Experience coaches vs. helicopter parenting

Last week’s Wall Street Journal featured this story on parents’ serving as “exposure coaches” for their children who suffer from anxiety.

Basically, therapists work with kids who suffer from anxiety to expose them in a controlled way to the very thing that concerns them. Parents are enlisted in the battle and serve as exposure coaches to help their kids grow accustomed to those things that produce anxiety.

As I read this article, I couldn’t help but think about helicopter parents and how their role seems to be the exact opposite.

Helicopter parents are those who seem to want to make everything right for their kids. Exposure coaches have the goal of making their kids right for what life throws at them. Put me down for #2, please.

When I was a kid, if I complained to my mom about something one of my friends did, her standard response was (and I can see her standing at the stove, stirring whatever was in the pot for dinner as she said it), “You’ve got to fight your own battles.”

Who knew that response would be one of the best gifts she ever gave me.

I was the youngest of four kids and I had awesome siblings who treated me well. I tell my own kids I don’t remember being picked on by my siblings (and I don’t). But I also remember growing up reasonably confident that I could do what I set my mind to. It wasn’t that I always succeeded. And it certainly wasn’t that my parents intervened on my behalf; if they ever did, I didn’t know about it. In fact, I’m sure my folks from time to time wondered how I would do some things I set out to do. But they let me do it.

I remember some school assignments that were awesome. And some were awful. And I got the grades for both efforts. I remember succeeding in some social circumstances and failing in others. Some successes and failures I shared with my parents and some I didn’t.

If I asked for help, I got it. If I didn’t ask for help, I got space.

It was a formula that worked for me growing up.

Now I know that the kids in the WSJ article suffer from significant anxiety, and there are lots of reasons for anxiety, most beyond the influence of helicopter parenting. But at the same time I have to wonder if training parents as exposure coaches is one way we can correct misguided efforts of helicopter parents.

Helicopter parents – those who intervene at every step to ensure their children have the best experience – have failed to learn that what we think is helpful is not always helpful. While it may be helpful to offer to call and make a doctor’s appointment for a spouse who has too much to do, it may not be helpful to do that for a teenage child who needs to learn to call and make her own appointments. While it may seem helpful to offer to type a paper for an overburdened student, it may be more helpful for that student to learn to budget his time better next time – a lesson he might best learn by stumbling once along the way.

When we teach our youth about agency and accountability, we typically say that we can choose how we act, but we don’t get to choose the consequences. That is, we take the consequences that come with the choices we make. A helicopter parent who obscures the consequences does no good for the child.

A friend regularly repeats this mantra: Never do for a child what he can or should be able to do for himself. Good advice. In fact, Great Advice!

In recovery circles, families with addicted loved ones learn a lot about enabling a person’s addictions – taking steps to soften the consequences of the addiction. That enabling might be as benign as regular reminders to wake up on time for work or nagging a person to get certain things done. But it can be as serious as covering up an addict’s or an alcoholic’s misdeeds to avoid legal or other troubles. Those enabling behaviors are often symptomatic of a co-dependent person, one who depends on others for his or her own happiness.

But that enabling behavior is common in our society, not just among families with addiction. It’s also deeply rooted in helicopter parents whose happiness is dependent upon the success of their children.

In the end, our goal as parents is to have kids who can grow up and be healthy, happy and successful without us. Helping our children toward that healthy independence requires that they learn skills on their own, that they learn to fight their own battles, that they learn to do the things that they should do for themselves.

On Playing God

I did a workshop at our stake’s women’s conference, and I blogged about it at Real Intent (you can read that blog here).

The presentation was based on the 12-steps of the church’s Addiction Recovery Program which are, in turn, based on the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, which are, in turn, a straightforward way of applying the atonement to our lives.

The first three steps are all about our relationship with ourselves, God and other people. And they’re especially important for people who aren’t necessarily addicted.

One of the cornerstone doctrines of the gospel is agency – the ability that we have to act for ourselves, to make our own choices and enjoy (or suffer) the consequences of those choices. “God will force no man to heaven,” or so the hymn says.

In the first three steps of a 12-step program, once acknowledges his own powerlessness over his addiction (and, in the case of a program like AlAnon or Families Anonymous for co-dependents, over other people), the power of God to restore us, and the willingness to turn ourselves and our lives over to God.

For people who grow up reciting the first few Articles of Faith, this should be boilerplate stuff.  We believe in God the Eternal Father, His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost; we believe we’ll be punished for our own sins and not Adam’s transgression; and we believe that through the Atonement of Christ all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel. We are taught from our earliest years that we get to choose, that we are agents unto ourselves, and that the fact that we are here on earth is already proof of our having chosen well at least once.

And yet, most of us who grow to adulthood try to limit the agency of others at one time or another. After acceptable rules of persuasion fail, we try to force our friends or our enemies to do things our way as kids. As parents, we learn by trial and error how much we can force our children to behave. As spouses we learn, often through sad experience, that D&C 121 is right – we really can’t compel others to behave in a certain way.

