Divorce: Impact on Parent, Child, and Their Relationship

Today we briefly began to discuss the overwhelmingly common effect that divorce and separation can have on parents, children, and their relationship. We have also been provided with a few great resources on how this change affects so many dimensions of a parent-child relationship.

The University of Minnesota's "Parent's Forever" handbook provides parents with dozens of free, in-depth resources to help cope with these changes. The resources come in three different categories: taking care of yourself, taking care of your children, and how to be successful in co-parenting. Also in this handbook are examples of the child's rights and how they should correspond with the parents' responsibilities. If the child's rights and the parents' responsibilities aren't aligning, the divorce or separation can have lasting negative impacts on the child, and their relationship with their parents. Some of these impacts include:

• Dropping out of high school
• Being unemployed
• Having troubled marriages and relationship challenges
• Having weaker ties with either or both parents
• Experience symptoms of psychological distress, including depression
• See long-term impacts into adulthood in many children

To avoid these potential impacts, the previously mentioned rights and responsibilities need to be met. Please choose one set of rights/responsibilities (or provide us with an example not listed) from the UMN Parent's Forever handbook and further explain how making sure that both are met will prevent negative impacts on the parent, child, and parent-child relationship. 

If you have been through a divorce or separation, and you don't mind sharing,what were important things that you and your parents did to alleviate the stress that comes with it? If you have not been through a divorce or separation, what are your thoughts on it and how it affects parent, child, and parent-child relationship? If divorce was your only option, what would you do to assure your child keeps their childhood, instead of being burdened with the stress of your divorce?

Parent Involvement in Children's Academic Success: Your Perspective

In class on Wednesday we began to discuss (too briefly, I'm afraid) parent engagement with children's learning. We touched on why it's a good thing for parents to be involved in their children's schools and in their learning, who benefits, and what involvement looks like.

Work by Joyce Epstein at Johns Hopkins U (probably the most significant scholar in this area, of which there are many) has identified parent involvement as activities seen and unseen by teachers and schools:

• parenting
• communicating (with the school/teachers)
• volunteering
• learning at home
• decision-making
• collaboration with the community

Consider how each of these support children's learning. I'd guess your own parents did many or all of these when you were in school - and may still do these in support of you in college.

Involvement is good for children - when parents expect their children to learn and to well in school they are more likely to do so. And involvement in what children are learning, how and the school context that supports their learning means that parents have valuable information to assist children. And they are valuable complements (through homework help, reinforcing school policies, etc) to what the school is trying to achieve. And when children see their parents and schools as partners, the psychological and academic base for learning is more stable.

Consider how this involvement might also benefit teachers, and schools, and parents themselves. In the broadest sense, when homes and schools are on the same page, everyone gains, because they are all (theoretically) working towards the same goals of healthy, happy and well-educated children who are the future generation for society.


Please reflect on your life in elementary school and possibly later (through middle or junior high school, high school and perhaps now in college) and share a bit about how your parent or parents were involved. Use Epstein's categories to describe how the involvement. Please also share more that adds to our discussion about the process and impacts of parent involvement. Like...

• how you felt or feel that this helped you in school (if it did), or otherwise affected you. 
• how that involvement might have benefited others - your teachers, the school itself and especially how it might have had an influence on your parents' own happiness or their development as adults, and 
• how it affected your relationship with them
• what helped or challenged your parent(s) being involved with your schooling?

The Homework Dilemma

This week we're talking about parenting during middle childhood when children are in elementary school. Skills and competencies encouraged during these years maintain children's sense of self-development, initiative, competence and promote their cognition, peer relations, and physical abilities. As discussed in the previous post (and more in class) is the issue with overindulging children, parents hovering and "doing for rather than doing with."

An area that plagues many households, stresses children and pushes parents toward the upper bound of their resistance to overparent is homework. While we advise parents to let children do their own work, and experts warn about the dangers of promoting 'performance' over 'mastery' mindsets when parents push children to excel (see this piece from Time), increasingly this is tough for families. Why?

• A big reason is that demands on students for learning (meaning homework) are increasing as school districts escalate standardized testing, and teachers and schools have to prepare children to excel on tests and in schoolwork overall. School funding is tied to student test performance progress. And in some cases, so is teacher's merit. 

• Also, demands on more sophisticated learning on topics around Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (aka STEM) are increasing in earlier grades. And parents see their children come home with expectations for language learning, doing experiments, calculation with new math, and problem solving in ways that weren't taught when they were in school.

