Emotional Maturity: Growing Up on the Inside

Aging happens to all of us who happen to live into adulthood, but emotional maturity is optional. What are the signs of emotional maturity? Here's a checklist of some of the things emotionally mature people need to master:

1.You don't pout.

2.You are direct with others.

3.You recognize that other people are allowed to have different wants, needs, and feelings than you do.

4.You handle conflict like a grown up, calmly, and respectfully.

5. You are responsible with your money.

6.You don't throw tirades or temper tantrums. You are not a bully.

7.You don't blame other people.

8.You take responsibility for making your own life meaningful and developing a purpose.

9.You listen to others from your heart, not just expect others to listen to you.

10.You take responsibility for your own health, both mental and physical. You have an exercise and food plan.

11. You can set limits and boundaries with others.

12.You take responsibility for your own emotions- sadness, anger, frustration, boredom, irritability.

13.You don't threaten or manipulate others to get your own way.

14.You don't use alcohol or drugs in order to cope or numb your feelings.

15.You set meaningful goals and work towards them.

16. You see your own part in things, and have a willingness to change what you are doing if it's needed.

17.You demonstrate values and flexibility.

18.You keep your expectations reasonable. You don't expect others to read your mind.

19.You are willing to negotiate so that both you and others get what you want and need.

20.You realize you are not more important than other people. You have compassion for others.

21.You experience and express gratefulness frequently.

22. You don't take things too personally. Often, it's not personal.

23.You operate from a place of integrity.

24.You understand there is usually another side of the story.

25.You can express affection, and open up and be vulnerable when it's safe and appropriate to do so.

26.You can forgive.

27.You can and do encourage others.

28.You don't complain and gossip to a third party.

29.You are impeccable with your word. You follow through as promised.

30.You don't spend time worrying about what other people think about you.

These are some of the signs I look for in people to demonstrate emotional maturity. We don't have to be perfect, but striving continually to operate from a mature position is a wonderful place to come from. Emotional maturity is a beautiful thing at any age, and it grows only more valuable over time.

The Most Important Ingredient

There is one essential ingredient to all relationships. This includes love relationships and marriages, as well as relationships between parent and child, between siblings, in friendships, as well as in the workplace. It serves as a starting place and foundation upon which all other actions and behaviors follow. Can you guess what it is?

It's mutual respect.

Seeing the humanity and dignity in each other is a key part of having successful relationships. It means that you don't feel you are a better person than the other person. It recognizes that they are allowed to have separate and different feelings or opinions than you do. In fact, it's the differences which keep things interesting in relationships.

Mutual respect means you talk to the other person using a kind, polite, and respectful tone. You abandon sarcasm. You are honest and direct. You don't play games. You are skilled enough to let the other person know directly if you are upset with something that they have done. You don't yell, scream, belittle, or ignore the other person. 

Withholding and shutting out a loved one or friend is actually one of the most destructive and hostile actions you can take. That behavior pattern, of ignoring and freezing someone out, is passive-aggressive, and extremely hurtful and unskilled.

Mutual respect in families means children are respectful of parents but also that parents role-model this mutual respect in the way they speak to their children. Teaching our children by example about how to create and maintain mutually supportive and respectful relationships is about the best training for life we can give them. They will needs these relational skills all of their lives. We hand them the blueprints for their future relationships.

Couples need to examine the blueprints they got from their parents. Were your parents mutually supportive and respectful? Or did Dad criticize Mom to the kids? Did Mom belittle Dad to her friends? How did their patterns unconsciously infiltrate your own behaviors and attitudes towards your partner? You can choose to rewrite the script in your generation, and not continue the multigenerational transmission of disrespectful behaviors flow through you to your own children.

Mutual respect in friendships means your friends don't have to be exactly like you. Neither one of you is always right. Your true friend can be different from you in many ways, but there is that sacred trust, understanding, and acceptance.

If a child you are in a relationship with is disrespectful, you can be an influence for good by teaching them how to do better. Make sure you are not role modeling or enabling the same primitive behavior.
Emotionally mature adults don't participate in disrespectful behavior as payback.

With an adult child who is being disrespectful towards you, it's important to discuss how and why you feel disrespected, and communicate effectively and calmly what you need them to do in the future to make you feel more respected. You also need to make sure your own expectations of a self-supporting adult child are reasonable, and that you also treat them with the respect they are due. (Hint: you don't get to pick who they date, for example.) Respect should operate both directions.

If you are in a relationship with an adult who is disrespectful towards you, it will not magically get better. You must shift internally and renegotiate the relationship terms, knowing that disrespect is unacceptable to you. Perhaps the other person respond to the truth of your observations, and be willing to change, and give up their disrespectful behaviors and tone with you. If not, you may need to require them to go with you to remedy the situation by going to counseling to break the old relational patterns and get support and skills for doing better.

If the other person is not willing or interested in changing their disrespect, you may need to alter or sever the relationship for your own well-being. It is not healthy to stay in relationship with someone who disrespects, belittles, and dishonors you. Every human being has a right to expect better.

In Gestalt terms, relationshipsbetween adults that have this disrespect have to be shifted from relating from a critical parent stance towards a partner as an errant child, to a more adult to adult way of relating.

Mutual respect means you don't just expect to be listened to, you also stop to listen from your heart to understand the other person. You don't play "victim" as if you are without any part in misunderstandings or upsets. You own your own part. You apologize when you are wrong and try to do better.

When you are cooking and leave out a key ingredient, like eggs in a cake, everything falls apart. It won't rise the way it should. The same is true in your close relationships. Don't forget the mutual respect, or you won't be creating anything of value. Anyone who isn't able or willing to learn how to respect you, just as you respect them, might be worth unloading or restricting their access to you. Mutually respectful relationships are your birthright.

What If Your Partner Doesn't Meet All Your Needs?

Contrary tothe movies, popular culture and the Bachelor/Bachelorette TV franchise, having a happy life requires more than a loving relationship with a partner. Putting all your relationship eggs in one basket may put too many expectations and too much pressure on your love relationship. 

I like the Buddhist saying, "before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." The same is true about life before and after finding a life partner. Both before and after, we need friends, hobbies and passions, interests of our own, work that is meaningful, an exercise and self-care plan, a spiritual life, and the ability to spend some time alone.

When people are dating, they often are looking for someone who will make them happy and fulfilled. When people fall in love, their world often revolves around the beloved for some time. At some point, a few months or a year or two into the relationship, most people realize that they will suffocate each other if they don't also balance the couples time with time with other friends and activities. The truth is that even happy couples don't stay perpetually "in love." Over the course of a long-term relationship, couples often go through phases of feeling "in love" and not. That's normal.

