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Quarantine Parenting Part 2: SWOT+

Last week I wrote about your parenting style, which is pretty well tied into your attachment style. While these styles don’t paint the entire picture, they do give a good baseline for how we relationally approach parenting our kids. We parents carry so many stories and libraries of information around about who our kids are. Most of the time, the biggest problem with parenting is the parent. We get in the way with things like what we like and don’t like about them, what we hope for them, and what we are afraid of about them. It’s easy to feel pretty overwhelmed about how to parent them well. I’ve adapted an exercise (some might call it an assessment) that will help you get out of the way, and clearly identify the make up of your kids.

If you’ve been around team building or organizational development, you may be familiar with the SWOT analysis. This is often used in businesses and organizations to identify what’s going well, and what’s not going well both internally and externally. SWOT is an acronym for: Strengths; Weaknesses; Opportunities; and Threats. I’m adapting this exercise to use as an assessment for parenting.

We’re going to take a look at doing a SWOT+ analysis on your individual kids. You may notice that I’ve added an “+” to the original exercise described in the first paragraph. This represents the future oriented “hopes and motivations” of our kids. Each kid is a unique creation, and needs to be treated as such. Good parenting is about knowing how to engage differently with each unique child, not as though they are a heard of animals (though it sometimes feels that way). 

I’ll explain the exercise and then provide an example SWOT+ to show you what it might look like. Sometimes this is better to do on a whiteboard or poster-board if you have those available. The SWOT+ assessment is a 3-part exercise addressing the make up of the child (internal), your influence as parents (external), and the future hopes and motivations of the child (eternal).

A few final thoughts before proceeding: Don’t worry about getting it right. Think of this as a living document that you’ll add/edit/change over time. The exercise doesn’t have to be linear, feel free to go back and forth over the different categories. (Warning, this is not something your child needs to see until they are mature enough — mid to late teen years.)

SWOT+ 

Internal (What’s unique about the child)
Strengths & Weaknesses

Section Goal: Find out what’s your child needs help with, and what they are good at. Try to fill this section out in a 2:1 ratio of strengths to weaknesses.

Strengths
Sometimes, especially with teenagers, we forget what is amazing about our kids. This might be the section your kids need to spend the most time on. What are they good at? What is a gifting of theirs that you want to name and highlight about who they are? It’s easy to miss what is good about our kids when we aren’t pointing out for them what is good. Try to balance their strengths between what they do and who they are (we are human beings, not human doings). Examples: Creative, artistic, thoughtful, follow through, compassion, remorse, empathy, plays well on their own, reading, athletic, leader, smart, competitive, relationships. 

Weaknesses.
What does your child lack or need help with that they are naturally not good at? Sometimes a weakness relates to an underutilized gift. Think of weaknesses as where they will need other people to help them. Weaknesses are less about normal development, and more about what they are not naturally gifted at. Examples: patience, compassion, team work, initiative, appropriate emotional regulation, relationships. If you find yourself naming more weaknesses than strengths, that might say more about you than it does about your child. 

IDEA – If my son is not good with time management but is great at follow through, I might need to adjust how I give him deadlines that set him up to win opposed to a expecting him to magically become better about time management. Asking him to clean his room by 3pm today might not be specific enough for him to manage that whole process in a timely manner. 

External (Parenting opportunities and threats)
Opportunities & Threats 

Section Goal: To name how the child’s gifts and abilities are uniquely influenced by you the parent(s). Keep in mind how your parenting style (Withdrawn, Hyperactive, Confused, Comfortable) might be helping or hurting your specific child.

Opportunities.
Taking into account his/her gifts and abilities, what current opportunities are available for you to encourage and develop in your child? In this time of quarantined living, if your child is artistic, this would be a great time for them to have a portion of the day set aside to learn and develop a new type of art. Other examples might be: Reading, writing short stories, developing a new craft, hobby or skill. Opportunity has a lot to do with motivations, which we will talk about at the end. What are the unique opportunities that each parent individually has to engage in a special with your child?

