October, 2011-- Parenting best practices

Do you have a parenting best practice?

I work at a Fortune 100 company, and one of the phrases tossed about quite a bit is “best practice.” Different departments or plants within the company look at others doing similar work and determine what is the most effective strategy for completing the work with better results, lower cost or less waste.

Parents have best practices as well. While every family operates a bit differently, there are ways of handling common childhood situations that are more effective than others. As in business, the best practices of parenting produce better results— kids who live up to their God-given potential. The lower cost is rarely a financial one—usually a best parenting practice saves sanity, not money. And less waste in parenting won’t necessarily prevent materials from entering a landfill. Instead, less waste refers to less wasted time and energy.  It’s rare that one parent would naturally stumble upon all the best practices of parenting—just as managers need to travel and meet with others in their field to learn best practices, so do parents need to talk to one another and learn. Knowing that amid the daily shuttle to soccer practice and dance lessons, meeting time with other parents might not come often enough for most of us, I emailed some of the most capable parents I know and asked them to share their best practices. Here are their words:

Best Practice: Building self-esteem:

Maurita and Mike, parents of two girls adopted as preschoolers, sometimes worry about their ability to build a healthy sense of self-esteem for their daughters. “I think adopted kids often have a little hole to dig themselves out in regard to self-esteem,” Maurita said. “We all know how crucial it is for girls to have self-confidence and self-esteem,” She explained that she heard a celebrity mother commenting on the suicide of her son, and the mother explained that parents cannot give their children self-esteem, that it must come from within the child. Maurita said the words stuck with her, and when her daughters achieve something, she uses the words, “Aren’t you proud of yourself?” She then re-states what they did to achieve the honor. “I tell them that I’m proud of them as well, but only after I lead with asking if they’re proud of themselves.”

Best Practices: Communication

Maribeth, mother of five children ranging from kindergarten to high school, said that taming adolescent “snippiness” is easier when she responds to an ungrateful remark by saying, “I think what you mean to say to me is. . .” and then modeling the correct response (‘thanks for cooking dinner, Mom’) to the child.

Nikki, mother of two, finds that strong communication doesn’t always need to involve actual talking. She just purchased a journal that she and her nine-year-old daughter share. One person writes her thoughts and feelings and then leaves it on the other’s pillow for a response. “The idea is that sometimes things are hard to talk about face to face and it's easier to write our feelings,” she said.  “Sometimes, it's easier not to look someone in the eye and to say what we really think when we can carefully choose our words.”

Amy, mother of three, has found success in whispering. “Rather than yell, I whisper,” she said. “It intrigues them. It pulls them closer to me and I can get them to cooperate better. Plus, I feel better about myself than when I yell.” 

Carolee, a family therapist, has this suggestion for parents: “When a parent makes a request of a child, the only appropriate response is either ‘Yes, Mom,’ or ‘Yes, Dad,’” she said, noting that many moments of talking back, whining and defiance could be eliminated if parents would hold to this. “If you ask your child to do something and he or she talks back, take time to practice the ‘Yes, Mom,’ response. Re-state your request five times and expect the child to answer appropriately, in an appropriate tone, five times. They’ll catch on and soon it will be a habit.”

Best Practice: Reducing wheedling for privileges

Amy, of the whispering, does not allow any electronics to be used before 6:30 p.m. “Once it’s 6:30, if homework is done, you can watch a show or play a game, but nothing until that time. No one ever asks because they just know that’s the rule.” 

Patty, mom of four has a similar rule that eliminates the need for negotiation. “No more than 30 minutes a day of screen time. You choose the screen—TV, computer or video games, but that’s it.”

Denise and Arthur draw their line at dessert. “We felt the kids were taking dessert for granted and eating too many sweets,” she said. “We made a rule that they can only have desserts on weekends. We’ve found it makes our kids appreciate the treats more and it prevents them from asking for dessert on the other days because they know the rule.”

Best Practice: Building a faith life

Carol and Jamie, parents of four, said that not compartmentalizing their faith has helped their children. “We talk about God and faith throughout the week,” Carol said. “It’s not just something saved for Sunday. I might have a candle lit on the counter on a Wednesday night and a child will ask me why, and I’ll explain I’m praying for a friend’s surgery.”