Happy people realize that being in love or happily partnered doesn't mean to demand or extract your happiness from that other person. You are still responsible for your own happiness, sense of purpose,  developing yourself, and keeping connected to healthy friends. As it turns out, some separate activities and interests can keep things interesting. (Think Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, who were happily married despite his passion for car racing, and her love for ballet. They were happily married over 50 years before Newman's death.)

Maybe happily ever after looks more multi-faceted than we were led to believe. Readjusting expectations of marriage and couples' relationships is healthy. Developing a healthy, sustainable love relationship is just a part of the bigger picture of building a happier life.

How Rituals Increase Satisfaction

Would birthday cake taste as good without the lit candles and the song? Probably not.

We use rituals every day: morning rituals, evening rituals, holiday and birthday rituals, anniversary rituals, as well as religious rituals. They increase meaning, significance, and evoke a sense of tradition and family. New research also suggests ritual behaviors increase the satisfaction in behaviors like eating.

A recent story on NPR (June 20, 2013) by their social science correspondent, Shankar Vedantam, covered a soon to be published article by Harvard University Behavioral Scientist Francesca Gino and colleagues, Kathleen Vohs, Yajin Wang and Michael Norton, giving evidence to the idea that creating rituals before eating increases the satisfaction of the experience.

Gino's study had volunteers divided into two groups, with each person being given a chocolate bar to eat. Half were instructed to follow a procedure where they carefully unwrapped half the bar, savored it, and ate the second half later. The second group just went ahead and ate their bar all at once.  

Guess which group enjoyed their chocolate bar more? It was the first group who ate their chocolate more mindfully. This process was retested with carrots, and the same effect occurred. Those who ate more mindfully experienced better taste and indicated they would pay more for the experience.

What did the researchers conclude? Performing rituals before eating increases the satisfaction and enjoyment of eating. The ritual must be done each time in the same way, like communion at a church service.  

So, singing happy birthday and blowing out the candles after making wishes before eating the birthday cake will likely increase the enjoyment of the cake. A shared toast or prayer before dinner will add to the meaning and satisfaction of dinner. 

The researchers determined that it is not enough to observe a ritual, it is essentially different to participate in it. It's the active participation that seems key.

There are rituals which have existed for thousands of years, traditions we either inherit from our families or create for ourselves, and habits which we develop. Ritualistic behavior can get out of hand and become a problem if it makes us obsessive, but the right amount of ritual in your life can make your life more satisfying, enjoyable, and meaningful. (Not to mention tastier!)

You might reflect on how traditions and rituals in your day and your week make your life better. Perhaps you enjoy a first cup of coffee or tea each morning, bond with your dog through play, water your flowers after work, tuck in your children in bed with stories and cuddling, enjoy a walk in your neighborhood and notice little changes as the seasons pass. Mindfulness in living does create more meaning in the small things of everyday life, including the chocolate.

Take Out Your Own Trash

You wouldn't throw all your trash in your living room. It would make your home look messy and smell awful. You would walk it outside to the trash can or recycling bin.

As I counsel individuals, couples, and families through making their lives and relationships more meaningful and more satisfying, I want each person to take out their own trash in their life and relationships, too.

This means everyone needs to be able to identify when they are stressed, and find a way to release that stress safely and productively. Children are included here, and I like their parents to help them find some possible alternative ways to reduce their own stress. As grown-ups, we need to be good role models in the stress management of our daily life. Do we salsa dance, run, meditate, pray, go to the gym, read, clean, garden, push the baby for a walk in the stroller, go for a bike ride, or see a friend? We each need to do something that helps us cope with our own stress.

It is NOT okay to take out your frustrations or stress on the people closest to you. This is what I mean about taking out your own trash. In relationships, we are each responsible for making ourselves happy, fulfilled, and managing our own stress well, and sharing our happiness with those closest to us. It's not a fair expectation of others who are close to you that they manage your stress, provide your life with meaning and purpose, or supply you with happiness. Some of these things are an inside job.

Stress is a regular part of our daily life; both good and bad stress. It's a part of our human experience. Learning some good coping strategies that work for you and are healthy and fun is a smart idea. Stress can be transmitted from one person to another, in a family, a relationship, and a workplace. Doing your part to stop the flow of stress means being aware of what situations and people stress you, setting healthy boundaries when you can, knowing how your body reacts to stress, and actively releasing that stress yourself so that you aren't a part of the stress dance.

So, the bad news is: you can expect stress as long as you are alive here on Earth. The good news: you can get really good at identifying signs that you are stressed, actively releasing it, and being a beneficial presence to others, rather than a part of transferring stress on to others. Load up that trash, and let's take it outside where it belongs.

A Tribute to Good Dads

Father's Day is approaching this next week. Sometimes Father's Day doesn't get the same play that Mother's Day does a month earlier, but good dads are very important, and they deserve a tribute all their own.

Good dads aren't afraid to get involved when children are small: they diaper, bathe, feed, soothe, and play with babies. Later, they teach us to play sports, help with school projects, teach us how to drive, give us some rules for dating, and lead us to thinking about the future: college, career, and money. They teach us about men, and the masculine perspective on things. Good dads are solid, supportive, productive, trustworthy, and honorable. Dads help us move out and launch successfully. They listen.

Good dads stay involved even after divorces happen. They understand that parenting is for the rest of your life, no matter what. The very worst thing that can happen to children of divorce is that a parent can go away and not stay involved, emotionally, financially, or in terms of time.

Good grandfathers are worth their weight in gold. They show up and suit up to be involved with their grandchildren, and support their children through difficult and overwhelming phases of parenting. Good grandfathers take time to teach their grandchildren life skills, like how to work on a car, or save or invest money, or plant a garden. A strong relationship with your grandfather gives children roots.

Loving and kind stepfathers can be incredibly important. Just because you're not biologically related doesn't mean you can't be a caring mentor and presence in your partner's children's lives. It can be what you are willing to put into it. If you are a stepfather, then you are choosing to step in where a child has already experienced some loss. It will be important to be patient and understand it may be difficult for this child to trust. Your ability to show love, concern, interest and support of a child that is not your own can be one of the best things that ever happened to both of you. The choice is yours.

Here's a toast to dads, granddads, stepdads, and all the other good men who get outside themselves to reach out and help raise the next generation. We see you, we appreciate you, and we are grateful for you. Happy Father's Day!

Home for the Summer

It's the season for those of us with college students who've been away at school to welcome them home. Our almost 19 year old daughter arrived home last week. At my counseling practice in Newport Beach, California, I've been getting calls and meeting with parents and families about managing the transition well of having an adult son or daughter home for a few months.

About the time school is out in late May or June, students had adjusted nicely to their greater independence, living in dorms or apartments, managing their own schedules, and enjoying the fun of having their friends around all the time. Similarly, by late spring, parents have also let go and adjusted to less regular parenting tasks.

Parents have questions. Here are some I'm fielding:

Should I set a curfew?

What if they want to sleep until 2:00p.m. everyday?

