The Dad Difference: How To Encourage Autonomy
(Continued)
Dads' growing involvement means they share with mothers the panic and stress whenever their kids compete. This strong visceral response derives from evolution. It prompted our ancestors to save their children from becoming a predator's dinner. Kids whose parents got them to leap out of the tiger's way survived to reproduce, so they passed this competitive gene to their own children. As a result, kids' competition still trips their fathers' evolutionary hardwiring. Dads react as though their children's lives were at stake, when really it's only a question of getting an "A" on the science project they've spent hours on together.
Sometimes this angst morphs into a "hard" feeling like anger, cloaking the underlying "soft" emotion of fear, and dads erupt in rage at a coach, referee, or teacher who they think is shortchanging their child. A few years ago a father was sentenced to jail for putting drugs in the water bottles of his children's tennis rivals, one of whom died. A year before that, a Connecticut father allegedly beat a high school softball coach with a bat for benching his daughter. Fathers meddle academically too: that same year an assistant superintendent of schools in Long Island was charged with giving his son answers to a New York state Regents exam.
More commonly, dads simply feel anguished as they learn, say, that a neighbor's child has a private baseball coach. ("Will Jackson miss the boat if I don't get him one too?")
The natural response to such anxiety is to take action. While few fathers steal exam answers or murder their children's tennis opponents, many still want to jump in when their kids compete. They feel like telling their children exactly what to do. ("You will swim in this race." "Get upstairs and do that homework now.")
But despite the stereotype that successful kids have parents who push them, research shows that eliminating parental pressure is the best way to help children excel.
That's where autonomy comes in.
About the Author
Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at Clark University, is nationally known for her pioneering studies on the role parents play in children's motivation and achievement. In addition to co-authoring Pressured Parents, Stressed-Out Kids, she is author of the critically acclaimed book, The Psychology of Parental Control: How Well-Meant Parenting Backfires.
Kathy Seal is a parenting journalist whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Family Circle, the Columbia Journalism Review, and many other magazines and newspapers. She's also appeared on several radio and television shows. Check out their website.
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