Andrea and Greg set aside time for service with their teens, serving at a meal program or working in a homeless shelter. “Kids need to experience living the Gospel by feeding the hungry or comforting the poor firsthand,” Andrea said. “It’s not something we can expect them to do when they’re adults if we don’t do it with them when they’re young.”

September, 2011-- Upcoming adoption of Teenasia

Her name is Teenasia.

After more than eight years of writing about our foster daughter, “T,” our family will finally be adopting her on September 30, in the same Children’s Court where we spent countless hours in hearings as her biological parents were offered chance upon chance to meet the conditions for her return. For eight years, I have protected her privacy as a foster child with the simple “T.” With her adoption comes the same freedom to use her name that I have for our other three children. She is Teenasia. She has always been Teenasia. She will be our daughter on September 30, 2011, just as surely as she became our daughter the cold March night in 2003, when she was first placed with us as a toddler; just as surely as she remained our daughter even when we were twice required to give her back to her birth family for another try. 

Our joy is so deep that it bubbles up in unexpected places: A spontaneous adoption rap begun by the boys in the middle of what would normally be a mundane Monday night enchilada dinner; little Jamie’s 12-foot long, taped-together, construction paper portraits of everyone in our extended family, including the pets, with stars around Teenasia’s face. Teenasia tells everyone she can about her good news, and the playground supervisor congratulated me in the parking lot this morning. “She is glowing,” she told me. In a recent paragraph Teenasia had to write for her spelling challenge words, she managed to link together neglect, annual, basically and contract among others, to effectively tell the story of her foster care journey and upcoming adoption.

With any adoption comes a list of needs on the part of the adoptive parents. Parents adopting infants need a bouncy chair and a pack-and-play; they need diapers and fuzzy-footed sleepers. Parents adopting from oversees need a passport and plane tickets. And what do Bill and I need, adopting our almost 10-year-old, who we have parented, off and on, since she was one?

We need a sacrament.

Every major life event comes with a sacrament and while baptism works very well to mark the adoption of an infant or small child, Teenasia was baptized and received her First Communion more than a year ago.

A sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace. As we adopt Teenasia, I look back on the past eight years, and see Christ’s presence in so many of the events that brought Teenasia back to us. I have felt God’s grace in the people sent into our lives to support us during our difficult times. I have seen God’s grace embodied in Teenasia, who is making her way back to her true self after enduring profound trauma. 

And that’s why I want a sacrament for the adoption itself— give me fire, water, holy oil, vestments, a ring—some outward sign that what is going on here is sacred; has always been sacred. Our church fathers were wise indeed. But with more church mothers—especially foster adoptive mothers--  we would probably have the Sacrament of Adoption.

Our adoption of Teenasia will feel closer to the sacrament of marriage than an infant baptism. Bill and I understand the commitment we are undertaking and we are choosing to go forward. Teenasia, too, will need to commit. Her new life will be one of learning to trust— halfway through her childhood— that from now on, she has a forever family. She will need to learn to believe that this love will not go away. Her childhood so far has been punctuated with the question marks given to her by the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare and a legislative system that does not respect children’s need for permanency. Our family will need to work together to extract these question marks that have lodged in her soul like stubborn fishhooks.

On Teenasia’s adoption day, the courtroom will be packed with friends and family. Teenasia will wear a gold-hued dress embroidered with delicate flowers. Bill and I will make promises to our daughter, and our other children will read statements of love, as witnesses. Teenasia will make promises to us.  We will give her a gift—an outward sign of our love and fidelity. I expect that God’s grace, which has carried us through, will be palpable in that room.

The moment of Teenasia’s adoption will be sacramental.

Let the church say Amen. 

April, 2011 If I were Pope

            I was a little girl when Pope John Paul died and was replaced by Pope John Paul II. Upon hearing the news of the new Pope, I commented to my mom on the incredible coincidence that another man of the same name was chosen to be pontiff. My mom explained to me how Popes changed their names once they are elected.