What's fair to ask them to do with their room or household chores?

Can I expect them to earn some of their own spending money, or to save some towards their own fall college expenses?

Entrances and exits from the family system are both situations that take adjustments. Give your son or daughter a few days to get caught up on sleep after their finals and moving home. Then it may be a very good idea to have lunch or dinner with them and talk together about the adjustments that you each need to make while they're home to make it a successful summer for all of you.

I don't recommend giving curfews to college students who have already been living on their own. That would be like going backwards and they'd resent it, and you'd be fighting all summer. However, I do feel it's okay to ask them to be reasonable, not have overnight guests without your permission, and to ask for your son or daughter to be very quiet after the older generation goes to sleep, and about what time that is. It's also okay to ask for no midnight laundry, or showering, blow-drying or loud music after a certain hour. While all those things are probably common at school, you just need to ask for respect for quiet times you need at the house.

It's also perfectly okay to ask your son or daughter about their summer plans. They may already be working on it, but, if not, you can tell them you want them to be productive over the summer and look for work or enroll at your local community college for some summer credits, or both. Don't give them so much money that they don't need to work, or you are a part of the problem of their stagnation.

Make a list of household and outside tasks that you normally do, and ask them if they could please help this summer by picking up a few of them. Set a date each week where those things will be done, without you nagging. It's also reasonable that they do their own laundry, pick up after themselves, make their bed, hang up wet towels, and not leave dishes out for you to do. Perhaps they could care for the dog? Do some gardening? These chores are fair, and make them a better roommate when they return to college. They are not home to be your maid, but you're not there to wait on them either. Think teamwork.

With meals and groceries, communication helps. I have a small whiteboard on an easel on a kitchen counter that updates everyone on which nights I'm serving dinner and at what time, and each person can let me know if they will be gone so I don't waste food. I grocery shop several times a week, and I let our college student know she can write down requests on the list in the kitchen.

If other things bother you, talk it over so you can work it out. Be realistic. Your adult son or daughter is only home for a few months. If they are a night owl, you are unlikely to reform their sleep schedule. It may be a job or early morning class in the future that shifts their schedule.

Make it a wonderful summer. Talking about your expectations and asking for your college student's involvement will help!

The Next Generation: Teens and Twenty-Somethings

Young people born between 1980 and 2000 are being called "The Millennials" and "Generation Y." They are the children of baby boomers, and are in their teens and twenties now. They're different from previous generations in a number of important ways. The week of May 20, Time ran a cover story by Joel Stein, called "The Me, Me, Me Generation: Millennials are Lazy, Entitled Narcissists Who Still Live With Their Parents, And Why They'll Save Us All." There are some essential qualities and values worth understanding about this next generation.

Baby boomers were born from about 1943 through 1960. Boomers grew up in the suburbs, affected by hippies and the summer of love in the 60s, became yuppies, lost money in the stock market and during the Great Recession. Boomers are working longer and postponing retirement due to their financial setbacks.

In contrast, Generation X, born from 1961 through 1980, grew up as latchkey kids, often with divorced parents. This group grew up with a sense of boredom, and studies show them often earning less in real dollars than their parents, which didn't use to happen, historically speaking.

So what's unique about millennials?

1. Their parents tried to pump up their self-esteem while they were growing up. Many of them are very disappointed in their careers. They have a high likelihood of unmet career expectations and low levels of career satisfaction. They were used to getting trophies, and having parents who praised them. They expect to succeed, and quickly.

2. High levels of entitlement. Many millennials have to learn that they can't start at the top, email the CEO, or skip work projects they find boring. 

3. They're networked. They interact all day long, mostly through screens. Cell phones help them socialize 24/7. They use Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and Twitter. Most teens send 88 texts each day. The influence of friends is omnipresent. In his book, Idisorder, psychology professor Larry Rosen notes this generation can get a dopamine hit from people liking their status updates,and can get anxious if they can't check their phones. These changes in communication technology have changed dating, friendships, work, family relationships, free time, and even job searches.

4. Studies show this generation is less empathetic, probably due to less face-to-face time, more social media and self-promotion. They love their cell phones, but are often uncomfortable in conversations. They have FOMO (Fear of Missing Out On Things), because other people appear so busy and happy on social media.

4. They take longer to grow up. Obamacare recently provided insurance coveragein the US for dependent children up to age 26. Many young adults are living with their parents longer, and spending longer trying to find a career that is fulfilling and meaningful, not one that just pays the bills. They marry later. They have children later. They do most things later in life than previous generations.

5. Narcissism is at higher levels in this age group. Millennials grew up on reality television, which is a sort of training ground for narcissism. Studies show higher levels of narcissism among this age group than in previous generations. They like positive feedback and approval from others.

6. They have different expectations of work than previous generations. Money isn't enough. They want self-actualization. I found it interesting that in his Time article, Stein notes that at DreamWorks, 25% of the employees are under age 30. The studio has a very high retention rate (96%) and offers classes in photography, sculpting, painting, cinematography, and karate that employees can take during work hours. All of these benefits are highly attractive to millennials, who care deeply about work/life balance, and negotiating work schedules and time off.

7. They rebel less than previous generations. They are accepting of differences between people. Millennials are tolerant. They have their own microgroups, with unique music, media, and cultural interests. They are not as homogenous as previous generations of young people who may have shared one genre of popular music, the same television culture, etc.

8. They are less religious. They believe in God, but at least 30% of people under age 30 don't go to church and are religiously unaffiliated. This is less than any previous generation.

9. They are careful with money, having less debt than their parents. They have taken on student loans, but take on less credit card debt and household debt. (Maybe living longer at home is helping them get further ahead before launching?)

10. This next generation is realistic, pragmatic, and optimistic. You could call it pragmatic idealism.

These are, of course, broad generalizations about generational trends. There are individual differences that may account for some teens and twenty-somethings not fitting in these broader brush strokes. Whether we choose to see the positive or negative contributions this next generation will make to our society is up to each of us. Just like the similarities we see in our parents and grandparents who weathered the Great Depression, the next generation is having a different life experience, partially defined by the times they are coming of age in. The Time cover story from May 20 is well worth reading and discussing.

For those of us who have children or grandchildren in their teenage years and 20s, this article about the unique challenges our next generation faces reminds us to reach out to do what we can to guide and encourage their development. I believe in the wonderful young people I know in this age group. I feel hopeful about their future, and their ability to improve the world. As adults who care about them, we can take up our role to encourage them to work hard, be industrious and self-motivated, volunteer as early and often as possible to develop empathy, practice engaging in face-to-face communication starting in our families, and develop their character and faith. Their generation has its unique benefits as well as hardships, and it is our role to help encourage, develop and influence them for good, rather than stand by and lament.

