The Hardest Job- Parenting

[INTRODUCTION THEME MUSIC]

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis said,

"If you bungle raising your children,

nothing else much matters in life."

So much is at stake, and yet,

in an ABC news poll done for Primetime,

54 percent of the parents polled said

they feel overwhelmed by the job.

So we decided to try something different.

We decided to make parents reporters

reporting on themselves.

We gave them cameras and said,

"Take for us the scenes that trouble you the most."

And then Jay Schadler went in with an expert

to give some practical clues, advice, and support

on the most important job in the world-

raising a child.

[LULLABY PLAYING]

[INDISTINCT TALKING]

Karina and David Rush are wearing

great expectations these days.

What do you think of this?

Do you think this will fit?

A baby's on the way,

and they're about to become parents.

Thrilling, exciting, nerve-wracking,

a lot of changes probably that need to be made

in our lives, but we're very happy to make them,

and we're ready.

Barry and Barbara Cohen already have nine years

of on-the-job experience.

It's totally not what I expected.

It's very rewarding, don't get the wrong impression,

but it's ten times more work

than I ever thought it would be.

Parenting may be the most challenging

and important job we'll ever face.

It's certainly the most mysterious.

Our children come with no instruction manuals,

no blue prints, guaranteeing success.

And so we puzzle over the great riddle

of raising our kids.

We can definitely teach parents

specific techniques to use with their kids,

and specific ways to interpret

what their kids are doing.

Doctor Lawrence Kutner, a clinical psychologist,

teaches at Harvard Medical School

and is a columnist for Parent's Magazine.

What makes it difficult now is that the problems

faced by parents of this generation are quite different

from the problems faced by parents

of one or two generations ago.

It ain't gonna happen that you're gonna go

to somebody else's house and we're not

going to know who they are.

To understand what those problems are

and begin grappling with solutions,

Primetime spoke to hundreds of parents

of school age children.

Eventually we gave 12 parents video cameras

to document the home front battles.

You're 16, you have no right to do anything,

you're just a kid!

Between these takes, and our conversations,

lies a portrait of modern parenting.

I was a teenager when I thought I knew more

than my parents, but my six year old thinks

he knows more than I do.

Kids would know, "No," would mean, "No,"

when we were growing up.

"No" means "why?"

And it just goes and on and on and on.

The only knowledge I had to raise

my kids was the way that I was raised.

But hasn't that worked for centuries?

Has it? I don't know. I don't think so.

It's not working in my house.

We begin with Barry and Barbara Cohen,

who have been fighting with their two sons

ages nine and seven, about everything from

homework to bedtime.

Unsure of what to do,

Dad does what was done to him.

I spanked one of my children so hard.

I hated myself.

I looked and I said, "What am I doing?"

I knew I couldn't continue like that.

Is Daddy a good parent?

No. Turn it off!

And why he is not a good parent?

Because he yells at me,

he hits me, he punishes me,

he makes me go to bed early.

And why does he do that?

Because he's mean.

Tell me an episode when you lost control.

The two of them would be fighting.

I would tell them five minutes before,

"Don't even look at each other,

don't sit near each other,

just stay away from each other."

A minute later, one of them is crying

or both of them are crying.

I would be so upset myself that I would lose

control, I'd wind up spanking them,

and everybody would be crying.

And where do you think you got that idea

to do that in the first place?

My father was a screamer, my mother was

a screamer, and my father used to whip

the belt off in one flash and you know,

we'd get whipped.

Well Dad, here we are.

Children not listening.

Misbehaving.

DON'T DO IT AGAIN!

You, go to your room.

David, you're in your room.

Where are you?

He's hiding.

I'm in my room!

[SCREAMING]

Barry comes from a long line of screamers.

And that's what he grew up with,

and that's what he knows,

and that's what he's perpetuating.

Even if it doesn't work,

that's the one technique he's comfortable with,

so he keeps doing it.

Yes, but you can't always be explaining to kids.

Well, no, you can't always be explaining to kids,

but you can say, "You guys are acting out

too much; you're going to have to quiet down.