Threats.
Some dad’s get into “Alpha-male” battles with their sons. Some mom’s get into nagging and petty fights with their daughters. Most parents struggle with the child that is most like them. What is something that is challenging you with developing and encouraging your child in achieving their goals in this time of life? What would threaten you from helping or engaging well with them? For example, a kid loves to be outside playing games, but you’ve just had knee surgery and cannot play with them. Or more nuanced, your child needs a lot of physical touch, but you aren’t a touchy-feely person (avoidant parenting style?) keeps you from meeting this need in them. 

Eternal (Encourage your childs’ purpose)
Hopes & Motivations

Section Goal: Name at least one hope, and one unique motivation about your child (not about you!). What they are motivated by and hope for has a lot to do with how they will influence their world. There will never be another person in the history of the world like them, help them discover and live into who they were created to be.

Hopes & Motivations.
Your child tells you often about what they hope for, they just might not say it in an obvious way. For example, my 12 year old son hopes to be included and is motivated by attention. He’s always up and about, looking for ways to be involved with his siblings or with us, his parents. When we give him a little bit of those things that motivate him, he comes alive. One of my other kids hopes for independence and is motivated by money and good food. Knowing these things is extremely helpful in how we approach each kid uniquely. If I parent my 12-year old as though he wants to be independent, he’s going to feel profoundly misunderstood. What does your child hope for, and what motivates them? 

Now that we’ve talked through each of these categories, set aside some time (15-20 minutes per kid) to complete each section for each of your kids. Again, I’d recommend some posterboard or one of those “giant sticky notes” you get from an office supply store. Seeing these words written down on paper helps to clarify the process. 

The next part in this series is setting goals. This will come from taking your parenting style and your kids SWOT+ and applying these to some specific goals for each one of them, and your family. Check back later this week for that post. 

Have questions, or want to set up some parent coaching? Let’s connect.

Example SWOT+

Christopher – 13 Years Old
Strengths: Others-centered, athletic, competitive, numbers/math, flexible, diplomatic.

Weaknesses: Attention to details, Intuition, Tends to look for others to make decisions. Has to compete with younger sister for attention.

Opportunities: Katie (younger sister) & her being in 6th grade with him next year. Gifted in soccer, mom played soccer in college, so time for them to work on this together. Has ample time to learn coding and other basic math implementations with technology.

Threats: Time with Dad b/c of dad’s work schedule. Tends to get lost in family needs/discussions because he is quiet and removed. Mom’s hyperactive parenting style can overwhelm him with too much energy. Dislikes being given multiple tasks at one time (weakness- attention to details)Hope.

Hopes & Motivations: Motivated by surprises. Wants to be a teacher when he grows up. Energized by serving/helping others.

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Boredom

When my kids were younger, they would often complain of not having anything to do. It was tempting to spring into action, and give them a project or some kind of entertainment to quiet their boredom. At some point in those early parenting years, we stumbled onto something together: Boredom is the gateway to creativity.

When we let our kids be bored, they found their imaginations. Cardboard boxes became space ships. Flour and sugar littered the kitchen because they baked cookies. The couch cushions were fashioned into the walls of a tent kingdom in the den. 

I wonder what boredom might uncover in your life. What creativity might you fid if you said no to the many distractions. 

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Testing Relationships

Depending on the age difference, kids test out their emotions on their siblings. Kids yell, hit, scream, cry, manipulate, shut down, lie, cheat, steal, and pout. They are working out how to be in relationships with themselves and the people they live with. 

These tests are pretty safe to run, because kids don’t get a choice to leave or stay. So there is a lot of latitude they have with how they treat one another. 

A lot of times these “tests” don’t go all that well. But it’s ok, because kids don’t really know what they are doing. That is not the case as adults. We will run off the people who are close to us if we keep testing them. 

At some level, we all keep running these tests with those closest to us, especially in our marriage. Yes, we’re adults, but we’re still trying to figure out ourselves, and life. 