Stories We Tell

I saw an intriguing film this past week made by young Canadian actor/writer/director Sarah Polley, called "Stories We Tell." The 2012 film was produced by the National Film Board of Canada, and has won several film festival awards. The film was just released in the US this week. The film is a perfect launching point for discussion about the power of our personal narrative and how it may differ from the narratives of others in our own family.

The film documents Polley's search to learn more about her mother, who was a Canadian actress and casting director. Her mother died of cancer when she was 11.Within her family, it had been astanding joke that she doesn't look like the rest of her four older siblings. She's the only redhead in the bunch. Her siblings, her father, her parents' close friends and family are all interviewed by Polley in the excavation of family secrets and the search for understanding and truth.

After her mother's death, Polley was raised by her father, Michael Polley, a former actor who turned to selling insurance after marrying her mother. In the film, Michael reads selected parts of his own memoirs with his reflections on his relationships with the children, and a balanced view of the pitfalls and gaps in his own marriage. Michael and Sarah, his youngest daughter, grew close as he finished raising her alone after his wife's death.

In the film, there is Sarah's investigation of a rumor that she is the product of an extramarital affair between her mother and someone other than her father.

I won't spoil the surprises of what Sarah finds out, but you owe it to yourself to see it. The film is artfully crafted, drawing us in as layers of facts and perceptions are shared in successive interviews Sarah conducts on film. There is much to ponder about her mother's true character, and about different aspects that were known to different people. Among the talented cast, there are 8mm film footage of look-alikes who artfully appear and bring the narration to life. 

There are questions about who the story belongs to, and the different take different friends and family have on the story. There are wonderful insights about what leads to infidelity, questions about whether people in a relationship ever love completely equally, and about what is the core of being a parent. There is an examination of what really is family. In addition, there is a sense of how impossible it is for one to be fully known, and how many different people may have their own, unique understanding of the same individual.

"Stories We Tell" is a powerful little film, and while simply made, gets to the heart of the complexity of being fully human. The film reminds us that while we have our own narrative, so do the people we care about.

Saying Goodbye

My family lost our matriarch and most senior member this week, as my grandmother passed just a few weeks short of her 100th birthday. I was glad that she could complete the end of her story, thanks to the wonderful hospice nurses who helped make it possible. She died peacefully in her own little apartment at the senior assisted living home which has been her home for a number of years. 

Spending time with my grandmother this last month made me reflect on lessons Ifirst learned in my late 20s and early 30s, when I was doing hospice social work early in my career. This week's events just made those lessons about losing a loved one much more personal. Here are a few lessons about helping yourself and other loved ones let go and say goodbye when the time comes:

Loss is a part of life. It's a part of the family life cycle.

Exits and entrances into the family and out of the family are pivotal moments for everyone in the family. This includes deaths, but also divorces, births, adoptions, and marriages . They are nodal life events that cause adjustments.

People are generally happier dying at home if at all possible. It's more intimate.

Our sense of hearing becomes more keen in the days before we depart, so even if a family member is unresponsive you can talk to them, reassure them, let them know that its okay to leave this body and make their transition. Some of our family at a geographic distance got to reassure Grandma by phone even when she was in her last several days.

Death can sometimes provide an opportunity to mend fences between family members. Sometimes you've had a conflicted relationship with the dying person and it may be unrealistic to think you are going to resolve all your feelings before they pass. Try to accept it.

Include younger family members in ways that seems appropriate, but not scary. It felt especially meaningful to have my young adult daughters come and say their own goodbyes. In some ways, including younger family members in suitable, age-appropriate ways helps them be a part of what the older family members are dealing with. It's also good loss education for younger family members who will have other losses to cope with and mourn in future years.

Ask questions of the hospice nurses or other medical staff. It helps to know about the dying process and what is happening as change accelerates in the final days and hours. It's calming to be reassured about what's normal.

Palliative care helps keep a patient comfortable and out of pain. Since supportive, hospice care lasts for only a few days, weeks, or months, we are not concerned about addiction in a dying patient. Hospice and end-of life care is all about comfort measures and helping the patient to make a peaceful transition.

People seem to choose their own timing. Try not to feel guilty if you aren't present at the time of the death. Hospice nurses often notice that family can be holding constant bedside vigil for hours, leave for a moment, and the patient will often die as family are not in the room.

Make peace. Say anything you need to say to your family member; don't regret not saying it later.

Our civilization and culture is not as advanced in terms of dealing with death and dying as some others. It's okay to use the words death, die, etc. Some patients will want to talk about it, but aren't sure the family is up for it.

Tears are good, and healing. Real men cry, too, if they feel like it. I respect a man that can cry.

Loss is often experienced based on your degree of attachment to the person you are losing.

Different family members can express their grief differently.

Loving touch can be the right way to connect with a dying loved one.

Each loss is unique. It's not useful to compare them. Losing an elderly grandparent who lived until almost 100 is not all the same loss as losing a child or a person in the prime of their life, or still with small children. All losses do put us in touch with the temporary nature of this life, the power of connection at all stages of life, and the way that families need each other in times of loss. The finality of loss makes me aware to tell the people I love how I feel about them frequently, and not to let my appreciation of other people go unspoken.

Siblings: It's Complicated

This week, I heard a story on NPR about several recent studies on the impact that older siblings have on younger siblings that got me reflecting. Siblings can be our oldest friends. They hold our past, and we hold theirs. We may be a good fit, but we might not be. We didn't pick them out. We compete as children for time, attention, and parental resources. Brothers and sisters help form our identity, for better or worse.

The NPR story featured interviews with an OB/GYN who works with pregnant teens, who noticed a pattern that if they were helping a pregnant teen with medical needs during her pregnancy, they were very often seeing her younger sister(s) in the coming years with a teen pregnancy of their own. In a follow-up study, they showed that girls with an older sister who got pregnant as a teen are 5 times as likely to have a teen pregnancy themselves.

Another study quoted in the NPR story followed the substantial increase in smoking if another sibling smokes. It's enough to make you wonder how your siblings can impact your life, your choices, and your personality. Perhaps siblings can influence us for good (as in being responsible, getting good grades, etc.), or for bad (smoking ,drugs, alcohol, shoplifting, early sexual activity). In some families, I see children working hard at differentiating from older siblings to be different on purpose.

Birth order also comes into play. Are you a typical oldest child who is responsible, seeks to please parents, and tries to influence younger siblings? Are you a middle child who got lost in the shuffle and can get along with anybody? Are you a typical youngest who was babied a little?

As a family therapist, I sometimes feel having siblings gives us our first opportunity to learn how to have a voice, assert ourselves, and learn how to become socially skilled in working things out with other people.

Siblings can be extremely different, or amazingly similar. Sometimes all you have in common is your parents, and growing up together. Different siblings can also have markedly different childhoods growing up in the same family. Growing up you may each be competing for a niche in the family. Parents will play into this, as in "Mary is our athlete." As parents, we want to be sure to see each child in a complete way, and not stereotype their strengths or roles. You can have as many 'good children' in the family as you have children. Try not to play favorites.

