A key concept in Hasidic thought expresses the idea of balance: “Keep two pieces of paper in your pockets at all times. On one write, ‘I am a speck of dust.’ On the other, ‘The world was created for me.” The divine and the ordinary merge in Judaism, where the holiest day of the year is not Yom Kippur, the majestic and awesome Day of Atonement, but every Saturday.
The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, page 49
With this, Dr. Wendy Mogel begins the “Antidote to Specialitis–” her treatise on what’s wrong with families in a culture where “all the children are above average.” It is part of the book Dr. Mogel wrote in response to her crisis of faith and profession, after fifteen years as a child psychologist in Los Angeles.
I was trained to believe in psychology, the talking cure. I had been taught to provide psychological support without being judgmental, but I began to have more and more judgments. Working with children, I started to feel like the highly paid baby-sitter … the words that came to mind to describe these troubled youngsters were old-fashioned: petulant, obstinate, rigid, greedy, cowardly, lethargic, imperious. I started wondering whether their problems fell into a different category than I was considering, whether they might be problems that psychotherapy alone could never repair — problems of character. My training was failing me.
The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, page 20
In a quest to discover what was making perfectly normal families unhappy Dr. Mogel closed her practice in order to devote a year to intensive study of Jewish scripture. Her work led her home — back to her Jewish faith, back to her own family, back to simple principles of ethics, holiness, and every day living.
Dr. Mogel’s book, “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee” is the product of that work. In it, she examines the problems of the modern family living in an extremely privileged society, and how those families have been led astray by their own best intentions.
My generation of parents — Generation X, born between 1969 and 1979 — are known as the “helicopter parents.” We hover, we swoop, we overprotect and overinvest.
I had intended to discuss this with Penelope Trunk in our interview two weeks ago, but we ended up talking about careers instead. You should read her praise of helicopter parenting here.
My friend Sally Sisson forwarded to me this article, which suggests that helicopter parenting is the result of a generation of children who felt abandoned by their own parents. The argument strikes some notes with me — I was a latchkey kid and much of my parenting comes from a desire to do things differently. It was interesting to think of this as a generational trait. But the tone of the article bothered me: are we a generation of entitlement? Of self-pity and indulgence?
Does feeling abandoned as a child justify spoiling your own children? And how abandoned were we? Haitian-earthquake-orphan abandoned or just “make-your-own-snack-and-get-your-homework-done” abandoned?
Dr. Mogel agreed to talk with me on this subject.
Helicopter parenting, she told me, is a result of “a psychological defense mechanism called ‘displacement.’ Parents look at the world and worry there will be no world left for grandchildren and so you displace all of those fears and start worrying about the end of the world and predators and we try to control the one thing we think we can control: Which is whether our child gets the good or the better second grade teacher. I think that’s a part of it. But I also think that it’s a way for parents to be close to their kids. Some of the helicoptering is trying to be friendly and intimate. It feels normal because it’s common.”
What it isn’t, Dr. Mogel says, is healthy. Or rational.
I described to her a scene that happens to me often: in the market I send my seven year-old and my four year-old to the dairy aisle to get the milk. It is a few aisles over, but they are going together and they have instructions to pixk up a gallon and come straight back.
“More often than not,” I told Mogel, “someone brings them back to me. Some other mother. ‘I found these two wandering,’ she says to me. And then I think … am I jerk? Should I be watching them more closely?”
“You’re swimming against the tide,” she answered. “You are finding a way to trust your kids, give them freedom, give them responsibility. Other mothers are bringing them back … The danger of abduction by strangers of young children is almost none. But the media so adores it that the minute it happens (they) cover it.”– And fuel the hovering parent’s fears.
Dr. Mogel shared the story of a mother who would not let her daughter walk three blocks to a friend’s house by herself because there were painters working on the house in between.
“I ask parents ‘What are you afraid of? -Don’t flatter yourself. They are not interested in your kids.’” It is an important part of growing up, Dr. Mogel says, to allow children to take risks. “And they have to have even some close calls,” she added. ”Otherwise they go to college these little hothouse flowers.”
