It’s OK for Your Kids to Be Miserable Sometimes

It’s OK for Your Kids to Be Miserable Sometimes

Source: Lisa Bloom

Better they should be miserable than you should be miserable, that’s for sure – as long as they’ve earned it. I’m not talking about child abuse or neglect. I’m talking about allowing them to suffer a reasonable amount for the natural and fair consequences of their behavior.

So little Zachary got busted for smacking his sister Chloe, and now he’s screaming in wretchedness in his room because you grounded him. Ho hum. That’s his problem, not yours. Turn up your music, have a cookie, call your best friend, read a book to Chloe. He’ll be fine. This is how he learns and grows.

If you’re always running to comfort the crying kid or trying to calm down the hysterical toddler, they don’t learn to work things out themselves. And you have needlessly run yourself ragged. No wonder you never have a second to think.

Alone time is important for kids’ proper development, and not just when they’re wailing. Here’s another piece of advice that saw me through:

Children’s Entertainment Is Not Your Job

Many working moms unnecessarily drain themselves managing every minute of their kids’ leisure time. Unless you’re a professional clown, entertainment of children should not be a part of your job description.

By which I mean leaving the kids (safely) on their own is a good thing. Let them hang out in their room with books, blocks, paper, and crayons and figure out what to do. Some of my happiest memories are staring out the window from my grandmother’s house as a child. I imagined myself jumping off the roof or building a secret fort or stringing a rope bridge over to the next house. I mapped out my first novel. My grandma Fox did not assume responsibility for my every amusement, and it would never have dawned on me to ask her to. She loved me. She fed me. She asked me to help her in the kitchen and around the house, and I did, proud to take responsibility like a big girl for shucking ears of corn, bring in the groceries, or walking her poodle, Linus Pauling. Each time I came to visit, our first stop was the corner bookstore. I was allowed to buy one book, two if I begged (became an outstanding beggar). Then she left me alone with gorgeous blocks of unstructured time to enjoy them. Thos books and my imagination were my entertainment for the weekend, and it was heaven.

And Fox genuinely enjoyed my visits because she didn’t run herself ragged dragging me from one child’s activity to the next. She didn’t sit on the floor nor did she pretend to enjoy games with me that weren’t her cup of tea. I stretched by listening to her music (Bing Crosby) and watching her TV shows with her (Masterpiece Theatre – to this day, the opening theme music still puts me right to sleep). She quietly left my favorite cake in the refrigerator and never commented in the morning that a giant slice had carved itself out and disappeared while she was sleeping, so long as the knife, fork, and plate had washed themselves and found their way neatly into the dishwasher.

I implored my parents to let me visit Fox as much as I could during my childhood.

Two economists at the University of California, San Diego recently conducted a time study and found that moms today spend more time on child care (an average of twenty-one hours per week for college-educated women and sixteen hours per week for non college-educated) than moms did a generation ago (twelve hours per week, on average). How can that be possible when there are significantly fewer stay-at-home moms today? After all, the stay-at-home moms had all that face time with their kids. They had the home team advantage! The only explanation is that my mother’s generation left us to our own devices most of the time. Kids were expected to play alone or with siblings or friends. Parents were not expected – nor, frankly, were they invited – to play with us. Parents were, to a large extent, authorities to be rebelled against. Inviting them into the fort would give aid and comfort to the enemy.

My kids make this mistake only once: “Mom, I’m bored.”

“Oh, great!” I said, eagerly. “Here’s a list of things for you to do. Start with cleaning your room. Next, wash the windows. There’s some crud baked on to this pan that really needs a good scrubbing to get it off. Did you rewrite that homework assignment to bring up your grade? How’s that thank you note to Grandma coming along? Honey? Where’d you go?”

I always interpret “I’m bored” as “How may I be of assistance?”

When my kids were little and they weren’t required to do anything right at that moment, I called it “free time” and bestowed it upon them like the glorious gift it was: “Okay, we’re home, there’s an hour until dinner, so you have…free time!” They saw this as a special treat. As I do. Free time for them means precious fre time for you. And that’s what it’s all about.

In a landmark study called “Ask the Children,” researchers asked 1,000 kids what one wish they had for their parents. Researchers expected the answer would be the children’s wish for more family time. “I wish Mommy would play with me more”? Nope. The top answer? For their parents to be “less tired and stressed.”

In her warm and wise parenting books, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee and The Blessing of a B Minus, Dr. Wendy Mogel comes to the same conclusion: Back off and give your kids the chance to solve their own problems, to exercise the divine gift of free will, to learn not to panic over pain. In short, give them the freedom to fail. She comes at it from a different perspective – because it’s better for your kids, as over-protective, over-involved parents produce flaccid, nervous children who struct to become independent, self-sufficient adults.

From my perspective, I know that mom need some grownup mental space for ourselves, to daydream and problem solve and create and wander. We need, figuratively if not literally, Virginia Woolf’s “room of one’s own,” a place without a changing table, playpen, or Sponge Bob.

Take a break, Mom. Even your kids want you to. And for heaven’s sakes, sleep with grownups only.

Lisa Bloom, author of THINK: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed Down World (Copyright © 2011), from which the above is excerpted, is an award-winning journalist, legal analyst, trial attorney, mom of two, and the daughter of renowned women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred. She is the legal analyst for CBS News and The Dr. Phil Show.