With adult siblings, an attitude of tolerance is helpful, and trying to stay out of judgment. Lowering our expectations also helps. It's wonderful if they end up becoming your closest ally and supporter, but it often doesn't happen. Try to appreciate what you can about them, respect your shared past, and set boundaries if and when you need to if you have a sibling who is destructive towards you. It can be hard when you have to work together as a team with aging parents if you aren't close.

The sibling relationship impacts many of us profoundly. It helps to define your core self. It can be a source of support, understanding, and strength, or it may be the source of sadness, hurt, and the feeling that you wish you could be closer. You can do your part to be a supportive sibling, and then some of it is up to chance, parenting, the goodness of fit between your personalities, and your ability (and theirs) to accept the differences between you. Having a sibling you feel close and connected to is a great asset, but it's a team sport that takes both you and the other person.

Impossible to Please, or Life with a Perfectionist

You might know someone like this. Nothing is ever right for them. There is no pleasing this person. It could be your partner, or it might be your boss. They pick at you, point out every mistake, and are never satisfied. Get skilled, because you're in a relationship with a perfectionist. Taking care of yourself and knowing how and when to set limits is going to be key to your survival and mental well-being. They are not likely to change, so you need extreme self-care so you don't get angry and bitter, depressed, or overwhelmed.

In Impossible to Please: How to Deal With Perfectionist Coworkers, Controlling Spouses, and Other Incredibly Critical People (New Harbinger Publications, 2012), psychologists and writers Neil Lavender and Alan Cavaiola do a great job of writing a guide for staying sane. Here are some of their tips:

1. Don't expect the controlling person to change.

2. Set your own expectations and benchmarks. (You will never meet theirs.)

3. State your own boundaries, clearly and without attitude or defensiveness.

4. Give yourself a little time to respond to unreasonable requests. You can say that you'll get back to them, and buy yourself a little time to consider how you want to respond.

5. Speak up. If the controlling person is at work, let them know how their behavior impacts your work, and what you would like them to do in the future. If you are in a personal relationship with the controller, let them know how their specific comments or behavior makes you feel, and what you would rather they do next time.

6. Agree to disagree.

7. Don't expect the other person to validate your feelings. Know that your feelings are important even if the controller can't acknowledge them.

8. Stay in your adult role. Just because they may behaving like a critical parent, don't become a child.

9. It can help to create distance for a while.

10. With criticism, assert your right to want something else or be different. Critical controllers tend to operate like there is only one right way to do everything, and its theirs.

11. Don't show your frustration; it won't help.

12. Don't let them undermine your self-esteem and self-confidence.

13. If you're at work, consider speaking up to HR or someone with the authority to change things.

14. If it's in your personal life, get a little counseling to identify some coping strategies or help you make other plans.

Why do people become perfectionists? It can't be fun. While it's good to have high standards, controlling perfectionists push away others with their perfectionism. They may have deep-seated anxiety and their rigidity is how they cope. Often they are not happy, and more likely to be stingy with others and fear-based. Perfectionists are often unhappy and critical with themselves underneath that idealized view of themselves. People who are generally at peace with themselves don't invest in criticizing others with this intensity and mission. In close relationships we have to be vulnerable, and it has to be okay to be imperfect. People don't love you because you're perfect.

Impossible to Please has some useful strategies for getting perspective and getting up above the controlling perfectionist in your life with your self-esteem intact. This is a helpful book in the effort to not take their criticism personally, because the need to belittle you is really about them.

Growing Up Quiet

Over a third of the population are introverts, while the other two-thirds are extroverts. Introverts can have strong people skills, but they prefer to be interacting with people one-on-one, and they can get drained by group interaction. Introverts need alone time to recharge their energy.

If most people are extroverts, who enjoy lots of interaction and get recharged by being with people, then more parents and teachers are also extroverted. There is pressure from parents and teachers to get children to be more social.

 I often see children and teens in counseling whose parents worry that perhaps their child is not socially engaged with others on weekends and during other free time. When I check with the child or teen, sometimes they are not depressed, but have had more than enough people contact all week at school.

It often occurs that extroversion is the norm and the ideal, but we need to rethink that assumption. It's far better for us to be informed about the continuum of introversion to extroversion, and being sensitive accepting our own natural temperament type, as well as those of the people we're close to. There is nothing inherently bad about being an introvert.

This situation is the topic of the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain (Crown Publishers, 2012). In this well-written book, Cain suggests that we undervalue introverts. She charts the historical development of the ‘Extrovert Ideal’ from Dale Carnegie courses about how to win friends and influence people via extroversion, to Tony Robbins, Harvard Business School, American schools, and mega-churches. We favor extroverts, and it's not fair to those who are more reserved by natural temperament.

I found Cain's interview with Harvard developmental psychology researcher Jerome Kagan fascinating. He's in his 80s, and has spent his career studying the emotional and cognitive development of children. In one of his studies, begun in 1989, Kagan and his team began to study 500 four-month-old infants, and based on a 45 minute evaluation, he predicted which babies were likely to become introverts or extroverts as adults. In the study, babies were exposed to voices, noises, colors and smells. Their reactions varied widely, some being highly reactive, and others being low reactors.

Kagan reexamined his subjects at ages 2, 7, and 11. As it turned out, Kagan was right. His predictions were accurate that the babies who were highly reactive to stimuli at age 4 months usually grew into more serious, quiet, introverted types. The low reactive infants, who remained calm, were more likely to develop into relaxed, confident, extroverted types.

Cain examines brain research on what role the amygdala, the emotional switchboard in the brain, may play in differential reactivity in extroverts vs. introverts. Some of what determines reactivity may be hard-wired in your genetics. Another part is the influence of the world around you. David Dobbs developed a theory that some children are like dandelions, meaning they can thrive in just about any environment. "Orchid children," in contrast, have highly reactive nervous systems that can make them easily overwhelmed with adversity. Orchid children especially need a nurturing environment. These highly sensitive children can, with the right support and nurturing, grow to become even more socially skilled and have fewer emotional difficulties than the low-reactors.

It's helpful to know some of the concepts, particularly if you are on the quiet side, or are close to someone who is. It helps us accept that while your amygdala may be hard-wired to panic when you have to give a speech or make small talk in a crowd of strangers, your adaptive self-talk can calm you down and help you get through the temporary stress. Learning to coach yourself through situations that aren't natural for you helps train your frontal cortex (the higher level thinking part of your brain) to not let the amygdala (the ancient part of the brain) run the whole show.