I want you in your room until you can quiet down."

That's very different from the

"You, in your room; you, in your room."

Do you believe in spanking?

By itself, it's a lousy technique.

It doesn't teach the child anything new

except to fear you.

Kerry and Michael Pollack have two sons,

seven year old Zachary and four year old Dillon.

You know, it's funny, because as much as every day

is trying to keep your kids in control,

every day is keeping yourself in control.

Absolutely.

And it's hard.

Most of the time I know that I feel like

I'm in control of no one and nothing.

Capturing the chaos on tape is easy

compared to calming the storm.

What would you do?

You disobeyed me!

Go upstairs when your shoes are tied,

and when you can- I CAN'T TIE THEM!

That is an absolutely classic temper tantrum.

The kid is unable to express in words

the intensity of the emotion

that he or she feels.

And so it comes out with flailing arms

and kicking legs and screaming.

They're completely out of control.

So, what you want to do is you stay calm,

the child needs to barrow your calmness.

I like that idea.

What you do is you walk over and you physically

move your child, even if it's only two or three feet.

Why?

It shows that you are in control of the situation.

There are times, are there not, when punishment

is absolutely called for?

Well, discipline is different from punishment.

Discipline has to do with teaching.

And yes, there are times when a kid needs

to see the consequences of behavior.

What I like having is natural consequences of things.

Your child loses his baseball mitt all the time,

well you don't go out and buy another one.

How about time outs? What do you think

about time outs? Pretty effective?

There are two purposes to time out.

One, is your child has to calm down,

get back in control.

The other is the parent has time to calm down

and get back into control.

What we found with time out is

the shortest period possible is the best.

Of course, as children grow older,

the menu of parenting problems

becomes more complex.

How do you give your child a taste

of independence without risking their safety?

It's a balancing act Marilyn McLaughlin

struggles with every day.

You know, your lungs sound pretty good.

As a single working mom with two girls,

thirteen year old Erin and eleven year old Mary.

It's coming home from school by themselves,

it's knowing that your neighborhood

is not going to look out for them.

This is how it is, this is the world we live in,

it's not, you know, all starry-eyed.

You don't run around, you meet men you do not

go up to them, you do not say hello,

we do not become friendly with them. That's it.

So now what do you think that does to them

when they look at men?

It puts the fear of God in them,

which is fine by me. Okay?

I think that they should be leery of anything

they're not sure of.

She has a tremendous amount of fear,

not all of it that well justified,

if you look at what are the real dangers for kids.

But here, Marilyn is a single mother, she's working

she's seen how hard it can be out there.

Yes, absolutely.

And she cares tremendously about these children.

But instilling that type of fear

will eventually work against her.

Here's what happens when Mary,

her eleven year old, asks to have

thirty extra minutes after school

to hang out with friends.

I do not approve of you being out

on the street without adult supervision

for that length of time by yourself.

We don't hang out in the streets.

Mary, where do you hang out

and talk to your friends?

In school, in the school yard.

No, you...

Also, people play basketball and we sit on the side.

But there's no adult supervision over there.

There's a guard.

No, the guard is not looking out for you.

He doesn't care what's going on.

Yeah, 'cause he stands by the gate

until like six o'clock at night.

The whole matter of fact is this,

that I feel very uncomfortable.

She's just in the school yard.

How do I know she's just in the school yard?

I'm supposed to trust you to say

that you are just in the school yard?

Yes, you are!

Here we have the daughter who is telling her,

you know, this is what I need.

I need more independence.

Right.

I need more time.

The mother is saying I don't want you

to spend time on the street.

They haven't met in the middle and say,

I know you need more independence,

more autonomy; maybe we can find someplace

that isn't home, but where there is adult supervision.

Maybe there's an after school program,

where I, as your mother, will feel more comfortable,

and you'll get to be with some of your friends

and there are going to be adults around.

It's natural for kids to keep pushing the boundaries,

testing the limits of their freedom.

