Melissa Soderberg, Head of School
October 24, 2017
 
Dear Families and Friends,
 
When my first son was about to be born, I remember panicking about having the right stroller, the right bedding and the most educational toys -- until my doctor stopped me in all seriousness on one visit, saying, "children have been raised for centuries without any of this 'stuff' and I am sure he is going to be fine." And so began my first foray into modern parenting -- an age in which I am given the sense that there is no product I can buy or decision I can make that will not help in fixing any dilemma I run into from my sons' earliest days on the earth into their twenties.
 
I write you as a parent and educator knowing I am not a better parent than others -- or even a good parent compared to experts in parenting -- though I do think often about being a parent and believe that much of what is marketed to parents about children is a hustle. What we know of the human brain and child development (short of disease-prevention and diet) supports what my kind, 70-year-old physician asserted in her office -- that children thrive where there are clear values with lots of psychological and physical room to explore without pressure.
 
In my own family, my husband and I have recently been reflecting on the ways we were raised by our parents. We admire their clarity of what they expected (and didn't expect of us), and the unflappable ways they communicated those values to us as their children. Perhaps it was their pre-war upbringing or just a simpler time, but I increasingly believe that what they wanted most for us was to be healthy and productive people, and everything they did -- or more often did not do -- was to that end. 
 
So, when I came across Amy Morin's 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do and now her 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don't Do I began to see the work of being a good parent as more of a framework of resistance to the increased societal pressure of consumerism, victimization, blaming and achievement at all costs than a list of actions that would ensure my children's happiness and success.
 
One particularly salient point she makes is that strong parents don't allow fear to dictate their choices. In this age of anxiety, I am in more conversations in which parents discuss not allowing their children to drive a car, take a certain class, play a particular sport, befriend a certain student, apply to a college in a specific city, travel to a certain region of the country, ride a bike to school, attend a specific summer program, go to particular section of the city and so on. While each activity may represent logical concern, I am struck by the litany of injuries we can imagine our children experiencing when most experts would suggest that the cell phones in their hands (and in the case of younger children, our hands) are likely to be more dangerous to their mental and physical health.
 
Somehow, we have arrived as parents at a place where it seems any anxiety we feel we freely express to our children. I know my parents had many strong opinions and fears about things I chose to do or that were happening to me, but often they kept their mouths shut while they hugged me and coaxed me to talk about what was going on. They saw their silence as protecting me while they allowed me the distance to learn for myself.
 
In his article, How to Raise an American Adult, Ben Sasse (R-NE) sees this shift particularly with affluent children and describes a "drift towards perpetual adolescence" among older people where "too many children don't know what an adult is anymore -- or how to become one." He adds, "Perhaps more problematic, older generations have forgotten that we need to teach them."
 
It is beginning to appear to me that the increased fragility experts report in children these days stems from how we as adults are framing the ways they are growing up -- and we are going to have to be more vigilant, more patient, more grown-up and mentally strong if we are going to raise the kind of people we want to influence our world.
 
What does this mean? We may need to buy less, blame less, be more present and less vocal. Our children know we love them, not because they are the center of our universe (which Morin describes as a bad idea), but because we care about them enough to let them choose their friends (even when it means biting our tongue), make bad decisions and face consequences without excuses and victimization, and even tell them we won't buy something "everyone else has" that we can afford simply because we do not think it's a good idea for our child to have one.
 
Our children will know we love them because we care enough to raise them well, which is the greatest gift to them we could give.
 
Warmly,
 
Melissa
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