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On a recent trip to LA to promote our book, ScreamFree Parenting, I received a great text message from my wife, Jenny. I had missed my daughter’s soccer game and my son’s t-ball game, and Jenny was texting me the highlights. While it hurt to not see how well Hannah and Brandon were playing, I was thrilled to hear the news and imagine the scene. Both teams won, both played great for their respective teams; Brandon even got the game ball.

My text response was very typical. I asked her to show them this message: “Hannah, Brandon, I am so proud of you!!.”

Simple, common parent language. Words we long to express, knowing that our kids love to hear “I’m so proud of you.”

That’s what’s behind the bumper sticker craze, isn’t it? Honor students and all-stars get the whole world to know how proud we are. But I have a question: Am I really proud of my kids? What does that mean anyway?

I’ve always been a little confused by the expression because for years I was also taught that pride was a sin, the mother of all sins. “Pride goeth before the

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fall” and all that. You’re not supposed to be proud, right? Well, maybe it means that we’re not supposed to be proud of ourselves, but it’s okay to be proud of someone else. If we’re proud of ourselves, I guess that means we’re asking others to recognize us, focus on us, and validate our accomplishments. To be proud of ourselves must mean we’re overconfident in ourselves, bragging in some sense.

If that’s the case, then why is it okay, even commendable, to be proud of our kids? Wouldn’t that mean that we’re somehow taking responsibility for their accomplishments, asking others to notice us, to focus on us because of the success of our kids? If I’m proud of them, isn’t that even worse than taking pride in myself? Now I’m taking some sense of credit for Hannah’s soccer skills, and I want her and everyone else to take notice!

Well, I can hear some of you saying, it’s not really like that. We’re not taking credit for them, we’re just expressing our joy about watching our kids grow and succeed. Then why don’t we say that? Why do we say we’re “proud” of them? If our neighbor’s kid won the game ball, would we still say “I’m proud of you”? That feels a little awkward, because she’s not our kid. The word “our” implies that we take some sense of ownership, some responsibility for our kids and their performance.

And that flies in the face of one of the bedrock principles of ScreamFree Parenting:

I am not responsible for my kids and their behavior; I am responsible to them for my own behavior.

If I want my children to eventually take full responsibility for their own choices, and not blame or credit anyone else for the consequences of those choices, then I cannot take too much ownership for them now. I’m now thinking that means that I cannot take pride in their accomplishments; I cannot be truly “proud” of them without somehow assuming responsibility for those accomplishments.

We all know adults who still struggle with a need for their parents’ approval. In truth, most all of us still wrestle with a search for a parent to take pride in our successes. For some of us, this is an overt need to please and serve (and, much to the chagrin of our spouses, never confronting them—ever watch “Everybody Loves Raymond”?). For others, this need for parental approval or pride is a subtle longing for validation, whether it be from our spouse, our kids, or our job.

What most of us also struggle with is the flipside of the approval coin. Most of us also look for someone else to share the blame for our failures. After all, if our parents can take some ownership or pride in our successes, then they also have to take some blame for our mistakes.

What I’m thinking is that we cannot start our kids on a steady diet of our “pride” for them without creating a never-attainable carrot-on-a-stick. I’m also thinking that we cannot take pride in their accomplishments without also, in a subtle way, take blame for their failings. This is why so many parents write us from around the world looking for ways to erase all the guilt they feel when their children struggle through life. We cannot be proud when they soar without also being guilty when they fall.

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What is needed is a way to rejoice with our kids in a special way without taking any responsibility for them or their performance. What we need is a way to stay very connected to our children in a unique parent/child way without creating this never-quenched thirst for our continued approval (or the never-ending search for someone else to blame).

Again, this calls on me to focus on myself, and not ask my children to focus on me. Again, this calls on me to calm myself down and remember that my whole goal is to help launch my kids into adulthood as self-directed adults. Finally, this calls me to find other words to exclaim

“Hannah, Brandon, I’m so happy for you!”

Nah, doesn’t really work. Sounds kind of cheesy and distant, so I’ll have to keep working on it. Let me know if you can come up with something better.

And remember to take care,

Hal

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