• Beyond and within all this is the sense of competition that starts very early. Grades and test performance to qualify for college entrance that comes into focus, not in freshman year of high school but in first and second grade. Because going to the 'right' schools and gaining entrance to the 'right' programs early on means opportunities that will only help with college entrance. 

So, when the 6, 8 or 10 year old comes home with a backpack filled with projects and papers that mean several hours of study, what is a parent to do? Although they may object (and THIS piece in Time talks about the dangers of too much homework too early and parents' right to refuse for their child to do homework), few do.

What do you suggest? What worked for you in your families when it came to homework when you were in elementary school (or later, perhaps)? What role did your parents play in supporting you to get it done (or did they step up to the demands that the school was placing on you)?

In particular, what might a parent do when they perceive that the demands on their child are mismatched with what is healthy for the child/ what the child is capable of? Remember that although all children develop in the same ways, all children develop capacities at different rates. A parent may have a child with dyslexia (undiagnosed), or one who takes longer to memorize. How does the parent help the child to retain his or her sense of self and self-competence when they perceive that the school work and school performance and social/peer context might be one that is less of a 'fit' to that child? 

Thinking of the Future for Overindulge Children

Overindulging children can have serious consequences for their futures.  A study by Dr. Dan Kindlon of Harvard University found that, as teenagers, the majority will use drugs, and many will have problems with self-centeredness, anger, and disordered eating.  By limiting their ability to achieve age-appropriate development and learn life skills for their future, parents have inadvertently created a situation where they love their child but the child may not love them back. As these teenagers head towards adulthood, they will find themselves without the emotional maturity and psychological tools to succeed independently.

So why do parents all into a pattern of overindulging their children?  Most do not intend to hurt their children’s future and many may not even understand what they are doing.  However, by doing too much for their children, parents who think they are helping, may actually be harming. And the consequences for the child can be far reaching, holding them back from fully reaching adulthood until well into their thirties.

Parents may overindulge for many reasons, some becoming over involved as a way of protecting their child, or others giving too many gifts to placate their own guilt or make up for their own inadequacies.   Still others believe having successful children will make improve their own image, or that they will lose their child’s love if they do not provide and indulge in excess.  It seems that many parents have slipped into a pattern of insecurity and confusion in regards to their role in raising their children.  One piece of advice given by Mary Jane Burson, a family life therapist, is to focus on the future and to think of  “the kind of adults they are creating”. 

As young adults, many of us are in positions to see the results of good and bad parenting all around us.  In light of this, what is some parenting advice in regards to overindulgence and preparing children for adulthood that you would give?  What is something that you learned from you parents that has served you well as you moved or are moving into independent adulthood?

Promoting Self-efficacy in Children

Building off the previous post by Prof. Walker, I’d like to talk about self-efficacy, a term coined by Alfred Bandura. Self-efficacy is the extent of a person’s belief in his/her own ability to complete tasks and reach goals successfully. For example, somebody with high self-efficacy is more likely to stick to a challenging activity without surrendering.

Higher self-efficacy is linked to:

• better ability to think productively by applying positive thinking skills when facing a challenge
• higher motivation
• stronger effort put into an activity or task
• greater resilience
• lower vulnerability to stress and depression

Evidently, nurturing self-efficacy in children is quite important for their successes in future.

Self-esteem vs. self-efficacy

Self-esteem is an opinion one holds about one's self-worth or self-value, which without a doubt influences self-efficacy. However, high self-esteem by itself does not give a child an optimistic attitude and willingness to persist when experiencing resistance. A child develops these characteristics through self-efficacy. If one’s self-efficacy in an area is much lower than their ability, they will likely under-challenge themselves. However, if self-efficacy is much higher than actual ability, they may over-challenge themselves, set unrealistic goals, and experience failure and frustration, that’s why parents need to nurture realistic self-efficacy in their children. Taking into account the following four building blocks can help promoting self-efficacy:

Sense of mastery.

When a child attributes a success to internal, stable, and global factors (personal effort, capabilities), he will experience a sense of mastery and this will reinforce his self-efficacy. When a child attributes success to external, unstable,  and specific factors, (luck, lenient grading etc), he will not experience a sense  of mastery or efficacy.

Observing others.

Seeing someone who is similar to oneself work hard to achieve a  goal or overcome an obstacle contributes to our belief that we, too, can successfully negotiate our

environment. For example, if a child sees  another one climb to the top of a hill after several attempts, the child might think “if he can do it, I can, too.” The more similar  the child feels to the person he is observing, the stronger the effect the other person’s successes or  failures will be on the child’s beliefs about her own ability to succeed.

