prepare. They cannot do it all and they cannot always do it right. Just like their teenager, they will make mistakes.
Even giving a full faith effort, a mixed job is the best they can make of it, and a mix is mostly good enough. That's parenting. And from it a child has to grow - partly because of and partly in spite of what parents were able to provide. Partly, that's they key, because parents don't control that much to begin with.
So for those parents who tend to judge themselves harshly, it can be helpful to remember that not everything that happens in their adolescent's life, for good or ill, is to their credit or to their blame.
For more information about adolescence, see my book. "The Connected Father," at: www.carlpickhardt.com
Next week's entry: Criticizing your adolescent.
