Nuance

 I was listening to a great podcast about parenting by Arthur Brooks (How to Build a Happy Life) and he touched on a topic that inspired me to write a post. The discussion was about parenting and safety messages that public health officials give out. The interviewee was saying that the messages are very black and white - something like - co-sleeping is dangerous. Parents, who don’t know the risk factors and analysis, hear this and immediately write it off as an option. She said that in an effort not to co-sleep, some parents go to the couch and end up falling asleep holding the baby which is far more dangerous than co-sleeping. 

I have no intention of having a discussion about co-sleeping or any other public health issue for that matter. It made me think about how we, as parents, approach our messaging with our kids. Do we categorically disallow or disavow things? How can we approach topics in a healthy way that allows room for error? 

I especially think about this as it pertains to safety, good decisions and religion. 

I have found Safety a hard topic to approach with teenagers. With their all knowing attitudes and lack of long term thought, I find they often assume some behaviors are safe despite the obvious. It’s important to choose your safety lines carefully and to give them reasonable margins of error. If we were back in the times when seatbelts were optional, I’m sure that would be a topic of discussion.  I wonder how our grandparents and/or parents approached that discussion when they realized how seatbelts saved lives but were definitely not in vogue.

When it comes to religion - there’s so much to talk about it’s impossible in a short paragraph. At a recent wedding we attended in a very religious area, I noticed that the kids there who had “rebelled” were far more notorious than most I had seen locally. Part of me wondered if this was partly due to the lack of nuance in their religious approach. In the neighborhood where we live, there are many levels of observance.  You have the spectrum of ultra religious to modern and I believe it shows kids that there are many ways to observe. If their particular family approach isn’t working for them - they can still see many other variations which allow them to remain observant with more flexibility.

I don’t have a particular feeling of the best way to approach this with your kids - I feel every persons parenting style dictates different types of conversations. My main thought is that we should be leaving loads of room for error - parents can and should make the lines and boundaries clear - but there shouldn’t be a my way or the highway attitude. If kids know they can always discuss and question they’re more likely to take on some reasonable version of whatever the topic is. If the approach is always line in the sand - it leaves little room for growth and experimenting safely. Those lines should probably be left for the high risk safety situations (call when someone drank don’t get in the car, say no to drugs, you get the idea). 

“ Drawing a line in the sand does not work.”

The path to anything that matters in life is never linear. It twists and turns. It seeks solutions rather than charging obstinately into what it does not care to understand.

And if you ever found yourself in a sandpit like the one I described, you know that drawing a line is an invitation for others to cross it. When that happens, everybody loses.

We must learn judgement, and to pick our battles. We must learn how to be flexible, allow ourselves room to manoeuvre, and time to consider.” (quoted from “The 8 Percent”)