I’ve heard some say that trying to control outcomes for others is trying to play God. But even God does not control the outcome. He offers a choice and we make a choice. Our choice determines the outcome. Of course God facilitates the choice, and the path back to Him if we choose poorly. After all He loves us and His grace extends to each of us if we choose to accept it.

As a parent, the hardest lessons I’ve learned have been the understanding that I must let go. Now a loving parent doesn’t hold a child out a third story window and then let go. Instead, the parent does all he can to teach, guide, direct, protect, make safe, and then he lets go. And even when a parent lets go, he doesn’t leave his child alone. Good parents establish rules and boundaries with real consequences so that children learn early that with choice comes accountability. And consistent and fair consequences often do a better job of teaching than any lecture Mom or Dad could give.

Now six of my seven children have approached that point at which they begin to separate from us. All kids do it (or should), usually in the mid-to-late teenage years. Some of the separations have been easier than others. Some of our kids have separated but maintained the standards and patterns they learned at home. Others couldn’t run for the exit fast enough. A few have separated in fits and starts – wanting to be independent, but not really wanting to be independent.

Our job as parents – impossible as it seems – is to prepare them to leave, not to prepare them to stay. I learned some time ago that I cannot judge my success as a parent by the choices my children make. But I have learned there are things I can do to help them learn to separate themselves from me. I can help them see consequences. I can help them think a little longer term than the end of the hour or day or week. I can engage them in conversation and invite them to formulate and express their opinions (even half-baked ones). I can help them identify their strengths and help them to reinforce those. (Chances are they know their weaknesses better than I do; I am learning I don’t need to point those out, but I can still help them to learn how to work through them if they want to.)

Basically, I do need to play God. He put us here with teachers, trainers, parents, prophets, friends and family to help us to learn to live separately from Him (so we can return to Him). Similarly, I need to help my children to arm themselves to live separately from me.

What do you think? What has worked for you in helping your children to be independent?

Full disclosure

Thanks to the article in Bloomberg (see Jeff Lindsey’s great discussion of the cover and article here), a number of bloggers have started talking about transparency, disclosure, and general information about how tithing funds are used. (I’m not naïve enough to think this began with the Bloomberg article or even the City Creek mall in Salt Lake City, but those things tend to be lightning rods for these questions.)

I am a finance professional. I understand the value of an audit, the importance of reporting transparency, and the need to be accountable to ones shareholders, stakeholders and taxing authorities. In the large company that employs me, we go to great lengths to be sufficiently transparent in our financial dealings to honor laws not only in the US, but in the many countries in which we operate around the world.

I will say this, though: we don’t tell everyone everything. We report enough to be transparent according to applicable statute, but no more. We do have corporate secrets that we keep in order not to tip our hand to our competitors, just as every other business does. Corporate financial statements give enough detail to satisfy requirements, but not so much as to allow someone to draw a straight line to confidential information on specific costs of operation or specific pricing policies within the company (not that others don’t try – in my business, there are plenty of analysts who also examine our financial statements and other public data in order to predict our future profits, and I know we do the same with our competitors in an effort to tease out their cost advantages so we can think about how to compete.)

All of that is interesting, but irrelevant.

What is relevant for me, as I think about tithing funds and the church’s stewardship over them is this (and, yes, I’m going to appeal to authority here, and I realize that for some such an appeal is a retreat from the field of battle, but so be it):

Tithing is a commandment of God. Abraham paid tithing to Melchizedek (Alma 13:15; Hebrews 7:1,6). Malachi taught about tithing (Malachi 3:8). And in modern revelation, the Lord renews the call for a tithing of his people (D&C 64:23; 119:3).

The church eloquently discussed the use of these sacred funds in a recent press release:

Tithing funds are used to support five key areas of activity:

• Providing buildings or places of worship for members around the world. We have thousands of such buildings and continue to open more, sometimes several in a week.
• Providing education programs, including support for our universities and our seminary and institute programs.
• Supporting the Church’s worldwide missionary program.
• Building and operating nearly 140 temples around the world and the administration of the world’s largest family history program.
• Supporting the Church’s welfare programs and humanitarian aid, which serve people around the world — both members of the Church as well as those who are not members.

Each April in conference, there’s a report of the audit department which confirms the use of church funds, overseen by the Council on the Disposition of Tithes, as directed by Section 120 of the Doctrine & Covenants, consistent with the church’s mission and that proper reporting and safeguards are in place to protect the assets of the church.

In the end, the tithing I contribute ceases to be my concern when I contribute it. I contribute it freely, not just because I altruistically support the key five areas of activity listed above, but because I seek the blessings associated with paying my tithing. It is part of my honoring the covenants I have made, covenants I certify that I am keeping when I renew my temple recommend every two years, and when I partake of the sacrament each week.

I have read recently that some see a sinister motive in requiring members to be full tithe payers to attend the temple. I have to scratch my head at that suggestion. The sacred covenants I enter into in the temple are completely consistent with the requirement that I be a full tithe payer. Of course, so is baptism.