If we continue these behaviors in our marriages, it will lead to us treating our spouse more like a sibling than a lover. 

What tests are you running in your marriage? What questions about yourself are you trying to answer by testing your relationships? 

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The Viewpoint 1.1

The Viewpoint is a weekly roundup of content I have come across throughout the week that is worth reposting. This content will often be an article or a book I’ve recently read, or something else that is of cultural significance.

One of my good friends talks about the word “viewpoint” as nothing more than a view from a point. When we change our point of view (or sometimes the point of our view — which is a different issue altogether), we can see differently. Relationships grow when we are open to changing our view.

The Viewpoint

Vol 1, Issue 1

  1. You Are What You Watch?
    This article from the NY Times covers several interesting topics about the rise of television consumption. It’s a fascinating read that covers a lot of ground. The two topics of most interest to me were the social science research done about children and Sesame Street, and the affects on someone’s IQ based on the amount of TV watched.

    Television has changed dramatically in the last 5 years. On demand content and streaming services have created a massive library of accessible information and entertainment. As with any technological advance, the danger is in the use of the system without boundaries. I’m especially concerned for our kids and their parents marriage. The television (screens) offers the safest place of escape from relational hardships, and what we watch is impacting us far more than we realize.

  2. Fatal Stabbing Recorded by Dozens of Onlookers.
    Sad news this week out of New York about a fight that broke out amongst some High School students one evening that turned into a deadly stabbing. The troubling part of this story comes from the details that “dozens” (from the 50-70 that were present) other kids were watching and video recording the young man bleeding to death in the parking lot. Some of these bystanders live streamed the event, and others posted the video to their social media accounts. Share this story with your age appropriate teenagers (if your child has a smart phone, they are old enough for this story), and talk about what happened.

  3. Comedian Impersonates Tom Cruise
    I’m sure you’ve seen the gifted comedians that impersonate celebrities. It’s awesome to hear them talk like a famous person. What’s not awesome is to watch a video of an impersonation, and their face change to match the person they are impersonating. It took me several times watching this video to figure out what I was seeing was both real, and fake. First, watch this video, then keep reading.

    This is a technology that allows faces to be manipulated in a video. Think of it like photoshop for videos. This might not be news to you that something like this can be done, it wasn’t to me. But what was news to me was how subtle and real this appeared. After watching this, I’m really concerned with how this kind of technology can be used (and weaponized).

    Our society is losing it’s grasp on what truth it can stand on. There are significant implications now that videos can be manipulated to subtly appear as though “Tom Cruise” is sitting on that couch. With so much of our lives centered around a screen of some kind, how do we know what is real or what is fake? It is becoming increasingly important for real, face to face relationships to be a significant part of our lives. The less real relationship we have, the more we are going to be subjected to on screen manipulations (words, news, videos, etc).

Thanks for reading this week’s version of The Viewpoint. If you’ve read something of interest, please let me know. Thanks and have a great weekend.

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Parenting is Not About Safety

Ask any parent, and if they are honest, they will agree: Parenting is impossibly hard. As my 4 year old was running away from me one night, screaming at me as he ran, I realized why these relationships are so hard: My personal desire to be safe and comfortable is threatened by my kids.

I’ve invited and co-created these little humans into the world. I’ve fed them, hugged them, disciplined them, and have done my best to love them. Ultimately, though, what I have given them is a part of me. They walk and run around this world with my heart draped over their shoulders…without any clue as to what they are carrying.

The reality of being unsafe with them comes alive in moments of panic. When my 9-month old is choking on something he’s found under the dining room table, I become aware that his life contains a part of me that I’ll never have back. If he goes away, so does his portion of my heart. It’s why a child’s scream of terror or pain makes me move with the speed of a superhuman. When my son falls off the the top bunk bed at night, I’m in his room quicker than his tears. When they hurt, I hurt.

My heart is with them, and that does not make me feel safe. They will do as they please. They have the same free-will as I do,  and I really don’t like them for that. In fact, I often resent them for being human. Sometimes, I wish they were robots, doing as I say, playing nice, and behaving on behalf of what’s right. I want them to be safe, so I can be safe.

