Parenting in a Not-So-Empty Nest

Back-to-school season typically marks a rite of passage for parents of high school grads: the moment when that young person officially leaves the nest to head off to college or university.

Clearly, things are going to be a little different this year, with many students who would normally be leaving the nest living at, and studying from, home.

This was the focus of my most recent parenting column for CBC Radio. What follows are a few highlights of that conversation.

What having a not-so-empty nest may mean for parents….

Most of the empty nest research, which, admittedly, was conducted back in pre-pandemic times, found that having kids leave the nest is a milestone moment for parents—an indication that they’ve done their job by preparing their children to head out into the world on their own. So if kids aren’t able to do that this fall, some parents may find themselves grappling with a misplaced sense of guilt or even failure. They might even feel like they’re being harshly judged by other people for having kids who aren’t quite “ready to launch” right now.

It’s important for parents to recognize what’s triggering those kinds of feelings—deep-rooted cultural scripts that tell us that kids are “supposed” to leave home at a particular stage in their development—and that it’s our job as parents to prepare them for that moment. If the timing is off (our kids don’t “launch” at the expected time)—or if the kids have to “boomerang” back home again (as may very well happen this fall, depending how the next wave of the pandemic plays out on the college and university campuses that did choose to remain open), parents can be left feeling like they’ve failed at parenting!

If you’re a parent who is experiencing some of these misplaced feelings of guilt and failure, it’s important to know how to chase them away. The best strategy is to recognize and talk back to them: to remind yourself that you haven’t failed as a parent simply because your child hasn’t been able to leave the nest this fall as planned. You’re simply dealing with the fallout of a global pandemic—a situation that’s changed the entire landscape of parenting.

Of course, if you’ve spent the past year or two anticipating this moment—perhaps looking forward to having a little more time for yourself at this point in your life—you might be feeling a bit frustrated, or even discouraged, about the way things have played out this fall.

Or you might be feeling quietly joyful about the fact that you’re going to get to enjoy some bonus time as a family living under the same roof.

Or you might be feeling disappointed for your child—really empathizing with what they feel they’re missing out on by not being able to enjoy a more typical college or university experience.

Or you could be feeling all those feelings all at once! There’s no one-size-fits-all emotional response to any parenting experience and you’re definitely not limited to a single emotion. It’s okay to be feeling whatever it is you’re feeling.

…and for college- and university-aged kids

Young adults who find themselves attending college or university remotely this fall are definitely going to be feeling all the feelings, too.

They might be feeling really disappointed about not having the opportunity to spread their wings and leave the nest (this on top of the layers and layers of disappointments they’ve already faced this year, like not having a “normal” last year of high school or anything even remotely resembling a “normal” high school graduation).

They might be feeling angry about having to be treated like “little kids,” living at home with their parents at a point in their lives when they feel incredibly grown up and they want to be recognized as such by the wider world.

They might be feeling worried that they’re missing out on something magical or irreplaceable about in-person campus life. We have a tendency to tell high school students that college or university are going to be “the best years of your life!” which may or may not actually be true. But if that’s what you’ve been hearing for the past few years, of course you’ll be disappointed about missing out on that.

And, at the same time, they may be feeling secretly relieved about not having to deal with the risk of contracting COVID-19 on campus. Some of the stories of campus outbreaks in other jurisdictions have been pretty alarming, to say the least. They might be okay with the idea of hibernating at home.

Making the situation a little less stressful for yourself and your young adult child

Wondering what you can do to make the situation a little easier and less stressful for yourself and your child? Here are a few tips.

• Acknowledge and validate whatever it is they’re feeling. The situation is hard for everyone.

• Be patient with one another. Give one another the benefit of the doubt when misunderstandings occur and err on the side of kindness as much as possible.

• Remind yourself that your relationship with your young adult is going through a period of transition and that it takes time to figure this stuff out. There will be times when you’ll be guilty of treating your young adult like a little kid and times when they’ll be guilty of acting like a little kid! Your goal is to respect their growing autonomy while also maintaining that all-important sense of connection: anchoring them with the security of your love while giving them the freedom they need to figure out who they are and how they fit into the world (well, to the extent that this is possible for any young person right now).

• And, finally, instead of treating the months ahead as something negative—say, an unwelcome exercise in forced togetherness that is cramping the style of all concerned—try to flip that negative thinking on its head by reframing it as something positive: the chance to enjoy some bonus time as a family living under the same roof. The gratitude research tells us that it’s easier to feel grateful about a particular experience when you acknowledge that time is scarce—which could be as simple as thinking of the months ahead as a precious and limited time offer. Sure, we don’t know exactly what that means in practical terms—how many more weeks or months we’ll have together—but that doesn’t have to stop us from savouring the gift of this extra time, because it really is a gift—an unexpected extra inning in your life as a parent.