            I decided right then that if my Church’s tradition would evolve to include women priests, and I would ever find myself in a position to be elected pope, I would change my name to Chrissy — a name that sounded substantially more fun to me than Annemarie.

            I hadn’t thought of that exchange with my mom in years — until this past Good Friday, when Bill and I, driving home from Holy Hill’s Stations of the Cross, somehow wandered into a conversation about requirements we’d make for the Church if we were Pope. Interestingly, in our conversation, we didn’t remove any of the current requirements. We added more. I’m not sure why were able to have an uninterrupted twenty-minute conversation in the car with all the kids, but maybe they were tired from all the walking uphill for the Stations. Or maybe they were listening, and thinking that since we make up so many rules for them (no dessert if you don’t finish those vegetables), we could probably make up rules for the Church, too. In any case, here’s what we came up with:

A required yearly overnight retreat for all people 16 and over (Annemarie):  I love retreats. I wish someone would make me go on one. We have Sunday obligation and holy days of obligation, but the obligation is never more than an hour or so. The retreats of my high school and college years were some of the most spiritual weekends of my life, and I know many other people who feel the same. Once we hit full adulthood however (and actually have something to retreat from) the retreats stop for many of us. Retreats are an opportunity to hit the pause button and reflect on where God may be calling us. I’ve learned that I rarely hit pause for myself. Someone needs to hit it for me. I need a retreat mandate. 

A requirement that churches must integrate sustainability into all aspects of their buildings, grounds and parishes (Bill):  Pope Bill would require solar panels on church roofs, geothermal wells on their premises and native plantings in the gardens. He would also require all healthy parishioners to walk or bike to church rather than drive. “Every parish should be a neighborhood leader in terms of sustainability,” he said. “The parish should set an example to the surrounding community about what taking care of God’s creation looks like.”

A requirement to lean harder on Reconciliation (Annemarie): Reconciliation may have gotten a scary and bad rap when it was called Confession and took place in a dark closet with a sliding door. Going to reconciliation should be like taking vitamins, not medicine. Call it Reconciliation Sunday once a month and offer it right before or after Mass, along with coffee and donuts while you wait. Tell parishioners not to worry about listing every single little sin. Choose your main one and call it a day—stay focused on what is giving you grief right now. Make going to Reconciliation convenient by tying it to Sunday Mass, which is each church’s most popular hour of the week. Gas stations have the right idea by selling the optional food and beverages with the required gas. Offer the optional sacrament (Reconciliation) with the required one (Eucharist).

A pilgrimage once every five years (Bill): Your choice — Rome, the Holy Land, a Marian apparition site or a week-long mission trip to serve in an impoverished area. I noted to Bill that since our family drives to church, doesn’t go on yearly retreats and has never gone as a family to any of his pilgrimage sites, we would not be meeting the requirements of being Catholic in very church of which we were the theoretical co-Popes. This didn’t seem to bother Bill, who went on to make up a requirement for each suburban Catholic to switch homes with a central city resident for Lent. When I challenged him on this one, he threatened he threatened to ex-communicate me.

            Our conversation oscillated from the practical to pie-in-the-sky idealism. We both agreed that some of our comfort level with making more rules came partly from living in a neighborhood with many Orthodox Jews. Our Jewish neighbors’ commitment to a 24-hour Sabbath, keeping kosher and walking to temple in all kinds of weather is a witness to us about religious commitment that requires much more than an hour a week. We agreed also, that our rules were less about what we expected from the leadership of our church, and more about what we expected from ourselves, in terms of deepening our own faith response. It was an admission that when a law or rule surrounds something — be it going to Mass, keeping the speed limit or getting to work on time — we are more likely to do it. 

            Bill and I have no illusions that we’ll be moving from Glendale to Vatican City. Our names will remain Bill and Annemarie (which, by the way, I like much more than Chrissy, now that I’m grown.) Any change in careers that we make over our lifetime will not be announced with white smoke. But the beautiful thing about the Catholic Church is that every change that Bill and I came up with on our drive home is compatible with the rules that are already here. Our ideas are not new or revolutionary — each one has its basis in the doctrines and teachings already established. We belong to a church that values retreats, stewardship of the Earth, sacraments, pilgrimages, service and a preferential option for the poor. We belong to a church that trusts its people to define what it looks like to live these teachings and doctrine.