Cain's book gives us a better way to understand and accept our own natural level of extroversion or introversion. She also encourages each of us to find our optimum level or "sweet spot" of stimulation. We don't want to be either bored (under-stimulated), or overwhelmed (over-stimulated).You can have some fun playing with how much stimulation, social interaction, and alone time you like in your week, your weekend, and your life.

Quiet is a perfectly good way to be, and a fascinating read. Understanding your own temperament, and that of your partner and children, is an excellent place to start.

Encouraging Your Child the Right Way

Parents often worry about their children's self-esteem, and try to find a balance between being too stingy with praise and overdoing it. As it turns out, we may want to help our children have a realistic view of how they are seen by others. Over-inflating self-esteem, as in “everybody gets a trophy,” may set your youngster up for a crash when they hit a rough patch down the road.

In Sue Shellenberger's recent Work and Family column in the Wall Street Journal (2/27), the journalist gives a practical update on current studies and thinking about the relationship between parental encouragement and developing solid life skills. As it turns out, high self-esteem is more a result of good performance than a cause. Overdoing it on the parental encouragement can make a child feel worse when things don't go well.

Mark Leary is a professor of both psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, who determined from his studies that children as young as 8 years old tend to have their self-esteem level fluctuate based on feedback from their peers about their likability and attractiveness. While children always need to feel loved and valued, Dr. Leary believes it's quite alright for children to feel poorly about themselves for a bit if they are behaving in ways that are mean, selfish, or generally not going to be adaptive in later life. We want to help our children create a positive, but also realistic, view of themselves.

I found it interesting that a study of 313 children, ages 8 to 13, published this February in the Journal of Experimental Psychologyfound that parents can do harm to their children’s self-esteem when pumping them up too much. The children can feel shame later when they experience frustration and defeat.

Research studies show that helping children have a realistic perspective about themselves is helpful. When researchers tried to inflate self-esteem of college students with flattery in a 2007 study published by the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, the college students’ grades worsened. Researchers proposed that the students’ inflated self-esteem may have made their attitudes more cavalier, causing them to study less, and resulting in dropping grades.

Here are some tips for parents about finding the right balance with encouragement:

1. Focus on the effort the child is putting in, not the grade or result.

2. Empathize when your child is struggling or having a rough time with something (academics, friends, a sport). You may want to share something age-appropriate that you struggled with, but hung in there and persevered.

3. Encourage your child to look at how others (his team, etc.) will see his or her behaviors, or other long-term positive outcomes in life, work, and relationships for doing the right thing.

4. Emphasize character-building choices.

5. Don't give up or encourage your child to give up. Don't predict future doom, as in “You will never succeed in life if you don't try out for Junior Lifeguards.”

6. Praise things that are sustainable, like effort on homework, rather than straight A’s.

Parents of children of all ages, go out there and give some encouragement this week. Build that resiliency, notice that effort, shine a light on the improvements, and focus on your child's creating a healthy and realistic view of him or herself. You can do it!

The Sociopath Next Door

Beware of the charm and the flattery. Both are warning signs of the charisma of a sociopath. I always wish I could warn young people before they begin dating. You might be young, insecure and lacking confidence in yourself, but don't mistake the charisma of a sociopath for true confidence. Through counseling a number of bewildered adults through trying to repair their lives after surviving having a parent, or a marriage or relationship with a sociopath, I have developed a lending library of books to help the wounded partner try to make sense of what's happened.

One excellent book to start with is The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, Ph.D. (Broadway Books, 2005). Stout is a Harvard psychologist who clears up the misconception that all sociopaths are violent criminals. They are not. In fact, Stout estimates that 4 in every 100 people, or 1 in every 25 people, fit the criteria for sociopathy. These individuals seldom seek counseling or professional help. Most often it's the people around and closest to the sociopath that are likely to come for counseling to try to heal from the trauma they have experienced.

Stout describes sociopaths as "ice people" who really aren't capable of loving or empathizing with others. This dynamic really confounds people who are in the majority who can do both of those things. It's been called various names, including psychopathy, sociopathy, guiltlessness disorder, missing conscience, and/or antisocial personality disorder. According to the DSMIV, the current bible of psychiatric diagnoses, people with antisocial personality disorder have to have at least 3 of these 7 criteria met:

1.      Failure to conform to social norms
2.      Deceitfulness or manipulative
3.      Impulsivity, failure to plan ahead
4.      Irritability, aggressiveness
5.      Reckless disregard for the safety of self and others
6.      Consistent irresponsibility
7.      Lack of remorse after having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another person
Researchers also note the tendency of sociopaths to crave greater than normal stimulation, which creates more risk-taking. Many sociopaths began to have legal issues as teens with breaking rules.  Their emotions run hollow. Many sociopaths are not violent and are not in prison. They may, however, be wreaking havoc on the lives of people who are in relationships with them or work with them. Sociopaths have no conscience, so it's like the normal rules don't apply to them. They may appear spontaneous, exciting, interesting, and charismatic, but they can be very dangerous to your safety, your self-esteem, your bank account, and your heart.

Both Stout and I have seen too many people hurt by sociopaths and helped them begin the journey to heal from the trauma that was caused. It's important for the public to be educated and aware that such people exist, and what some of the characteristic behaviors are.

In her book, Stout does a good job of discussing the nature vs. nurture debate about the possible causes of sociopathy. It's probably some of each. Identical twin studies have shown a heredity factor. No one can tell you exactly how a sociopath is created, but it's interesting to see the cultural differences in the incidence of sociopaths, which is more common in cultures which highly value individuality. In the United States, the incidence level of sociopathy appears to be on the rise.

Sociopaths want to win at any cost. They can marry for money or power. They can act attached, but it is not genuine. Some wish to have others feel sorry for them, see themselves as victims, and can be lazy while taking gross advantage of those closest to them.

In contrast, narcissists are somewhat different. Narcissists can't empathize with others, but they do have a conscience, and they can feel guilt. Narcissists can be in pain about the poor quality of their relationships because of their lack of empathy, and can enter therapy to address this pain.

True sociopaths would usually only go to therapy if court-ordered. Sociopaths feel little beyond the basics of pleasure and pain, aggression, boredom, frustration, or anger.  Sociopaths don't care about other people and they don't marry for love. See how dangerous they are, and how the unsuspecting person can get caught up in their web?

There are lots of religious, ethical, and moral implications of people not having a conscience. Stout does an excellent job of discussing these implications.

Mostly, The Sociopath Next Door is a wake-up call for people to be aware that sociopaths do exist, are more common that you might have imagined, and are not likely to change. It is incredibly helpful for people who have been traumatized by the damage of a sociopath to understand the disorder, and educate themselves in order to heal and move on with their lives. If the book helps increase public awareness so that people can avoid a sociopath, that's a really good outcome, too.

Are You Committed?

There’s a big difference between being interested in something and making a commitment to it. Whether it's making healthy changes to your diet, how often you exercise, making new friends, changing jobs, saving money or the decision to be a better partner or parent, it’s making a commitment to yourself and to others that really counts.