But really, safety is just an illusion. Our cars have airbags, but at 75 mph on an interstate, compressed air isn’t going to keep me safe. An airplane has seat belts, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m in a rocket with wings going 500 miles per hour 30,000 feet above the ground. I lock my house at night, but a deadbolt is not going to keep a tornado at bay, nor the rising waters of a flood.

Much of life is building and creating supports that give us the illusion of feeling safe. Kids don’t factor into that illusion. This realization is clearly understood by most parents. Kids are humans, and they’re going to do what they think is best, or whatever pleases them. There’s nothing I can do to really be in control of them. This reality coupled with the gift of my heart to them creates a mess. If I want to be safe, I must control them; if I am okay not being safe, I must find a way to cope with inevitable pain. This is a sobering truth for every parent.

It’s sobering, because I know that I often try to control them. I try to get them to stop smacking their food, stop eating pizza on the couch, and stop fighting as they brush their teeth. When I realize that I can’t control them, I get jealous (Hey, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, right?). I’m jealous that they get to be the kids and I have to be the grown-up.

I think life as an adult is lived within the infamous 80-20 rule: Eighty percent is doing things we have to do, and 20 percent is doing things we want to do. That equation is the opposite for kids. To be an adult, we cannot play 80 percent of the time like our kids. And this is a big problem for most of us adults. We don’t want to do the 80% work that life requires. We want easy, and 80% work is not easy. The result … numbed-out adults.

Kids aren’t numb (depressed), rather they feel and express. Kids’ expressiveness in life challenges adult depression and adult self-absorption. Adults want to go to sleep, figuratively, and when a kid wakes them, we adults feel a rage of being roused from the comfy sleepy world of depressed self-absorption. Getting angry at a kid for being curious, playful, and expressive is like getting mad at water for being wet, shapeless, and messy.This is why parenting is so hard: As a parent, I can’t keep my kids from being kids and I can’t always keep them safe, which means I will suffer and hurt when they do.  Our children invite us to see the world through untamed eyes. It’s both wonderful and frightful. Parenting is about helping kids become adults tomorrow while holding onto the hope, wonder, curiosity, and awe they live with today.

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Kids and Self-Esteem

Another result of kids not knowing their place, or their usefulness in the family, is low self-esteem. Low self-esteem happens for our children when we, the parents, don’t allow our children to wrestle with the normal realities of life. Making decisions for them and not allowing them to fail prevents children from developing the necessary internal resources that are vital to identity and self-esteem.
As parents we can’t teach our kids things that we ourselves do not know. It’s likely that a parent with low self-esteem will not be able to allow their children to struggle with life because they themselves don’t feel confident in their own life struggles.
This is a but a small reason why parenting is so hard: Our kids expose our vulnerability and weakness.
Instead of growing these weaknesses in ourselves, it’s natural to take the easy way out and do things that ensure our kids cannot expose our weakness in the future.
Good parenting is about allowing our kids to organically point things out to us that we then address and mature instead of punishing or controlling our kids. The difficulty is that kids are unknowingly walking around as a mirror to us … and we don’t like it.
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Kids Need to be Needed

One of the worst things we can do to our kids is to raise them without ever asking anything of them. My kids love to remind me that none of their friends have to clean the kitchen, or do their laundry. What they don’t realize is that most of their friends’ don’t really know what their value is to the family, because their parents don’t ask anything of them.

Kids who are never needed at home never develop a sense of place and belonging in the world. They grow up thinking one of two things: Everything should be easy and done for me (entitlement); or I am not needed in the world and therefore I don’t know what makes me unique.

Most parents who don’t ask anything of their children are doing so because they don’t want to deal with the mess that comes with asking a kid to do something.

