The other day, my oldest boy shuffled down the stairs in tears. My husband was getting ready to take him and several friends on an outing, but complications had arisen. My son wanted to go down the street to invite a neighbor, but his two buddies already upstairs were against this.
I hadn’t heard the conversation as it unfolded, but from my son’s account it sounded like escalating social gamesmanship. Kid A didn’t like Odd Boy Out, and enlisted Kid B to vote with him. My son stood his ground, insisting there was enough fun to go around. Kid A parried: If the new kid was going, he wasn’t. This implied that Kid B would bail, too.
“But he’s my friend,” my son snuffled when he got to the bottom step, referring to Odd Boy Out. “I don’t want my friend to be left out.”
“Good,” I said, “go get him. Your dad will wait.” Now, my boy is quite capable of picking on other kids and of being downright mean on purpose, especially to his younger brother, a.k.a. the Great Usurper. But sometimes all a kid needs to do the right thing is the knowledge that someone, even Stinky Old Mom, is in his corner.
None of the kids in this story is a bad apple — quite the contrary. They’re all terrific kids learning the tricky business of negotiating their boundaries and differences. Without further controversy, they all followed my husband out to the car, had fun at their event, and (perhaps because no one got dressed down) there was no retaliation when grownup backs were turned.
My son is 8, and since the first day of third grade, everything — his height, his grades, his lunch box, which bus he rides — has held new and horrific potential for making him different. Some days he wilts in the face of something as small as a cowlick or the next kid’s facility with cursive. And as he came down the stairs, my stomach roiled. I remembered the pressure to be liked by the cool kids, the hot shame I felt when I put my popularity before loyalty to a friend.
I’ve watched with heart-stopping pride in recent weeks as my boy has blossomed into an assertive wonder, willing to stand up for himself, his kindergartener brother, and his pals. I know his confidence is sometimes still as much façade as pillar, though, so I’m on the lookout for times when he needs an assist. I’m careful to step in when I can do so without undermining him or to let him know I noticed he took the high road when I can’t.
Shortly after one of these moments of moral integrity, I was at the bookstore in search of fodder for this column. I was hoping for something different, a new take on this business of being a family. Maybe it was my choice of a big-box bookseller, but the shelves held nothing but titles that all boiled down, more or less, to some variation on “Don’t Screw Up Your Child.” All I got for my troubles was a headache.
What a relief when a friend, a psychologist with grown sons, tipped me to a book I had breezed right past during my depressing shopping trip, Dr.
Stanley Greenspan’s Great Kids. No catchy subtitle, no shtick, maxim, or system. No list of parenting potholes, of ways things might spiral out of control — just a book about great kids.
A child psychoanalyst and a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at George Washington University Medical School, Greenspan has identified 10 characteristics of happy, healthy kids — traits like empathy, creativity, and self-discipline. The book outlines each and explains, in clear, accessible language, how these characteristics develop — literally — as in what pathway gets engraved in baby’s psyche when you smile at her, or how my son’s sense of self becomes more solid when I back him up.
“Those first cuddles and hugs are the port of entry for real caring and devotion,” Greenspan writes in a chapter on empathy. “The depth of that warmth and the depth of that love become the depth of the love that the growing child carries in his heart, which in turn becomes the depth of his empathy for other people’s sorrows and joys.”
What a tragedy that this kind of reassuring and hopeful parenting book has fallen out of fashion within the publishing industry. But of course, from Rush Limbaugh to the Hummer, there are trillions of examples to remind us how powerful fear is as a sales tool. Great Kids, meanwhile, departs completely from the rulebook formula and relies instead on helping parents to recognize how a child forms values.
Those 10 desirable traits develop as a result of children’s interactions with others. If the book had a hypothesis, I imagine it would be that parents who understand the formative impact their relationship has on their children will be more likely to notice and repeat their victories.
“Whatever a child’s goals and aspirations may be, if all goes well on the developmental journey, he reaches a point at which it is possible to internalize a set of values and judge himself against those values,” Greenspan writes. “With a strong sense of personal values, what you might even call a sense of mission, a child, teenager, or an adult is not so vulnerable to what peers say, what parents say, or what teachers and bosses say. What matters is how they answer that ‘How am I doing?’ question themselves.”
A funny thing has happened since my boy has started flexing his integrity muscles. Every time he gets a little better at empathizing with the Odd Kid Out, he becomes a little kinder to himself. When he can cut himself a break, it’s easier for him to ask how he’s doing, and make adjustments when he’s not thrilled with his answer.
Et voilà, 57 pounds of moral fiber ready to come to the aid of his slightly geekier pal. And much, much quicker to recognize when another friend isn’t acting very friendly.
He is, quite simply, a great kid. And sometimes, if I can still the grinding in my brain’s worry-prone mothering lobe, I can reflect back on all the stuff that has loomed so large since his birth — his beige diet, my use of TV as babysitter, his repertoire of raunchy Macy Gray songs — and marvel that something pretty big went right.
Beth Hawkins is a Minneapolis writer.
In this essay
Great Kids: Helping Your Baby and Child Develop the 10 Essential Qualities for a Happy, Healthy Life
By Stanley I. Greenspan, MD
Da Capo Press; $22.95