Ann Douglas sparks conversations that matter about parenting and mental health. She is the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio and a bestselling parenting book author. Ann is the creator of The Mother of All Book series and the author, most recently, of Happy Parents, Happy Kids and Parenting Through the Storm. A passionate and inspiring speaker, Ann delivers keynote addresses and leads small-group workshops at health, parenting, and education conferences across the country.

Managing Back-to-School Anxiety: Strategies for Helping Yourself and Your Kids

It’s shaping up to be a back-to-school season like no other: a year when parents and kids are being asked to make sense of a whole new set of rules for heading back to school. That’s triggering sky-high levels of anxiety for a lot of parents and kids, even though the first day of school is still a few weeks away. What follows is some advice on managing your feelings of anxiety and helping your kids to do the same as your family prepares for this one-of-a-kind back-to-school season.

Understand what’s fuelling much of the anxiety about this particular back-to-school season.

What most of us are finding really challenging right now is the uncertainty—not knowing exactly how things are going to play out once school starts. Sure, we can figure out what options are available to our kids and research all the policies and procedures that are being put in place right now to keep them safe, but that doesn’t change the fact that the COVID-19 situation is constantly evolving. No one knows for certain what the situation will look like even a few weeks from now, so we’re having to anticipate and plan for all kinds of different scenarios. Mentally cycling through all those “what ifs” can be exhausting.

And, on top of all that generalized worry, parents and kids are dealing with a lot of more specific worries and concerns. Will the safety measures being put in place at the school, school board, or provincial level be enough to keep everyone safe—both within the school and in the broader community? What will school look like or feel like this year? How easy or how difficult will it be for my child to adjust to the new rules of being at school? There’s a lot to worry about, in other words.

Recognize when you’re spinning your worry wheels in unproductive worry—a.k.a. engaging in what psychologists refer to as “rumination.”

A crucial first step in helping your child to manage their anxiety is recognizing and managing your own. (“Calm yourself; calm your child.”) Of course, this is much easier said than done—a fact I can attest to as someone who has struggled with anxiety for a very long time. But it is possible to learn some strategies for hitting the brakes on your anxiety.

One key strategy is to avoid what psychologists refer to as “rumination” (which basically means engaging in unproductive worry). Here’s how it works. Either you allow your brain to keep cycling through an endless loop of worry or—worse—you join forces with another person (a rumination buddy!) and the two of you end up fuelling one another’s worries. While it can feel like you’re doing something productive, worrying just for the sake of worrying is actually counterproductive. It leaves you feeling more anxious, not less—and it doesn’t do anything to solve the underlying problem.

The secret to sidestepping rumination is to notice when it’s happening and to make a conscious decision to focus your attention on something else—perhaps a different worry where you actually have an opportunity to take action to solve the problem, instead of just endlessly spinning your worry wheels.

Resist the temptation to endlessly second guess the tough back-to-school decisions you’re being asked to make.

It’s important to find a way to make peace with whatever decisions you’re being asked to make about your child’s schooling this year, whether you’re being asked to make those decisions right now or down the road.

In most cases, you’re going to find yourself being asked to choose between a couple of less-than-ideal options. That’s because we’re currently living in a less-than-ideal world: a world where a global pandemic is still raging out of control.

The way to make peace with the whole situation is to feel as comfortable as possible with the process you used to make your decision. Your goal is to be able to say to yourself, “I made the best decision I could with the information I had at the time” as opposed to endlessly second-guessing yourself.

And, at the end of the day, that’s all any of us can really ask of ourselves, right?

Help your children to manage their own back-to-school worries.

Most kids are dealing with two different categories of worries as they gear up for the new school year: worries about a particular situation and more generalized worries that stem from all the uncertainty surrounding the return to school this year.

To help kids to deal with specific worries, it can be helpful to encourage a child to identify the underlying issue or concern (“What if I lose my mask?”) and to then help the child to brainstorm possible ways of dealing with that issue (“What might you do in that situation? Who could you turn to for help?”)

To help kids to deal with more generalized anxiety about not knowing what to expect at school this year, it can be helpful to validate and normalize the worry. (“It makes sense that you’re feeling a little anxious. This situation is new for all of us. Everyone’s feeling a little worried”).

Your child might feel less anxious if you help them to focus on what is known (as opposed to what isn’t known) about the return to school. You might share information about classroom seating plans or hygiene routines or remote learning plans or whatever other types of information you’ve obtained from the school.