Direct persuasion by others.

Children’s beliefs about their ability to master a situation are influenced by what they hear from adults or peers. Those who receive strong messages that they have the skills and capabilities to handle a specific situation are more likely to put in greater effort and to persist. Such feedback cannot consist of general or empty pep talks (“You can do anything.”) but rather should reflect the child’s real strengths and be specific (“You can think of a creative solution.”).

Mood.

Positive emotions and mood strengthen perceptions of efficacy and negative ones weaken them. The positivity enables children to see more solutions to problems they face, which strengthens their positivity, which further enhances their ability to cope with challenges, and so on.

What do you think of these four building blocks of self-efficacy? In which ways can parents organize and structure activities for their children to address those and to promote self-efficacy?

Encouraging Success through the Appropriate Kind of Praise

As we move from talking about correcting mis-behavior to encouraging positive behavior we enter the territory of tasks that our society loves to see: kids being responsible, kids succeeding in school, kids being good kids.

Starting with young children, research has examined a variety of practices by parents and others that 'shape' behavior, to recall a term from Skinner. Coaching and modeling to children, giving them tasks that they can reasonably accomplish, and rewarding and praising them are a few.

Praise is a particularly important, because children adore the adults who love them. Yet it can be a sticky tactic because parents and teachers often use it in ways not really helpful to longterm benefit. Research by Carol Dweck on praise with children is very interesting. Here's a link to an item about this from a few years back that puts in a parent's perspective.

Dweck's research, that the video below nicely captures in a few minutes, is on the power of giving children a 'growth mindset' over a 'fixed mindset.' A growth mindset comes from praise for effort towards a task that helps them believe that there is potential for improvement with additional initiative. A growth mindset encourages persistence toward a task even when it become more challenging (like life!). The fixed mindset comes when we praise children with a label, like 'intelligence' ("You are so smart!" "What a smart boy you are!") that rewards children for being something. Given challenging tasks they may opt out fearing that they won't be perceived as intelligent, or they may take on the belief that they aren't intelligent if a task is too challenging.

Consider this with young children and the kinds of tasks that we might ask them to do - like learn to brush their teeth, put their toys away, be kind to a younger brother, share a toy. (These might seem pretty simple but to a 3 year old they are physical and social problems to be solved.) Or you might think of a more tangible problem like learning to recognize letters (for early reading), understanding shape differences, or categorizing animals. What might be some great things that parents and other caregivers can say to offer children a 'growth mindset'? 

AND relevant to our class - how might using this kind of praise HELP promote the parent-child relationship?

Should the US have a law against spanking children?

Our current discussion in class is around the development of young children and the use of various caregiving practices that promote learning. For many caregivers this means asserting discipline to correct misbehavior - something that when we think about it, is actually a part of parenting throughout a child's life. We guide, teach, mentor, promote and occasionally correct. And 'power assertion' is part of that continuum that can be displayed a number of ways. You noted these yourselves with your accounts of your parents' giving you time outs, grounding you, or raising their voices. 

Yet with young children, parents may also assert physical assertion of power through spanking. In your survey responses most of you indicated that you were also spanked, on occasion. For some of you, this might have been once. For a couple of you, spanking was more often, and a few of you never were spanked.

In class we reviewed some of the reasons that parents spank, the perspective of spanking as a realistic practice (again, occasional for many families), and concerns whether its use is occasional or escalated. Discussion about this can be rather divisive, as practices do vary and parenting as passed through culture and social norms, conveys personal beliefs.

Our policies also inform and shape our norms and beliefs. And when it comes to spanking, it is a public policy issue. 

This is a map of countries' policies on spanking: 

And Canada is considering a repeal of law that allows (by not prohibiting) spanking by parents and those who serve as proxies for parents - teachers:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/02/01/spanking-law_n_9133170.html

This is the section of the law related to spanking:

"Every schoolteacher, parent or person standing in the place of a parent is justified in using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child, as the case may be, who is under his care, if the force does not exceed what is reasonable under the circumstances."

Corporal punishment bans exist for teachers and in classrooms. Yet this opens the door to include parents and is non-exclusive to public buildings or publicly-provided services. 
 
What do you think? 

Since our country also lives by state by state laws, if Governor Dayton proposed legislation that would disallow parents and teachers from spanking (as it is defined as 'with a hand' and 'intentionally bringing about pain, though briefly, how would you vote? 

What questions might you ask? 

This is NOT at all an easy issue, so your honest and respectful (to each other) opinions are very much welcome and requested.