            We belong to a church that says, Pope or not, live your faith as authentically and fully as possible. We belong to a church that invites us to lead— even without that puff of white smoke.

February, 2011-- Trauma, children and attachment

Before I became a foster and adoptive parent, eight years ago, I didn’t really understand how neglect and abuse hurt kids.

Before I paint myself as too dim, let me explain. Certainly, Bill and I decided to become foster parents because we understood that children are hurt by neglect and abuse. It saddened and angered us that so many children in our city were in need of a safe and healthy family, so we looked around our house and within our hearts and found room in both places to welcome a couple of children. But I can admit now, that even as we welcomed each daughter, we didn’t have an understanding of the science that explains exactly how abuse and neglect harms children. We knew abused and neglected children are hurt children, but we did not understand the effect of trauma on the human brain in terms of its ability to form healthy and lasting relationships.

We do now.

When a baby is born, every need met by that baby’s parent or caregiver teaches the baby that it is safe to attach to the parent or caregiver. The baby cries, mom offers a breast: the baby learns she will be taken care of. The baby cries, dad picks him up; the baby learns he will be protected. This pattern is repeated thousands of times in a child’s first year in a healthy family.

A child of neglect or abuse is a child who has learned just the opposite. She cries and Mom does not come to feed her; he feels scared and he remains alone. Like the child from the healthy family, a child from a neglectful home has this pattern repeated thousands of times. Needs unmet, over and over again.

What the child from the neglectful home learns is that he or she must rely only on him or herself to survive. Adult caregivers cannot be trusted.

The longer the neglect or abuse goes on, the more entrenched this belief becomes so that even when a child is removed from an orphanage or a dysfunctional home to a home with healthy, caring parents, the child’s brain cannot readily make the leap that now he or she is safe.

Children from neglected homes may hoard food because they don’t believe they will be adequately fed; they may become defiant to parents or teachers because they can’t trust anyone beside themselves with decisions; they may avoid eye contact; they may tantrum; they may become indiscriminately friendly with those they barely know. The child of abuse or neglect wants nothing more than to maintain control—because he or she has learned that protection comes from only from within herself, not from the caregiver.

The experts put a vocabulary around what happens to children of abuse and neglect the centers on the word “attachment.” Children are said to have a disrupted attachment, or an attachment disorder, or in the most severe cases, a reactive attachment disorder (RAD).

Once a child is removed from an abusive or neglectful home, the new parents need to rebuild the attachment the child missed.  The parents need to assess where the child is on the attachment spectrum and parent (and re-parent) accordingly, using specific intentional and therapeutic methods of parenting that have been shown to be successful. Lullabies and rocking; games that build eye contact; time-ins next to the parent, rather than time-outs; methods of discipline and ways of phrasing questions and commands that lead to compliance and the turning over of control.

Because one of our daughters was twice removed from and returned to the home of her biological parent before the court determined ours should be her permanent home, we have been immersed in the world of disrupted attachment for about three years now.

And while much of what has happened in these three years has been painful and exhausting, the lessons I have learned while working through my daughter’s healing process have all come back to Jesus’ command to love. Love is an action and a decision, not an emotion. When Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you,” he invited us to look at how he loved people—and it was through teaching and healing. Jesus was all about building attachment.

Our experience of foster care has been a daily challenge to live the command to love—to believe that the action of loving will lead to transformation of the one who is loved.

Foster care has brought us to levels of love as a family that I would not have known we were capable of. On our better days, you could say we are skilled lovers. The parenting techniques we’ve had to develop to be effective with our foster daughter have benefited our biological sons and adopted daughter as well. In an effort to heal her disrupted attachment, we’ve all become closer

Eight years ago, Bill and I didn’t really understand how abuse and neglect hurt kids. Looking back, sometimes I feel ashamed of our naïveté. More often, though, I am thankful for it. Because if we would have known what we’d be up against, maybe we would not have chosen foster care at all. And had we not chosen foster care, we would never have learned how deeply and how intentionally we could love, when required to.