It can also be helpful to give kids the opportunity to work on their develop flexible-thinking skills (which means their ability to adjust to a changing situation in real time). Depending on your child’s age and abilities, you might want to give them a chance to practice this skill in a fun and non-threatening way (say changing a key rule in a board game halfway through the game, like moving around the board in the opposite direction; or making some small tweaks to your family’s day-to-day routine, like having breakfast for dinner one night). It can also be helpful to talk about flexible-thinking skills: to get kids thinking about thinking!

Know how to spot the warning signs that a child is really struggling and might benefit from some added support.

There’s a world of difference between garden-variety anxiety (which all of us are feeling) and a much heightened level of anxiety that could indicate that your child is really struggling.

So how do you go about deciding when or how much to worry?

• By being tuned into what your child is trying to tell you—both through their words and their behaviour. Remind yourself that behaviour is communication (an angry outburst can mean “I’m really, really anxious”) and also be alert to any physical symptoms that could be associated with stress: say headaches or stomachaches, for example.

• By being on the lookout for changes to your child’s behaviour—eating habits, sleeping habits, activity level, energy level and mood.

• By considering whether your child’s anxiety level is starting to interfere with their ability to function or their overall enjoyment of life. What is your gut instinct telling you about the severity of the situation, given everything you have come to know about your child?

If you decide that your child would benefit from some outside help, the good news is that schools, child and youth mental health services, and other people who care about the wellbeing of children, youth, and their parents are aware that everyone’s anxiety levels are extra high and they’re offering a lot of additional supports for families. You don’t have to handle this on your own and neither does your child. You can tap into some of that support.

Recognize that there are still some things within your control (even though it might not feel that way).

Yes, the situation this year is really, really tough, but the situation isn’t completely out of your control. There are things you can do to help yourself and your kids to feel happier and calmer even if your family's back-to-school worries aren’t about to disappear anytime soon.

• You can make sure everyone’s getting enough sleep (because being sleep-deprived can actually cause you to feel more anxious).

• You can focus your attention in ways that work for, not against, you. It could be a matter of making a conscious decision to dig yourself out of a worry rut (like telling yourself, “I’ve thought about that worry long enough. Now I’m going to focus my attention on this other activity” (ideally a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable activity that requires a lot of concentration so that you can actually enjoy a mini-vacation from the worry.

• You can remind yourself be extra kind to yourself and other people. Change is hard and we’re going to be dealing with a lot of extra change this particular back-to-school season, as we figure out the new rules of heading back to school. Relationships are what are going to carry us through this strange and uncertain time. So this year, think “reading, writing, ‘rithmatic, and relationships,” with “relationships” being the most important “R” of all.

This blog post was based on my most recent parenting column for CBC Radio.

Ann Douglas sparks conversations that matter about parenting and mental health. She is the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio and a bestselling parenting book author. Ann is the creator of The Mother of All Book series and the author, most recently, of Happy Parents, Happy Kids and Parenting Through the Storm. A passionate and inspiring speaker, Ann delivers keynote addresses and leads small-group workshops at health, parenting, and education conferences across the country.

How to Avoid Shaming Kids About Their Weight

Weight can be a tricky issue for parents. It can feel like you’re trying to make your way through a gigantic minefield: a minefield laden with confusing cultural messages about bodies, weight, and food. Here are a few tips on navigating that minefield based on my own experiences both as a parent and as a kid.

Daria Volkova/Unsplash

Recognize that cultural messages make this tough.

Western culture gives us so many conflicting messages about food. We’re offered an endless buffet of seemingly irresistible snack foods and treats (foods that have been carefully engineered to achieve peak deliciousness, no less); and yet, at the same time, we’re given a lot of highly moralistic messages about the importance of exercising self-control when we’re faced with these foods. It’s all about resisting temptation so that you can achieve a (quote-unquote) “acceptable” body shape and size (or so we’re told).

Now add to this the unique challenges that are baked into the experience of being a parent (the fact that you’re responsible for the health and wellbeing of another human being; the fact that kids are constantly changing and growing; and the fact that every parent on the planet is the product of his or her own imperfect childhoods), and you can see that this is definitely not an easy task.

A lot of us grew up hearing messages about weight and food that weren’t particularly helpful or healthy—messages that were laced with shame and judgment. Is it any wonder then that so many of us are trying to handle things differently (and hopefully a little better) with our kids? We want our kids to grow up being healthy and strong and feeling good about their bodies. And some of us (myself included) know from first-hand experience how difficult it is to be “the fat kid.” Fat stigma is real, even in 2020. We want to spare our kids that painful experience, if possible.

