When’s the last time you saw a parenting book that asked parents to defocus on their kids?
-Rabbi and family therapist Edwin H. Friedman

The greatest thing we can do for our kids is learn to focus on ourselves. That opening line is meant to come across as contrary, even heretical. “Now, it’s all about the kids,” is what most of us recite as soon as we bring offspring into the world. And we keep receiving countless bits of counsel urging us to continue taking all focus off ourselves and placing it squarely on our kids. After all, what they need is our constant attention, affection, and sacrifice so they’ll think the right way, feel the right way, and behave the right way. Right?

Wrong. Such child-centered advice is simply a lie. Mothers have especially been sold this lie, and that’s why we see so many moms just give up pursuit of any sort of sexy individuality; their new primary identity is Mother. So the denim overalls replace the little black dress, and the Keds knock out the stilettos. This is not to mention the bob haircut. But it’s not just moms. Now dads like me are bombarded with messages to make up for our fathers’ relative absence by being supremely present, even to the neglect of ourselves, our marriages, and our careers. And before you know it, the stickers with our kids’ names get emblazoned all over our minivans, shouting to the whole world who really owns the van—and the rest of our lives.

But here’s the truth: we cannot orbit our lives around our children without giving them the impression that the world revolves around them. And then we have the nerve to call them self-centered, disrespectful, and unappreciative. When we’re the ones that helped create them that way! The advice we followed is actually creating the problems we were hoping to avoid.

Usually in this section of our newsletter, we have Hal answer a direct question asked by one of our ScreamFree Parents. Today we present the first part of a lengthy interview with Hal.

How did you come to develop ScreamFree Parenting? Back in graduate school I became amazed at the level of existing knowledge on how relationships and family systems really work. I also became amazed at how most of this great knowledge was couched in academic language and available only to the most educated therapists. So, as I learned to work with families, and began to raise a family myself, I searched for ways to capture the best theoretical concepts and effective principles into the working language of real families and organizations. I then began to see that any truly helpful teaching would have to begin with calming our emotional reactivity. “Emotional Reactivity-Free Parenting” was still too academic, though. ScreamFree Parenting was born.

You say “emotional reactivity” as a parent can be our biggest enemy. Please explain what it is and where it comes from. Emotional reactivity is the driving force behind every bad decision, bad pattern, and bad relationship. It is the opposite of responding according to our highest principles; it is reacting out of our deepest fears. Emotional reactivity is what happens when our anxiety gets the best of us, and we act in ways that are actually contrary to our intentions. Say a dad wants his son to talk to him about his life, telling him “you can tell me anything.” This is well- intentioned, principled behavior. However, when his son begins to tell him how we was recently offered drugs and he’s tempted to take them, Dad flips out. He demands to know the boy’s name, starts to look through his son’s room, etc. He has now eliminated himself as a resource for the son, who might actually run to the drug scene because the friends there are more accepting. This type of scenario happens every time we get reactive; we actually create the very outcomes we’re trying to avoid.

Hal, you say that parents are not responsible for their kids, but they are responsible to them. What responsibilities do parents have to each of their children? We’re called to launch our children into adulthood with the best foundation for living an effective life. We are meant to help them become self-directed adults, capable of discerning the factors that shape their lives, deciding the direction to take, and living with the consequences of their decisions. That means our main responsibility to them is to not be responsible for them. They cannot become responsible for themselves as long as we consider ourselves responsible for their life and their choices. We are only responsible for our own lives and our own choices. We are responsible to our kids for how we manage our emotions, our relationships. We are responsible to them for how we take care of ourselves. We are responsible to them for whatever we do to create a home that nurtures their self- direction.

What should a parent do when their child is seemingly out of control? Make sure they themselves are in the most control possible. So often we focus so much on the child that we lose control of ourselves, which makes things even worse. This can occur with the toddler’s tantrum in the restaurant or the teen’s struggles with promiscuity. Once we’ve brought ourselves under control, however, then it becomes much easier to respond to our child with wisdom and principled decisions. Then we can set and enforce consequences. Then we can better understand what’s emotionally behind our child’s behavior. Most importantly, we then can see our own role in contributing to our child’s situation.

Continue reading the rest of Hal's Q&A (Part One)

Want to read all of Hal's past "Ask Hal" replies? Check out the new Ask Hal Archives page here.

Do you have a Parenting question for Hal, the author and creator of ScreamFree Parenting? Contact Us Directly. We will answer a limited number of questions in upcoming newsletters.

Please note that we also cannot respond to all questions and can not always evaluate your specific challenge. If you want further feedback on your individual situation, we encourage you to explore Relationship Coaching with Hal or any of our team members. You can get a f!ree 20 minute evaluation of your situation to determine if coaching is right for you by contacting us here.

You can also share your questions or parenting issues in the ScreamFree Parenting Forum. Here you can interact with other parents on the ScreamFree Journey and share your questions and successes. Visit the ScreamFree Parenting Forum today and discuss parenting issues with parents all over the country. We post many AskHal questions in the forum, and they make for interesting and engaging forum topics.