So I’m trying to sort out what full disclosure it is that people are seeking. Are they anxious to scrutinize how much the church spends building and maintaining chapels and temples around the world? Do they want a vote on whether the church will continue to support three BYU campuses? Do they wish to examine the extent to which general church funds help support missionaries around the world or family history centers?

For me, my paying of tithing and other offerings is linked to covenants I have made with God, not with the church. I recognize that the church is His instrument, and so I pay my tithing to the church. I have a personal witness of the blessings of paying tithing in my own life, and I’ve observed similar blessings in the lives of those who are close to me.

As for accountability regarding the use of those funds, I’m happy to leave that in the Lord’s hands. If He is capable of blessing me as He has for paying my tithing, He’s quite capable of instructing those charged with the use of those funds, as well. And he’s capable of holding them accountable for what they do with those funds.

God: Good; Me: Bad? No!

I listened to a Mormon Channel Conversations podcast yesterday featuring Rodney K. Smith, former president of Southern Virginia University. I’d recommend the interview to anyone: Brother Smith is a legal scholar and educator and an experienced academic administrator. He articulated a unique vision for SVU that I had not previously appreciated, and his own conversion story was great to hear.

That said, Brother Smith mentioned a concept in relation to his own life and to one of the guiding principles for SVU that stuck in my craw. It’s not an uncommon idea, and it’s frankly one I have espoused in my life before. Basically, he said that when something good happens, he thanks God; when something bad happens, he blames himself. He calls it accountability. I used to call it humility.

Now I call it unhealthy.

Don’t get me wrong: I started this post speaking highly of Brother Smith. I do not intend to attack him or his ideas here, and I suspect I’ve drawn more meaning out of his two-second comment than it deserves. This post is about my idea, one that I myself used to espouse, not about Brother Smith. He simply reminded me.

We should be accountable for our failures and our successes. It’s healthy to examine what went wrong and what we have power to change in the future. But it’s equally healthy to examine what we did right that led to success so that we might repeat it.

Attributing all success to God and all failure to us robs us of a part of the blessing of the atonement, namely the power to improve.

Don’t get me wrong (again): We should praise God. We should thank him for every blessing in our lives. Without Him, His plan of happiness, the atoning sacrifice of His son, we would be nothing. As King Benjamin teaches, we are beggars, and we are regularly blessed, even in ways we do not see. We owe our Father in Heaven a debt of gratitude, and we should offer thanks continually. The very fact that we can improve is by the grace of God and through the atonement of our Savior.

Still, when I stay up late working on a project for my employer and deliver more than is required I want my employer to reward my efforts. I don’t go to work for the fun of it; I go to be compensated so that I can support my family (and I’m very fortunate – even blessed! – to have the job I do). So when I succeed at work, I also want the commensurate rewards. Do I also thank God for facilitating that success? Of course I do: He gave me opportunity in my life to learn; He gave me intellect; He gave me health. But I used those God-given gifts to the advantage of my employer. And so I want my employer to reward me (and I believe God does, too).

Attributing all success to God and all failure to ourselves is not humility. And it’s not accountability.

Accountability is reporting on my stewardship – good and bad. When the ruler gave various talents to his servants (see Matthew 25), they then accounted for their efforts – one returning ten for five, one four for two, and one returning only his original talent. Each of those servants was held accountable; two were rewarded and one was not.

Focusing only on my failures is false humility, and it is unhealthy. If I see myself as one who only fails, how can I enjoy the blessing of the atonement in my life? The Savior suffered that we might live. Failing to accept that gift suggests that it has no value to me.

In twelve step programs, participants engage in a fearless written moral inventory, including their weaknesses and their strengths. Most veteran 12-steppers understand the value of remembering our strengths as we engage in self-examination. There is something of value in each of us, something worth saving, worth building upon. If we seek to be like Christ, then we must also find his qualities in us, however weak, however small, so that those qualities may grow. As we see them grow in us, we recognize that the atonement is working for us and on us; we value the Savior’s gift.

Let me conclude with the words of Elder Uchdorf from the Priesthood session of conference in October 2010. He was speaking about pride, as a postscript to President Benson’s landmark address on that subject just over two decades earlier:

I also remember one interesting side effect of President Benson’s influential talk. For a while it almost became taboo among Church members to say that they were “proud” of their children or their country or that they took “pride” in their work. The very word pride seemed to become an outcast in our vocabulary.

In the scriptures we find plenty of examples of good and righteous people who rejoice in righteousness and at the same time glory in the goodness of God. Our Heavenly Father Himself introduced His Beloved Son with the words “in whom I am well pleased.”

Alma gloried in the thought that he might “be an instrument in the hands of God.” The Apostle Paul gloried in the faithfulness of members of the Church. The great missionary Ammon gloried in the success he and his brothers had experienced as missionaries.

I believe there is a difference between being proud of certain things and being prideful.

I do, too. I believe we can feel good about our successes. We can thank God for our blessings, but still recognize the value of what we, as His children, can do.