Notes: The Price of Priviledge

by M. Levine.

Yes, another parenting book. One more and that's it.

• Paradox of privilege - overly concerned with how our children "do" rather than with who our children "are." Our persistent and often critical involvement is well-intended ... does not lessen the damage. 
• Past age 11-12, increases in material wealth do not translate into advantages in emotional health; they can translate into significant disadvantages. 
• Aspects of this (affluent) culture: materialism, individualism, perfectionism, and competition may actually contribute to psychological problems. 
• Two factors repeatedly emerge as contributing to their high levels of emotional problems. The first is achievement pressure and the second is isolation from parents. 
• Strong relationship between perfectionism and suicide among those adolescents who are gifted. 
• It is when a parent's love is experienced as conditional on achievement that children are at risk for serious emotional problems. 
• Being "everywhere" is about intrusion; being "nowhere" is about lack of connection. Parents can be overinvolved and children can still feel isolated. If controlling and overinvolved. 
• Kids love rituals and depend on them for a sense of continuity and connection. Having dinner together -- very important ritual. 
• Applicants to highly competitive programs -- have a "terrific paper pedigree, but on interview, often reveal a misguided tendency to choose pre-programmed advancement over genuine curiosity and good values."
• Core issue of adolescence: autonomy. A time of defining, redefining, and fine-tuning a sense of self. 
• Reliance on others - common among affluent adolescents. A parenting style that emphasized the importance of external motivation while promoting materialism as a substitute for the hard personal and interpersonal work  that adolescence demands. 
• It encourages them to forgo the development of internal motivation, keeping them dependent on others and on material goods for a sense of self. 
• Materialism is not the same as having money. Materialism does predict a lack of happiness and satisfaction. It is a value system that emphasizes wealth, status, image, and material consumption. It is a measure of how much we value material things over other things in our lives, like friends, family and work. It keeps us wedded to external measures of accomplishment for a sense of self -- prestige, power, money for adults; grades, clothes, electronics for kids. 
• "Retail or shopping" therapy. Advertisers target girls and women to make them feel bad about themselves in order to encourage consumerism. 
• Taking your daughter shopping to "chase away the blues," or because "she brightens up whenever we go shopping" not only teaches materialistic values, it also prevents the development of skills for dealing with sad feelings. (my god, can't take Ev to Menchies to make her feel better!)
• Help them understand and manage distressing feelings, and find ways to cope with them. 
• Buying children off is a parenting strategy that only leads to a lessening of parental power and a fortifying of childish greed. Kids do things when they see the benefit of those behaviors for themselves. Internal motivation is the basis for all true learning. 
• External motivation drives kids to participate not primarily for the activities itself but for some associated gain. 
• Admissions director of Brown: "I see many teens of means with few interests or passions. Ironically, many are academically successful. Rarely, though, is their success driven by a quest of knowledge. Rather, they tie academic achievement to an eventual lifestyle of luxury." 
• Need to be educated about values of perseverance and perspective, and to understand that learning and performance are not always the same thing. Need to see parents value effort, curiosity, and intellectual courage. We do this by valuing the process more than the end result. 
• We need to always deal with the child in front of us, not the child of our fantasies. (grow the tree you got.)
• Culture of affluence that's sickening our children. Need to teach that objects can never replace relationships. 
• Many affluent kids prefer organized sports activities to spontaneous play. We should provide a safe environment, give your kid a few tools, and get out of the way. 
• Not so much that kids are spoiled, but they are immature. Affluent kids do not have enough opportunity to work on self-management skills because parents are quick to limit their child's frustrations and distress. 
• Our primary responsibilty is not to gratify our children but to make certain that they develop a repertoire of skills that will help them meet life's inevitable challenges and disappointments. 
• Affluent kids are so protected from even the most minor disappointments and frustrations that they are unable to develop critical coping skills. A child cannot possibly develop resilience when his parents are constantly at his side, interfering with the development of autonomy, self-management, and coping skills. 
• The "stuff" we buy our kids, the "advantages" we insist on providing say more about our won needs than our children's. 
• Preschoolers needs to develop skills like self-control and frustration tolerance, school age children need to learn how to accurately assess their abilities, and teenagers need to resolve issues of identity and independence. 
• Many parents are losing touch with the intuitive side of parenting (including me!!). Parenting is an art, not a science. (and all the books and experts are eroding our confidence.)
• Magic Years (years 2 to 4): Parents need to be clear and brief about what pleases them and what doesn't. Speak to your child firmly but respectfully. Have plenty of unstructured playtime. Be patient; most childhood problems blow over. 
• Masters of Universe (5 to 7): Help children gain perspective on their abilities. They see themselves as "all good" or "all bad" ... parents need to develop a working alliance based on warm collaboration rather than criticism. Once a child forms a negative impression of himself, it is very difficult to change. Never bribe a child to learn. 