So how do you gauge which risks to allow and at what ages?
In The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, Dr. Mogel describes how she learned the minhag (custom or community practice) of her neighborhood regarding children. Dr. Mogel had allowed her nine year-old to go shopping on the local boulevard alone. Her neighbor intervened. “She’s too young,” the neighbor said. “At nine they have to go in pairs.” Dr. Mogel had learned rules of children in her neighborhood, and she had accepted guidance from a parent she respected.
“Physical protectiveness means you are safeguarding your child from serious threat or injury. Physical overprotectiveness means you are guarding your child against life. ” (The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, page 106)
How do you pick? I asked Dr. Mogel. How do you know which is which?
“It’s good to find a parent with a slightly older kid in your community – a child that is turning out nicely and you like the family — and get guidance from them,” she said.
“I always take the view that when it comes to my children they have to do what I say and we don’t have to follow other people’s rules,” I said. “But your point about the minhag strikes home — we’re members of a community, too. I do have to pay attention to what the other people are doing, at least a little. One thing I struggle with is that I prefer my children call adults by title and last name. Some of my friends are almost offended by it,” I said.
“I gave up on that,” she said. ”I agree with you entirely and it really is radically countercultural.”
Adults, Dr. Mogel says, need to be treated respectfully by children. Adults need to insist on the dignity of their role:
But We Are Not Worthy!
Do you allow your children to interrupt you unnecessarily when you are on the phone in a conversation with another adult?
Do you have a designated place at the table? Do they sit in your place?
Do they consistently contradict your words in the name of lobbying for their own point of view?
Do they talk back to you in public? How often?
Do you give your children enough opportunities to help out? To demonstrate thoughtfulness? To take care of you?
Do your children ask if you want a glass of juice, a banana or a bowl of ice cream when they are getting one for themselves?
Do they respect your privacy? Do they enter your room or take your things without asking?
Do your older children commandeer the remote? Tie up the phone line? Forget to give you phone messages they have taken?
Do they talk too loudly at home? In public?
Are you squirming? Don’t bother, you are not alone.
The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, page 66
The problem, Dr. Mogel said, is that “we are treating kids like handicapped royalty.” It is limiting their ability to manage in the world, and giving them a skewed perspective on their importance — a perspective that burdens them with too much responsibility while depriving them of coping skills.
So let me tell you about this chick I live with, I said. Her name is Ren.
”I often ask parents who have a challenging child to bring me a picture of their child,” Dr. Mogel said. “ – Well, I used to ask them to bring one, but now they just take out their phones. But anyway, they show me a picture, and then I turn it around and show it to them and I ask, ‘Does this child look scary to you? She looks normal and adorable to me.” I laugh.
Renny is adorable, there’s no doubt. That’s what makes her so freaking scary.
So how do we do it? How do we manage challenging kids, teach them to respect us, teach them limits?
“I’ve gotten grief from my readers in the past about my strong opposition to spanking,” I said. “I’ve had some nasty e-mails from people telling me the only thing wrong with Ren is a mother without the nerve to whack her bottom.”
“I advocate spanking only minimally,” she replied. “ The classic child-running-into-the-street. It only works for very small children. With older children (spanking only teaches) kids to solve problems with physical force. In general my recommended approach is avoiding the problem as much as possible.”
I told her how Ren loves to cover herself and the room in paint and markers.
“To me it sounds like you have violated Leviticus 19:14 ‘do not put a stumbling block before the blind,’” said Dr. Mogul. “So if you have an energetic, creative four year-old you don’t leave them with material where they can get themselves into trouble.”
Ouch. Yeah, I know that. I need to work on keeping Ren out of trouble rather than just being sure I react well once she’s there. That said … how do I know what’s a good level of response?
