Your kids need you to relax, says pastor
STATE COLLEGE, PA—Do you want happy children? Then relax. Award winning author and pastor David Code has published a new book on how parental stress affects children.
In Kids Pick Up on Everything Code says that children soak up the stress of their parents, which can then manifest in health problems, behaviour problems and neurological disorders.
He says he wrote the book out of frustration:
"As an Anglican minister, I worked with so many families in crisis, but by the time they asked me for help, it was often too late to do any good. I remember sitting in the living room of one family in crisis, and the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. And suddenly, a very un-orthodox question popped into my head: Is this family stressed-out because their child in crisis, or is their child in crisis because this family is stressed-out?
"This one, strange question led me on a journey into the research of the National Library of Medicine in Washington, DC, where I discovered many studies suggesting a link between parental stress and the recent increase in child disorders. It was as if a light bulb came on for me, because it made perfect sense with the families I had observed."
Healthy parents need community
Code has been featured in the international media for encouraging parents to prioritize their marriages and reduce their stress levels. He says his books draw on the latest research in neuroscience and his own study of families in more than 20 countries, across five continents. He claims that stress may even be more damaging to a child's healthy development than external and environmental toxins, and can contribute to things like asthma, allergies, obesity and ADHD.
While stress is "the new normal" for many parents, Code says this is stemming more from our isolation than workloads or new technology. Human beings were designed for community, and when we stop socializing and developing community relationships, our stress increases.
"Today's parents can sense in their hearts that something is wrong with their parenting strategies," he says, "because they aren't getting the results they expected with their kids. But they weren't sure what was wrong.
Disney World parenting doesn't work
He says modern parents have bought into the "myth" that the more attention you give children, the happier they will be. In reality, the problem is not the amount of attention the children are getting, but that their parents are unhappy and have no life of their own.
"So, today's parents kill themselves to try to create Disney World around their kids: a stress-free, trauma-free childhood of attention and affirmation, so their kids will grow up to be happy.
"My question is, where are the results? Studies show today's parents spend more time with their kids, and yet today's kids don't seem more fulfilled. Rather, they seem more troubled and entitled.
"The Disney World Strategy isn't working."
Steps to self-reliance
When parents focus on their own marriages, community relationships and social lives, it not only reduces the household's overall stress level, it also helps children develop self-reliance. This, says Code, is key for helping children become healthy adults.
"Remember the old saying, 'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day?' Well, stop giving your kid a fish every day—instead, teach him or her how to fish for a lifetime.
"Kids need to learn how to behave in public. If you 'lovingly' tolerate their bad behaviour, then they never learn how to control themselves and that threatens their future relationships.
"Kids need to learn how to keep house. If you 'lovingly' feed them and clean up after them, then they never learn how to cook, shop for healthy food, or scrub a bathroom. You might tolerate that, but will their future partner?
"Kids need to learn how to respect authority—authority is not a dirty word. If you 'lovingly' tolerate their disrespect, you are programming them to argue with their teachers and professors, or to clash with their future bosses. If a child doesn't learn how to cooperate and compromise, you have jeopardized their future."
How would Jesus parent?
Code says misguided parenting can stem from a faulty understanding of what love is, which in turn can link to a faulty view of Jesus.
"I think we have turned Jesus into a caricature," he says. "Yes, He was all about love and forgiveness, but Jesus was also a truth-teller, who gave people honest feedback. Today's parents are forgiving even the most outrageous behaviours in their children, thinking that they are loving as Jesus loved. But they are overlooking the times Jesus was angry, and blunt, and had the courage to tell it like it is.
"I think people within the Church need to take another look at their definition of what love is. If parents ever want their kids to hold a job or maintain a loving relationship, they need to praise good behaviour and criticize bad behaviour as the child is growing up. The sooner kids learn that the world does not revolve around them, the better.
"This may sound harsh, but it's much kinder to teach a child this lesson at age 10 than at age 30, when they can't hold a job or maintain a relationship."
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