And we would have missed out on two of the four best gifts in our lives. 

January, 2011-- Dominican High School, salt of the earth

Some of the holiest people around are also some of the most quiet and unassuming. Jesus often pointed out that spiritual bravado wasn’t the equivalent of holiness. He spoke up against the Pharisees praying aloud for all to hear, while highlighting the barely-noticeable widow who put a few coins in the offering jar. We all know of the salt-of-the-earth folks who go about their lives matter-of-factly doing good — they don’t carry a bishop’s miter or have a position of authority in their job or the community, yet their example shines forth and their goodness inspires others to become better. 

            It is a paradox of Christianity that strength and truth often arrive humbly wrapped — in swaddling clothes, for example.

            And if this is true for Christian people, it is also true for Christian institutions. Dominican High School, a small co-ed Catholic high school in Whitefish Bay, is so quiet and unassuming, it doesn’t even show up on the radar of some parents who are considering Catholic high school for their children.

            But for those who slow down enough to take a look at Dominican — for those who recognize the Gospel connection between humility and greatness — they invariably find in Dominican the genuine beauty of Catholic education done right.

            Catholic faith is at the heart of Dominican; there is an intentionality to the parent community. Dominican families don’t choose the school for its status or its legacy — it is too small and too young to have much in the way of either. Rather, Dominican families choose the school because they come to visit and become aware of the holy. Not holy in the sense of the overly pious or a chest-thumping spirituality. Rather, holy in the sense of genuineness, and God present in the ordinary.

            And somehow, in tandem with that quiet faith comes an academic rigor that manages to be neither boastful nor arrogant. When our oldest son Jacob was in eighth grade, I was concerned about whether Dominican, as a high school with fewer than 400 students, could wield the academic chops of larger schools that might draw from a wider base. I needn’t have worried—much in Jacob’s freshman and sophomore curriculum has been material and works of literature Bill and I remember studying early in college. Dominican just published the universities where its 80 or so seniors have been accepted so far, and the list— which includes Fordham, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Boston College, Marquette and Purdue—is a simple, yet eloquent statement about the strength of Dominican’s academics.

            Part of Dominican’s strength comes from its diversity. More than any other Catholic school in metro-Milwaukee, Dominican mirrors the ethnic and racial makeup of the metro area it serves. Dominican reaches past the homogeneity of surrounding Whitefish Bay and welcomes a multicultural student body that will prepare its students well for an increasingly global work experience.

            For me, the spirit of Dominican can be expressed through an example of the JV boys baseball team last spring. At the end of the season, the boys and their families gathered for an end-of-season celebration at a pond near our house. The majority of the boys were excellent swimmers and were comfortable in the water, playing keep-away, leaping off a raft in the middle of the pond, racing each other. Two of the boys didn’t have much experience with natural bodies of water and didn’t know how to swim.

            “I’m more of a land animal,” one confided to me.

            “Well, you two could just stay in the shallow part,” I told him. I didn’t actually think the young man would go in the water at all. I thought he and his friend would just stay on shore; that he might be concerned the good swimmers would give him a hard time. Instead, though, he thanked me, nodded and the two slowly ventured out to waist-deep water.

            As I looked on, the swimming kids splashed their hellos to the guys in the shallow water, and included them in a game of catch. No one commented that they both kept their feet firmly on the bottom of the pond. When the ball landed beyond the comfort zone the non-swimmers, one of the swimmers would stroke over and toss it to one of them without comment. It was a remarkable moment for its ordinariness. And it struck me that at Dominican, quiet kindness is the norm, not the exception.

            This Catholic Schools Week, eighth graders and their families all over the city are preparing to make their final decisions about which high school to attend. Perhaps a thousand of these students will choose Catholic high schools with big names and correspondingly big enrollments—excellent schools indeed— and I would never second-guess the education those students will receive. And as those thousand students sign the enrollment papers for their schools, a separate group — of perhaps just a hundred—will choose Dominican. And I can’t wait to meet those families; to hear the stories of how they found Dominican and the moment they knew it was for them.

            Dominican. Small and quiet. Leaning humble. Filled with spirit and grace.

            Salt of the earth.

            And strong. So strong.