Psychologist: Parents overthink job

From the Daily Reflector, February 7th, 2013:

A two-humped camel.

That is how American family psychologist and newspaper columnist John Rosemond explained the current graph of parental involvement in a child’s life during a talk to educators at Northwest Elementary School on Tuesday afternoon.

“Instead of a bell curve (graph) where most parents have just the right amount of involvement in their child’s life, now we see parents who are either under- or over-involved,” he said. “Some degree of involvement is necessary, but eventually we reach the saturation point of being helpful.”Rosemond, who calls himself a “traditionalist” when it comes to raising children, said the 1950s were the last era where parents knew how to “sanely” raise children.“We stopped listening to our elders,” he said. “It became a complete disaster in the 1970s when people began to listen to mental health professionals and using their heads instead of their hearts to parent.”Since the 1950s, Rosemond said the mental health of children has “tanked” and that mothers are overthinking their jobs.“Bringing a casual, calm, confident demeanor to parenting gets better results,” he said.
Such an approach is “a projection of an attitude that says you know what you’re doing and you don’t need to consult with a 5-year-old to do it,” Rosemond said.

The psychologist said the idea that parenting somehow produces a child is a myth.

“The child produces himself; that’s called free will,” he said. “Within that context (of free will), children learn to run their own lives responsibly.”

The problem with over-involvement is that parents begin to see their children as a result of themselves.

“They begin to personalize what the child does, and they become defensive (of their own parenting),” Rosemond said.

“We forget that all children are liars. Parents start to believe their 7-year-old rather than a 40-year-old school administrator.”

Rosemond, almost 70 years old, said he is in the last generation who knew by the age of 3 that it was his responsibility to pay attention to adults and not the other way around.

“I was the last generation who knew that when a woman said to do something, you did it,” he said. “Women didn’t end instructions to children with the question, ‘OK?’”

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder does not actually exist, according to Rosemond.

“All ADHD symptoms describe typical toddler behavior,” he said. “The question is how do we move toddlers with these pathological behaviors into successful adulthood?”

Temper tantrums were “over and done with” by 3 years old 50 years ago, Rosemond said.

“We want to think that our feelings rule everything and don’t want to see the evidence that it’s not getting any better,” he said. “We need to pull our head out of the pseudo-science sand and face reality.”

In response to a question about what teachers can do to help change a child’s behavior, Rosemond simply said “not much.”

“You do the best you can to transmit (positive) social values to kids while you have them,” he said.

“Teach them that misbehavior and happiness don’t go hand-in-hand and try and turn them on to the excitement of learning,” Rosemond said.

Rosemond spoke to parents about “parenting the willful child” during a Tuesday evening talk at the school.

Contact Katherine Ayers at kayers@reflector.com and 252-329-9567. Follow her on Twitter @KatieAyersGDR.