You can tell a lot about a person by looking at what their schedule says. What are your priorities? Adjust your schedule to reflect what you say you value. I am often working with my coaching clients on setting and reaching their most important life goals. It is sometimes useful to ask, “How is doing what I am currently doing helping me to reach my goal?” It might not be.

For example, if your partner is unhappy because you are working too much and you continue that behavior, and yet you say you value the relationship, you have a dilemma. A true commitment to being a more responsive partner will take setting boundaries around work, halting the people-pleasing of unreasonable clients or your boss, limiting your perfectionism about finishing everything in your emails and on your desk before you leave, and redefining your ideas about what it means to be truly successful at home as well as at work. Interest in being a better partner is a feeling, but leaving the office on time as a sacred ritual to preserve time with your partner is a repeated, new behavior.

Interest is passive, and it might be fleeting. Commitment is continuing to keep the faith, and do the hard stuff even when you don’t necessarily feel like it. Commitment takes the long-term view, and recognizes that most things that are really valuable take some sustained effort.

Parenting comes to mind as a perfect case for the need for commitment. It’s common to be interested in having children. Most prospective parents picture a sweet and loving baby or small child who loves you back. As I coach parents through some of the unanticipated and difficult chapters in parenting, that’s when I call for commitment. I’m thinking about when your teenager is rude, defiant, and testing all the boundaries. 

Commitment is also needed to have the tenacity as a parent to hang in there for answers when your child has learning disabilities, physical challenges, ADHD or ADD, depression, anxiety, or chemical abuse problems. This past week, I was moved by an NPR interview with David Sheff, author of a new book, Clean, about what he has learned about addiction treatment in the US through trying to help his son, Nic, now 30, and sober for 5 years, through his addiction to heroin and crack cocaine. Sheff never gave up on Nic. That’s commitment. What a lucky guy Nic is to have a father with that level of care and tenacity.

In marriage, commitment translates into listening to your partner, making a decision to do loving and thoughtful behaviors (even when you don’t feel like it), closing the exits by deciding to go direct with courage towards your partner about any concerns rather than passively complain to someone else, and continuing your own journey to bring your best self to the relationship. Being committed in relationships means making a positive decision to create regular time together for fun and for play. This takes being aware of the energy you bring into your closest relationship, and taking some effort and care into keeping things interesting and setting new goals.

It’s okay if you don’t want to be committed to something, but own it. Take responsibility for not just being interested in the people, causes and changes closest to your heart. Making a real commitment can inform your daily choices and behaviors, and that can make such a difference. Interest is passive and transitory. Commitment is more solid, fixed, and has some muscle and follow through behind it. With the things you want in your own life, stop to reflect on whether you are interested or whether you are committed. Make sure to check that your behaviors match up with your most important commitments.

The Empty Nest

Parenting is like a long distance run. You are so focused on the race, for such a long time, that when the youngest child heads off to college, it's a big transition not only for the child, but also for the parent or parents who remain behind. What's next?

The transition to the empty nest is one I've helped many clients with over the years. It's also one I've experienced this last year as my youngest daughter headed off to the dorms. For me personally, after 23 years of parenting as a central focus, things changed. They still need you at times. Send money. Sometimes they call or text, and it's important to be there. You also want to give them the emotional freedom to separate from parents, make friends, organize their own life, and have parents step into the background. It's kind of like the National Guard—we’re here if you need us.

As a parent, we have to grieve the loss of an era ended. Just like when our children felt it was uncool to hold our hand, or detected the truth about the tooth fairy. We weren't perfect. We missed some things. We can miss the sweet little child who wrote us love notes, drew us pictures, wanted to go to the park, loved us to read stories, and couldn't wait to play board games. It's okay to miss that.

The empty nest transition is about beginning a different season of your life as well. It's time to reevaluate your own life. It's an opportunity to take a look at your life, and what you may still want to accomplish after launching the children. Do you want to take a different direction with how you spend your time? Would you like to reinvest or reinvigorate your career? Make a difference by volunteering? Improve or change your own relationships? It can be a time to enrich your marriage, or if you are single, maybe you'd like to date again. Perhaps you'd like to deepen your friendships, or add new ones in a way that was harder to do with children still at home?

Perhaps it's time to make a vision board for the goals you may want to create now. It may have been quite a long time since you've thought about how you'd like to further develop yourself. You may want to go back to school to study something you've never had a chance to, or make plans to travel more, want to downsize the house, learn to paint, take cooking classes, or start your own business. If not now, when?

You'll be a good role model if you reinvent yourself some in the empty nest years. You don't want the kids to worry about you not being okay while they are living their life as young adults. Rather than being sad, better to take responsibility for making it a positive transition for yourself. Plus, there are upsides to being an empty nester. I'm reminded of a cute New York Times interview a month or two ago with writer Anne Leary, who is releasing her new novel. She and her husband, actor Denis Leary, are new empty nesters as their two young adult sons recently moved out. She thought it was going to be hard, but they're doing okay and even having some fun with less structure and responsibility. Leary notes that she and her husband never realized how stressful it was to be good role models.

The nest can't stay full forever. Everything changes. Remind yourself that this is the result of successful parenting that your young adults have launched into college. For those of you with a college student or two headed home for spring break, like at our house, It's time to stock up the fridge and welcome the flock home for a while.

Making Repairs

I really liked Ben Affleck's acceptance speech at the Academy Awards ceremony this February. In accepting the Oscar for best picture, he acknowledged and thanked his wife, actress Jennifer Garner. He told her that while their relationship has taken a lot of hard work, there is no one he'd rather work with. Truly great, committed relationships do take continued awareness about yourself, the other person, how you treat each other, and how you can repair things if they go off track.

Great relationships are a little like great houses. You can't buy a beautiful house with a terrific yard, move in, and not repair or fix anything for 5, 10, 20 or more years and expect to have anything of value. Both houses and relationships take regular attention, care, and repairs when things aren't working.

All couples are going to disagree at times. What matters most is being able to repair the problem. It helps to stay solution-focused. Avoid blame. Describe what you observed, as neutrally as possible, and explain what would work better for you next time. Apologize for any ways in which your behavior, thoughtlessness, or reaction made the situation worse. Ask what you could do differently when a similar situation arises again. (It probably will; most couples have patterns). This should help your partner be less defensive with you, too.

Both people in a relationship need to share responsibility for making repairs. I don't like to see the responsibility always resting with one partner, while the other one stubbornly refuses to ever take initiative for a repair. That's not fair, and it will eventually burn out your partner and breed resentment.

I also consider it a danger sign when couples don't speak to each other for days when they have had a fight. This 'deep freeze' is often very painful for one or both partners, and is actually a very wounding and passive-aggressive behavior. It's perfectly okay to cool down when angry, decide you will meet up and talk it through a bit later, but a day or more of not speaking is a really bad idea.