Kids whine and complain. They are like pigs. Put a pig in a stall, and it’ll find a way to get out. They constantly testing the limits of the boundaries: What is a legit boundary, what is a threat, what is a lie. When they find a weak spot, they’ll hit it over and over and over again until they get what they want. Kids want freedom (don’t we all!), but they don’t know what to do with freedom unless they’ve been taught.

Setting your kids up for success depends on how much responsibility you teach them. Parents teach responsibility by giving them responsibilities. By telling them that they are a valuable member of the family. By telling them that their actions impact more than just themselves.

The best thing we can do for our kids is give them a constructive space to fail.

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Making Room in Your Family

Earlier this fall I was asked to share some practices and habits our family does that help to make room for relationships. So much of family life is dictated by events and schedules that we often miss out on relationship building with our spouse or kids. Here are a few of the ideas I shared. Disclaimer: by no means does my family have it figured out, rather we are figuring it out as we go. Our kids are all under 12, so I expect these ideas to expand/evolve as our kids grow up.

We think of making room in our family in two sections: Work/school week, and weekend.

During the school week we attempt to eat together as a family as often as possible. We don’t allow technology or other distractions (books, TV, toys, iPods, phones, etc) to be at the table and we try to have conversations about our day. It usually begins with discussing our high and lows. It almost always includes at least one of our four kids trying to sabotage our efforts. I did the same thing as a kid, so I can’t blame them. Conversations are “boring,” as my kids put it.

We, my wife and I, limit our personal technology use. We try not to use technology (tv, phones, etc) while the kids are awake during the “school nights.” It’s really easy to want to come home, turn on the TV and check-out. The “screen” has become the biggest influencers of relationships.

For the kids, there is no tv, no video games, or other technology use on school nights. This helps the kids to focus on the homework but also allows for us as parents to play or relate to them in whatever it is they have going on.

On the weekend:

We don’t police tech use on Saturday. It’s the day to play video games, watch a cartoon in the morning, and let the kids be kids in this modern day and age. Surprisingly, whenever we ask the kids to turn their iPods off on the weekend, they rarely complain. They intuitively know that too much technology is not a good thing.

We have made Sunday until Noon our time of rest. We generally stay in bed and have all the kids with us after they wake up until breakfast. We lounge around together in our pj’s, reading, playing board games, legos, or something else that is open for everyone (Our kids range from 3-11 with one girl and 3 boys).

Sunday mornings are the few hours of the week that Stephanie and I feel the most present and available with our kids. It’s my favorite time of our week because there are no agendas, the kids know we’re not doing anything outside of being together as a family.

Lastly, one of our favorite practices together is sitting by a fire. We have the benefit of a big backyard that allows us to build a great campfire. Usually 2-3 times a month during the spring and fall we are outside sitting around the fire together. It is probably the single most influential relational time that we have together as a family. The fire sparks so many conversations and openness between all of us. The fire is one of those things that unites people. I’m not entirely sure why that’s the case, but it slows us all down.

The main idea we have come up with for our family is the limiting of technology. There are very few places we humans can go where technology is not surrounding us. If you as a parent don’t do anything else with you kids but eat dinner together, and limit their technology use, you’ll be in rare company.

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Parenting as a Vehicle

Parenting. Hordes of books dominate the shelves of bookstores, teaching you the love languages of kids, the brain rules, and even how kids raise parents (which is my most suggested book for current and aspiring parents). There are classes, techniques, and even some really stringent cult-like ideas that all hope to help parents master the art of parenting.

I enjoy referring to parenting in football defensive references. If a family has two kids, it’s “man coverage,” with 3 kids they are in zone coverage, and with four or more, the all important (and most anxiety producing for a football fan) Prevent defense. It’s clever, I know.

The truth is, no metaphor, book, technique, or principal can help to prepare someone to be a parent. And yet, we all need help to shepherd us along the way.

It’s really hard work, and mostly exhausting to deal with free-willed little people who refuse to be your robot.

Go to bed. Unload your dishes. Be nice to your sister. Pick up your clothes. Turn off the lights.