“The rebuke needs to be directly related to her transgression. So the question to always ask yourself is: is this a power struggle where I am getting down to the child’s level? Is it turning into a form of sibling rivalry? –Which I see a lot between mothers and daughters. The key to delivering the proper rebuke is to be able to be calm. Give it a little thought to decide what the consequences will be. In general the four year-olds are too entitled, too spoiled and bratty in part because parents don’t feel the dignity of their role and their right to be treated respectfully. And then they’re awfully over-scheduled and stressed even at four.”
– This I have figured out. Ren goes to school every day and comes home to hang out after that. She’s much happier without a lot of activities. More settled, less stressed.
“The money in the bank part is lots of time for creative play, not always being in a rush being able to stop and pick up a rock and see its beauty and take a walk that you can do in ten minutes and let it take half an hour. So we make an investment in young children by looking at the world through their eyes.”
“Four year olds are really challenging, they’re really hard, really exhausting,” Dr. Mogel said. “The other two pieces are to see who that person is (your daughter) and give her opportunities to express that: her interest, her temperament. Make sure she has a chance to make an arty mess.”
“So you’ve been in practice for many years. Are you seeing the results of helicopter parenting? How are these kids turning out?”
Helicopter parenting has resulted in two kinds of kids entering college, Mogel said. “The teacups and the krispies. The teacups had the helicopter parents. The chew-and-swallow parents. Breathe in, breathe out parents. — These kids have been protected by their handlers. They can’t handle any problems. They don’t have life skills. They have a difficult roommate or don’t get the class they want and they have a meltdown and call home. The classic example of this is the kid who calls her mother from in front of the salad bar at the college cafeteria and asks her, ‘Do I like Russian dressing?’”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. Then we have the krispies. These kids are just burnt out. Teenagers are sort of anxious and entitled and the girls feel they have to be absolutely perfect. They suffer from goodism. The girls feel that their mood and their grades and their popularity are what keeps their mother’s mood up and their parents marriage together. Boys don’t care, they are intimidated by the girls and feel that they are falling behind. So we are seeing a lot of reckless behavior and substance abuse in the boys.”
“The good news is that teenagers are bright, they’re great negotiators, they have thriving social lives with each other.”
“Tell me you are writing a book about this,” I said.
“Yep. The Blessing of a B-,” she said. “It comes out October 2nd.”
“One of my favorite things about your book,” I said, “is the way you describe a return to holiness. You document becoming an observant Jew, and one central part of that is the tradition of Shabbat — the Friday Sabbath dinner. You write about the prayers and blessings and taking the time to appreciate each other, challenge each other, and create a family identity. It made me want to institute Shabbat for our family, even though, you know, we’re Episcopalian.”
”To elevate one day of the week and make it a time of gratitude and food and wine and beauty and grace fits any spiritual tradition,” she said.
It is this elevation of the every day to the holy that is at the core of what Mogel is saying about modern American families. Her admonition is not to be more strict, or to be Jewish or to turn off the television: the core of Mogel’s message is to live your life already, stop protecting yourself or your children from it, and learn to celebrate the great gifts you have been given.
How much of your life do you want to spend managing your children? And how much of your life do you want to spend appreciating the beauty of life … with your children?
“Could we talk again when the new book comes out?” I asked. Mostly because, well, I just really like talking to her.
“Absolutely,” she said.
So mark your calendars for next October.
In the meantime, Dr. Mogel sent me a little present — a copy of the Blessing of a Skinned Knee for me to give to one of my lucky readers. It is the only parenting book I love– one of my favorite books of all time.
If you’re interested in this book, leave a comment. The comments are numbered, so I’ll have Mare pick a number at random and send the book off to the winner.
I’ll end this conversation with Dr. Mogel the way she ends The Blessing of a Skinned Knee — with a poem her daughter Emma wrote after a Shabbat dinner. Candles are a central part of the ceremony of Shabbat:
Candlelight
Come here
come here and stay for awhile
to see the candle burn away
and to see their beauty burn away
Come here
come here to look at the light
to see its brightness
to see the happiness in the light
to see it grow and
to see it burn away
Come on before it’s gone!
The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, page 234