Be mindful of the messages you’re sending your child about weight.

Ask yourself what broader cultural messages about food and weight your child sees you amplifying or rejecting. How do you react to a social media story about a celebrity’s weight loss or weight gain? Do you laugh at a fat joke in a movie you’re watching with your kids?  What kind of things do they hear you say when you talk about your own body or your own relationship with food?

This is something I was speaking with Michelle Allison about recently. She’s a Toronto dietician who helps people figure out what it means to eat normally—in a healthy, non-obsessive way. She told me that parents have an important role to play in modelling these kinds of behaviours for their kids: “Parents really need to sort out, as much as they can, their own relationship with food so that they’re able to model for their kids eating in a way that is normal and healthy—and includes permission, but that also includes structure.” Where kids, like adults, tend to run into trouble and when they can actually end up developing an unhealthy relationship with food is when they get a lot of all-or-nothing messages around food: you’re either depriving yourself of food or you’re rewarding yourself with food; this food is good or bad. The goal is to find some sensible middle ground—a place where kids can grow up feeling good (not guilty) about food and where they can learn to trust their bodies to tell them what they actually want and need.

Find out if there’s actually cause for concern.

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that kids are simply going to be bigger than others. That’s simply a particular child’s body type. Looking at your child’s overall growth pattern or trajectory over a prolonged period of time often helps to make this broader pattern clear. A big baby becomes a big toddler becomes a big child. A doctor or a dietitian can help you to gain this bigger picture perspective.

And what if your child is a bit bigger than other kids? The goal isn’t to move your child from the 90th percentile to the 50th percentile on the growth chart. The goal is to allow your child’s body to become what it is meant to be and to avoid reacting in a way that might cause your child to develop an unhealthy relationship with food. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes—and kids go through periods when they naturally become a little bit chubbier or a bit thinner. It’s important to recognize and accept those key biological facts.

This kind of ebb and flow is normal, explains Michelle Allison. “We all recognize growth spurts when it comes to height or…shoe size. But it’s also important [for] parents to understand that there are periods of what is called adiposity rebound that occur as well. And these are periods when kids will gather more fat and they’ll grow more fat tissue on their body and then usually a growth spurt in height comes after that. This is a normal and important part of development. The body knows what it’s doing and as long as parents provide the supportive structure of regular meals and enough permission (exposing children to a variety of different foods, but letting them pick and choose from what’s available), parents can [relax], trust that process, and not try to take it over.”

Maybe you’re trying to fix a problem that isn’t actually a problem at all.

Maybe there isn’t actually anything for you to fix.

Offer support in a way that doesn’t involve body shaming.

Keep the focus on having a happy, healthy relationship with your body: eating well, being active, and celebrating all the things your body can do: how strong and capable it is. Resist the temptation to try to control your child’s weight or food intake in a way that feels punitive or like deprivation. And insist that other relatives do the same. (It’s not okay for a grandparent to tell a chubby kid that he doesn’t “need” this piece of cake, but that his skinnier brother can have two pieces!)

Modify the family environment in a way that supports the child and that is healthy for all family members. Make high-quality nutrition and regular physical activity the norm for your family. And model those behaviours yourself. (Parents are incredibly powerful role models, particularly when it comes to physical activity. More active parents end up raising more active kids.)

Recognize your own internalized biases and stigma regarding weight. Don’t let them spill over into your relationship with your child. And refuse to allow other family members (grandparents, siblings, anyone) to engage in weight-related shaming or bullying. Help them to understand that teasing a child about their weight as a means of “motivating" them to lose weight is a strategy that can backfire big time. Children who are subjected to weight-based teasing actually tend to gain more weight than other kids. Likewise, putting a child on a diet is also hugely ineffective and it may even cause psychological harm, increasing the risk of both weight gain and disordered eating. One study found that women who remembered their parents commenting on their weight when they were growing up were likely to express dissatisfaction with their bodies well into adulthood regardless of their actual weight in adulthood.

Take action to combat fat stigma.

Acknowledge that fat stigma is real. Our kids pick up on all those “fat is bad” messages—and overweight kids pay the price on the playground and in gym class.

If your child is on the receiving end of this kind of bullying, help your child figure out how to respond—what they might want to say and who they might want to turn to for help and support in dealing with these episodes of bullying.

And if your child is the one doing the bullying, help your child to understand why it’s not okay. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes. No one should be made to feel less acceptable or worthy because they’re living their life in a bigger body—or any body, for that matter. Body shaming is also an issue for kids who are deemed “too skinny” and for boys who are deemed “not manly enough,” too.

Recognize how important it is to get this right.