Try to avoid black and white or extreme thinking when there is conflict between you and the other person. While it is sometimes necessary to cut-off or end a relationship that is toxic or dangerous to you, most healthy relationships do have conflicts from time to time. It's not generally helpful to threaten to leave or end the relationship every time you hit a speed bump. The conflicts, if worked through in a respectful way, can actually deepen your connection and understanding of each other.

Choosing a wonderful house to live in, or a terrific partner to share your life with, is a great start. The happily ever after part often depends on different skills, which definitely include attention, care, maintenance, and regular repairs as needed. Think of it as protecting your investment.

Teach Your Children Well

We need to raise children that are strong, resilient, and have good coping skills—just in case Plan A doesn't work out. For these reasons, I enjoyed Madeline Levine’s new book, Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success, or Why Values and Coping Strategies Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or Fat Envelopes (Harper Collins, 2012). In this succinct book, Levine digs deeper than the tiger parent vs. overprotective parent debate, and helps us take a long-term perspective on parenting, and what type of adults we are hoping to launch.

Helping our children find authentic success means assisting them in learning to love learning, develop their own strengths and interests, find productive and meaningful work to support themselves, become capable, resourceful, and resilient, create loving relationships with family and friends, and contribute to our world in some way. That’s more valuable than awards, trophies, honor rolls, or admission to a prestigious college.

Levine reminds us that there is more than one definition to building a successful life. Sometimes it takes us way into adulthood to figure that out. This book gives us encouragement to define our own version of success, and parent with that end in mind. I have wanted for my own children to grow into responsible, kind, capable adults who contribute to the world in their own unique way. I wanted them to be able to cope with not only successes, but also with loss, disappointment, waiting, and developing enough inner resources to create a Plan B,C or D as needed.

Levine has some interesting views on how an over-focus on self-esteem in parenting has left some young adults unprepared for the rejection and frustrations of real life. Authentic self-esteem really comes from feeling capable, not from awards, recognition, or compliments (while those are nice to receive). By being too child-centered, we can add to a narcissistic trait that can develop in our children. It's important for our children to know what they think/feel/want is important, but so are those of others. Ultimately, we are reminded that as parents, teaching our children and teens life skills to increase their independence and ability to function in the world, and how to relate compassionately to others, are among the best gifts we can give them.

In Teach Your Children Well, Levine does an excellent job of defining some of the developmental tasks children need our help with in the elementary school years, the middle school years, and the high school years.

Parenting isn't, as Levine writes, one job. It's really more like different jobs at different developmental points, and we need to make intentional shifts as parents in order to help our children and teens move along on their own path to an authentically successful life of their own. We don't want to become so child-centered, overprotective, over-scheduled, or allowing of dependency on us that we fail to help our children prepare to launch. Taking a long-term perspective helps. Our long-term goal in parenting should be to work ourselves out of a job, and launch a well-balanced, strong young adult who can live, love, work, play, and cope well. Teach Your Children Well has some great ideas for the journey.

Children of Divorce

Children whose parents divorced are affected by that loss, and for a longer time than people often think. This was among the findings of a pioneer research psychologist, Judith Wallerstein, Ph.D., who passed away in June 2012 after making significant contributions to the research of mental health concerns for families and children after divorce.

Wallerstein wrote 60-70 journal articles and 5 popular books on the topic of helping families and children after divorce, several with her co-author Susan Blakelee, including The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce (2000), What About The Kids? (2003), and Second Chances:  Men, Women, and Children a Decade after Divorce (1989).

Wallerstein was the lead researcher on a 25-year longitudinal study on the impact of divorce on children. She followed 131 children from 60 families in Marin County, California beginning in 1971. She met and assessed the children again every 5 years for 25 years. Wallerstein has been criticized for not having a control group of children whose parents didn't divorce, as well as for not having a larger sample size.

Despite these critiques, she really did contribute to the knowledge base of mental health professionals and influenced changes in family law and custody in order to try to better meet the needs of children. She taught for over 30 years at UC Berkeley in the Social Welfare program. She lost her own father at age 8 from his early death, perhaps stirring her interest in the profound impact of parent-child bonds and attachment.

Wallerstein was a pioneer in the early 1970s, as the divorce rate in the US was climbing, to begin to shift the focus to how this change was impacting the children involved, and what parents can do to minimize that impact, rather than increase the damage. Here are some important points from her life's work that Wallerstein leaves as a legacy:

1. Parents divorcing is a significant and generally long-lasting loss for children.

2. Grief impacts children differently, depending on their age and emotional maturity at the time of the divorce. The loss issues experienced by children can reappear at later watershed points in a child's development, triggering more feelings long after the divorce.

3. One of the great risks to children is the alienation or abandonment by the father, emotionally, time-wise, or financially becoming disengaged.

4. Both parents need to work through their own issues of loss, anger, resentment, etc. about the break-up of the marriage to avoid poisoning the children with the adults' feelings. I always recommend that divorcing parents work out their own feelings in personal therapy, or a divorce recovery program for this reason. Your children, no matter what age they are, cannot be your listeners to bad stuff about their other parent. It's not fair to put them in that position.

5. Parents dating again, remarrying, and blending together families is challenging, and needs to be handled with a great deal of sensitivity and thought. Step-parents shouldn't be asked to replace parents where the parents both exist, they are simply another adult who should love the child, and leave the discipline to the biological parents. It takes a really mature grown-up person to love someone else's child. (Screen carefully!)

6. Children of divorce can be vulnerable to depression or worry. They can feel especially concerned that they not experience a divorce in their own life as an adult. Parents should be watchful and get professional counseling support for the child if it is needed, to work through the child's grief.

7. Each child has their own grief process about their parents’ divorce, independent from what the other children are feeling.

8. The transitions back and forth between the parents' households often stir up feelings for children and teens. Many teens resent the impact on their own life with packing up and changing houses.

9. Custody arrangements need to be revisited from time to time to make sure they are still working for the child or children involved.

10. Children often later resent a parent who ruined their relationship with the other parent. While a child may initially join with a parent by fusing with what the parent is feeling about their former partner, this usually backfires down the road.

I had the pleasure of hearing Wallerstein present her findings at a conference for mental health professionals 20 years ago at UCLA. She was bright, caring, and deeply devoted to helping families through the divorce process and on to healing.

Judith Wallerstein was an important pioneer researcher about the impact of divorce on children and families, and got mental health professionals and parents thinking about the longer-term picture. While Wallerstein sometimes got criticized for her research methods or for her comments about questioning the necessity for the increasing divorce rate, ultimately she had the best interest of children at heart. Children are often the most impacted in a divorcing family, and their developmental and emotional needs should be at the center of every decision that is made. After all, the divorce wasn't their choice.