• How am i doing? (8-11): becoming critical and competitive. Children need to see we value their character first, their effort second, and then their grades. Girls given more negative feedback than boys at this stage. 
• What Happened to my kid? (12-14): model thoughtfulness. Including the ones kids have been working on -- sense of self, academic success, and friendships -- they are also in the process of separating and individuating from their parents. In this process, they find it necessary to challenge, ignore, reject, and criticize their parents. Our sense of loss as they become flesh-and-blood reality, quite unlike our fantasies. 
• Working on real me (15-17): kids can, will, and must make mistakes, suffer consequences, and dig deep within themselves to find better solutions and alternative strategies. Same two manifestations of good parenting -- how we connect with our children, and how we discipline them. 
• Dr. Baumrin and the styles of parenting: authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative. Connection and discipline. 
• Good warmth: Acceptance is important part of warmth. Our children are always a work in progress, and part of true acceptance is our ability to love our children even as they swing back and forth between attachment and separation, between alienation and commitment. Not only acceptance but of deep understanding. Take time to really listen. Take a few steps back, follow their lead, listen openly and with curiosity. 
• Overinvolvement is not simply more. Involvement that gets in way of child development. Unnecessary involvement. 
• Affluent women -- without a close friend to share our problems, likely to turn to our children for solace. "Enmeshment," -- when boundaries between parent and child have collapsed. (gilmore girls syndrome)
• Praise is often "bad" warmth: Indiscriminate praise makes it hard for children to evaluate themselves realistically. Praise for grade works against real learning. It ignores the most critical aspect of learning: effort and improvement. 
• Sometimes we follow our strengths and sometimes we follow our interests. They are not always the same. Better parenting strategy to allow them to experience our love regardless of how well they are performing. Teaches them our love and acceptance are not conditional on their performance. 
• Opposite of warmth and connection -- criticism and rejection. Correction should be informational, not personal. Parental criticism of performance is damaging. 
• Discipline won't really work unless we have a loving relationship with our child. Need to set clear expectations and consequences for non-compliance. Firm control early on. A lack of firm limit-setting as major contributor to adolescent dysfunction. 
• Adolescents simply don't have the tools, the pre-frontal cortex of development, the judgement to consistently and appropriately regulate themselves.
• Monitor the kids. "Where are you going?" "Who will be there?" "Will the parents be there?" "When will you be back?"
• Containment. Power to enforce the rules. 
• Flexibility. Required in healthy relationship. 
• All conflicts between kids and parents embedded in issue of control. "In control" and "controlling."
• Types of parental control: Behavioral - being an authority, setting appropriate limits; Psychological - intrudes into inner world of child, attempts to manipulate child's thoughts and feelings by invoking guilt, shame, and anxiety. 
• Parents who use behavioral control are "in control."'; psychological control is experienced as "controlling" and intrusive ... nonresponsive to the child's emotional and psychological needs. 
• Tenets of authoritative parenting style - emphasis on warmth and control. Before exerting control, ask if what you are doing furthers your child's ability to make good choices or simply defends your own superiority. But the most critical factor in how well we parent has to do with our own feeling that we have enough inside of us, enough love, enough support, enough reserves ... 
• Challenges in affluent communities. Cultivates perfectionism - precursor to depression. Emphasize competition and extrinsic markers of success (grades, trophies, admission to elite schools). This cultivates external motivation, putting kids at risk for emotional problems. 
• Poison of perfectionism. Affluent communities emphasize individualism, perfectionism, accomplishment, competition, and materialism. "Not good enough."
• Maladaptive perfectionsim is driven by intense need to avoid failure and to appear flawless. Roots in demanding, critical, and conditional relationship with parents. When approval is conditional on performance; the feeling that excessively high standards are expected and necessary to win approval and acceptance can lead to intense feelings of hopelessness. 
• Chasing perfection. (not realizing no such thing as perfection.)
• "All roads are the same ... Choose the one with heart." -- Carlos Castaneda. 
• Make it clear you value good citizenship just as much as academic excellence. Make certain your children see you treat others respectfully. Watch your children for signs of arrogance or bullying or lack of cooperation, This is the place to show disappointment. 
• Antidote for isolation is involvement. Reach out and develop relationships with like-minded people. 
• Marrying at a young age is the single greatest predictor of divorce. 
• Dad's control and mom's depression robbed kid of opportunity to develop building blocks of a strong sense of self: ability to self-soothe, to tolerate adversity, to think creatively and flexibly, and to feel safe and loved for one's unique self. 
• Critical factor in child's well-being is serenity of the mother. Need to identify and attend to our own emotional needs. As we are able to feel generally loved, valued, and connected, so will our children. Particular challenges and obstacles faced by affluent women are real. Having everything but what we need most.