If you’re a parent, you get it. Most of the time parents are directing, pointing, teaching, yelling, and ending the day praying the kids turn out ok. It’s the ultimate journey of faith, trust, and powerlessness.

Parenting is the vehicle that gets our kids onto or nearby the launching pad for their lives. Each kid has their own unique launching pad. Sometimes parents don’t see that different kids have different needs, which produce different lifestyles, goals, and vision for their lives. If we take all our kids to the same destination, the same launching pad, only one is going to pleased.

This vehicle is the container that provides safe travel while the journey is still in the confines of childhood. Slowly, methodically, and gradually the kids will begin to branch out and become curious about their world. More often than not, a kids curiosity will trigger a parents fear of losing control. This fear, left undressed or unexplored, leads straight to the command center of the kids’ launching pad.

As a fearful parent, I want to be in the command center. I want to be in the control room that has the correct flight plan, path, and coordinates for my kids rocket. I want to know what is going to happen, where they are going, and that they will be ok. In reality, I just want to be ok. My kids are an extension of me (they’re still in the early journey of curiosity), and if they hurt, so do I.

It’s easy for parents to be in the mindset of putting the kids in an auto-piloted vehicle, and retire to the control room where they can push the buttons, speak commands, and remain aloof from the reality of the kids who are in the vehicle. This is the safest form of parenting, but it’s not really parenting. It’s more like a warden, a boss, or an autocrat.

James Masterson, a therapist and author, says that the role of the therapist is to be the guardian of the true, real self. Not surprisingly, this is a lot like the role of a parent. Our role is to guard our kids from buying into the lie that posturing, faking it, or performing is what works. It’s our job to show our kids that money doesn’t buy happiness, nor does money solve the real challenges of life.

The ultimate challenge of parenting is to cultivate a relationship, the vehicle, that allows for safe return from misplaced curiosity, foolish choices, or damaging actions.

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Project Parenting

What is your goal for parenting? Is it to just “survive” the process? Or perhaps might it be to “make sure I don’t screw them up too bad?” I often joke with friends that I don’t have a college savings fund for my kids, I have a therapy savings fund. My kids will probably need twice the therapy to work through their dad being a therapist. Bless them.
 
“What is your goal?” is an important question that I don’t think about a lot, but whatever my stated or unstated goal is, it drives my attitude and actions towards my kids. There are many days that I get home from work and don’t want my kids to be kids. I love them dearly, but goodness they can make a mess of things. Kids force me to see that life doesn’t work by my rules, nor does the world revolve around me (despite my best efforts to make it so). This is a big reason why I (and you, if you’re honest) both love and dislike my kids: They alert me to my self-centeredness. 
 
Poor parenting happens when my goal for life as an individual, a selfish person, is different than my stated goals for my kids. When I don’t pick up my shoes and socks on the living room floor, but get onto my kids for not picking theirs up, I’m not being a good parent. Living life with different standards will teach kids that duplicity is an acceptable way of living. 
 
Becoming a parent is a two-fold challenge (and there’s probably more folds than this). First and foremost, we have to learn how to raise the kid inside all of us. We have to be kind, respectful, loving and at the same time tough, hold boundaries, and be willing to say no to that part of us that wants instant gratification. We cannot be helpful parents until we have first learned to parent ourselves. 
 
The second challenge is to raise our kids as unique individuals with similar and different challenges in life than what we ourselves face. Parenting our kids as though they wrestle with the exact struggles as we do is myopic and not helpful guardianship. 
 
My goal as a parent is to be a guardian of my kids’ true selves. Said more simply: I want to help my kids find out who they really are … not just what they love to do, but to believe in and be able to express the uniqueness of their own voice. 
 
Most days, I get caught up in training my kids to be good performers. Showing them what is good and bad from a perspective of human doing. The days when am content with them are when I’ve not tried to control or train them like I would an animal, rather that I’ve allowed them to speak their own creative ways. 
 
One final thought. Err on the side of being in relationship (not a friendship) with your kids, that’s the only way you’ll thrive together once they are no longer under your care and protection.