For Bill and Ellen Owens and their

twelve year old son, Patrick, a rock concert

has drawn the border line between them.

What's wrong with going to a concert?

Well, from what I've...

I've never been to one of these modern concerts.

You know, the last one I was at was

probably Peter, Paul, and Mary.

Now, I understand that they're fairly dangerous.

That lots of things are going on

inside those closed doors.

The argument moves to their living room

where both parents and child slip into

their well-worn roles.

When was the last rock concert you were at, Dad?

Thirty-five years ago.

Exactly!

Look, Patrick, they weren't in the papers

thirty-five years ago saying that people

were seriously hurt at concerts.

This concert was not in the newspaper.

Yes, but we're not going to know the next one

that's going to blow up into a riot

with the mosh pits, people are going

to get hurt and killed and call the ambulances.

Is there someone that's going to bring a gun?

Yeah, we are scared, you're right.

You don't think that they're at all dangerous?

I never said that! Never!

Alright, you agree that they are dangerous?

Mom, walking across the street is dangerous.

You're taking on risk.

You're not nervous going into a place

where you can be hurt?

No. No, I don't walk out the door and shiver.

This is a twelve year old boy.

Is that too young to go to a concert?

There's no age cut off either way.

What's important is that if this is such

a big deal for the child, how can the parents see that

their main need, the child's safety, is addressed?

That can be with a chaperon.

If they're scared that he's going to get injured

in moshing, how could he avoid it?

If he finds himself surrounded by this,

if people are grabbing at him,

what does he do?

If they decide not to let him go to this concert,

should their be other options given at this point?

Yes, they should let him do something different.

Otherwise, he's going to keep on pushing

the envelope, keep on pushing for more.

But they're frayed on the bottom!

With adolescence, picking your battles

may be half the war.

That perennial skirmish over your

teenager's clothes is a perfect example.

You can't go out with pants like that!

Here, Patrick wants to wear

pajama bottoms to school.

But what's the message of wearing these?

There's no message, Mom.

What's the message wearing that?

There's no message.

But they're not real flannel outdoor pants.

They are pajamas.

Not anymore.

When did they stop being pajamas?

When I put a shirt and shoes on.

That's when they stop being pajamas.

So, if I went in heels and earrings

with a bathing suit, does it stop

being a bathing suit?

No.

I think the kid has a point.

You know, that there is no message in that.

This is the sort of thing where I'd be very

willing to just give in on it.

Clothes, by and large, are a mole hill,

as opposed to a mountain.

Yeah, yeah.

One of the ways that teenagers can exercise

control over how they look,

plus they're getting taller,

they're getting gawkier,

they're developing breasts,

they're developing muscles,

and they don't know what's going to happen next.

Well, you can control some of that

by how you dress.

Well, if control is the overwhelming issue

in the early years of child rearing,

in adolescence the focus shifts

to more social concerns.

Choosing the right friends,

handling the pressure of sex or drugs.

The best advice is yet to come.

So, as a parent, you have managed to survive

sibling rivalry, temper tantrums, and the time outs.

And then, like Jay Schadler himself,

you wake up one day and suddenly find yourself

living with a teenager.

For parents and their children,

no issue seems more entangled with risks

and revelations than the subject of sex.

An age old topic complicated by a modern danger.

I told them that it wasn't worth dying for.

That sex was not worth dying for.

I've told my girls that this is a natural part

of growing up- you will want to have sex.

And when that boy has you in that car,

trying to promise you every single there is

in this entire world, to have sex,

and telling you he will be there tomorrow-

I am a single mother, I am here to tell you

he will not be there tomorrow.

Marilyn McLaughlin's thirteen year old

daughter, Erin, wants to begin dating.

The discovery that she's already begun kissing

catches Mom a little off guard.

Do you think that you should be allowed

to go on dates by yourself,

or do you think you want to go

on chaperoned dates?

By myself.

How old are the boys that you want to date?

My age.

Okay. Do you know that there's people

your age who, I think, are involved in like

kissing and sex and all that stuff, right?

What's wrong with kissing?

For me, like, kissing at this age

is like exchanging body fluids.

And, like, why are you kissing?

I don't know.

Okay. So if you don't even know

why you're kissing, then how can you kiss him?

So everybody you like you're going to kiss?

No.

Well, you just said you like people.

Well, I've only kissed two people this year.

My God, that's a lot of kissing, Mary.

From me not even knowing

that you kissed one person.

There's been no discussion here

about why this girl wants to date.

If you think about from a child her daughter's age,

What are they interested in?

They're starting to develop these new bodies.

They don't know if they're attractive.

And they may want just some physical affection

and some cuddling, but the only way they

can get that, that they're aware of,

is trading it out for more active sex.

That's something that really is important

for parents to talk about.

Sexuality, together with drugs and violence,

define a trilogy of teenage problems,

that our parents say has made their jobs

more difficult than ever.

Regina and Bill Pinto now admit

it took them too long to deal with

seventeen year old Billy's behavior.

He'd go to some boy's house,

and we didn't where it would be,

we didn't know where the kid lived.

We would find that instead of going

to movies, they'd be hanging out a mall.

Instead of hanging out a mall,

they'd be at a pool hall.

And it just kept escalating.

We started seeing paraphernalia like clothing

with certain symbolisms on it. Right.

Leaf designs.

We found bongs made out of coke bottles.

I mean, pretty inventive stuff, underneath his bed.

But despite all the signals, including striking changes

in their son's appearance, the Pintos took refuge

in an old parental strategy.

It will pass, you know.

What he's doing now, it's just a stage

he's going through.

When you see a change in the fundamentals

of your child's behavior, you should

start asking what's going on.

So, you really need to sort of always

be doing a little of interpreting?

They're going to go at it obliquely,

they're going to hint around a little bit.

Right.

A kid comes in and says,

"Gee, Mom and Dad, I'm going to some parties

and they're serving some beer."

That's a marvelous opportunity

to talk about what's going on.

Because you're child is coming to you

and saying, "I don't know how to handle this."

You talk about something you call

developing refusal skills.

What does that mean?

If you have a child who is approached,

"G, do you want to smoke some of this stuff,"

or, "do you want to try sniffing some of this stuff?"

Your child wants to maintain the relationship

with, it's probably a friend, it's not

going to be a street dealer in the beginning.

So you need to give your child

the skills to say, "No, I don't want that."

"Why don't we try this?"

And it actually with younger kids

can be as simple as,

"Let's go play some video games,"

or, "Let's go to the movies."

What happens when your teenager comes to you

and says, "Dad, did you do drugs?"

You don't have to say everything.

Just like if your child asks you about

your sex life- you don't have to say everything.

Who our children choose as friends

is a window on how they view themselves

and their values.

So it's a good place for parents

to keep their eyes open.

Every so often, your child will choose

a friend who is dramatically different.

And that's a way for your child

to live vicariously, perhaps, through that person.

It's a pattern of friendships that are, say,

inappropriate then I'd get worried.

What you look for as a parent of teenagers

is a dramatic change in friends

or secrecy about friends.

Just this summer, Karina and David Rush,

the couple we met at the beginning of our story,

became parents.

Their great expectations now ride

under a white blanket.

But the hard work has already begun.

As diaper changes and midnight feedings

inevitably give way to first dates

and late night parties, the best advice

may be to remember that the ultimate goal

is not about making carbon copies of ourselves.

But a healthy, happy, original.

I'd like my kids, our kids, to feel really good

about themselves, and I think if they can

feel that way that they can accomplish

whatever they want.

I want them to have a spiritual life,

because I really feel that because of this

lack of community that gives a sound center

that carries on into your adulthood.

I'd like my kids to grow up and move out.

The secret is out.

With so many working parents and

so few extended family members nearby these days,

experts say that it is more important than ever

for parents to know their children's friends,

and the friend's parents.

To develop a phone system for keeping

tabs on children while at work.

And remember, parenting classes really can

make a difference.

There are studies that show that parent training

significantly improves child behavior.

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