Childhood experiences about weight can have a far-reaching impact well into adulthood, both in terms of how we feel about our bodies and what kind of relationship we have with food. How do I know this? Because I was a fat kid—or at least I grew up thinking I was a fat kid. Looking back, I was a little chubby; and I definitely packed on a few extra pounds as I headed into puberty. But that’s how puberty is supposed to work. (Girls shift from gaining roughly 2 kg per year before puberty to gaining roughly 5 to 10 kg right around the time of puberty. They tend to fill out before they grow up.) But here’s the thing: I didn’t understand that at the time. All I knew was that the scale was moving upwards at a rapid rate and everyone around me seemed to be talking about my weight. It would take decades of my life for me to shed the shame and to develop a healthy and joyful relationship with food.

Unfortunately, along the way, I ended up giving my own kids some rather mixed-up messages about food and body image. Like my parents, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had at the time—and, like my parents, I fell short on this front. Despite my best efforts not to burden my daughter with any of my own weight-related baggage, she ended up developing an eating disorder during her teen years, perhaps in response to my weight (I was quite obese at that time) and perhaps because of my obvious efforts to lose that weight (diet culture can be both toxic and contagious).

The good news is that I ultimately managed to find my way to a healthy place: both in terms of my physical health (I am no longer morbidly obese) but even more importantly in terms of how comfortable I am in my own skin. And so did my daughter.

And that’s what I want for any kid who might be worried about their weight: that same hard-earned feeling of self-compassion and self-acceptance; the lightness and grace that allows you to move in the world without obsessing 24/7 about the shape or size of your body; the freedom to accept and enjoy your body without even a hint of body shame. The freedom to be yourself, in other words….

Note: This blog post is based on my most recent parenting column for CBC Radio.

Ann Douglas is the author of numerous books about parenting including, most recently, Happy Parents, Happy Kids and Parenting Through the Storm. She is also the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio. Ann frequently speaks at health and parenting conferences across the country on issues related to parenting and mental health.

Friendship Skills: Helping Kids to Master the Art of Being a Friend

Parents, teachers, and other caring adults have an important role to play in helping children to acquire friendship skills. In her most recent column for CBC Radio, weekend parenting columnist Ann Douglas spoke to parent Amanda DeGrace about ways to help kids to master the art of being a friend.

Photo by Steven Libralon on Unsplash.

Friendship skills don’t necessarily come easily or happen naturally for every child. Odds are you know at least one child who is much more of a “social caterpillar” than a “social butterfly.” The good news is that parents, teachers, and other caring adults have an important role to play when it comes to helping kids to make sense of the unwritten rules of friendship. Here’s what you can do to encourage that all-important learning.

Ensure that kids have plenty of opportunities to work on their friendship skills.

The best way to help kids to understand what it means to be a friend is by giving them plenty of opportunities to practice those skills. That means ensuring that they have plenty of opportunity to play with other kids, starting when they’re still really little. Of course, play dates don’t just happen. Someone has to make them happen. And more often than not, that “someone” is mom or dad!

The good news is that eventually, parents are able to take a bit of a step back when it comes to orchestrating these kinds of play opportunities. This is something I was speaking with Amanda DeGrace about during a recent interview for CBC Radio. She’s the mother of three children, ages 4, 7, and 9, and she told me that she likes to encourage her children to take the lead when it comes to making weekend plans with their friends. She then supports those efforts by providing logistical support in the form of transportation — a necessity, given that her family lives out in the country. Yes, it can be a lot of work, but, it’s definitely worth the effort. She wants her children to have the chance to play with their friends and to work on their friendship skills.

Help kids to understand that it’s normal for friendships to hit road bumps from time to time.

Kids need to know that these friendship road bumps are inevitable. It’s not a case of if they’re going to happen but when they’re going to happen. Human beings make mistakes! We’re going to say and do things we regret from time to time. We don’t have to be perfect and neither do our friends, but we do have to be willing to do the hard work of repairing the relationship when something goes wrong.

One of the ways you can support kids through the process of dealing with one of these friendship road bumps is by helping them to figure out what went wrong and what it’s going to take to get the relationship back on track. Your child might find it helpful to role play some friendship repair scenarios with you. They could practice talking with a friend about what happened, expressing regret for their own actions, and coming up with a game plan for handling things a little differently next time.

The benefits of supporting a child’s social-emotional learning in this way can be huge. Instead of feeling like they should give up on a friendship the first time they encounter one of these friendship road bumps, they will be more inclined to think about what went wrong and to look for an opportunity to repair the relationship. And they won’t be looking to you to rush in and fix things: they’ll feel confident in their own ability to get the relationship back on track. That’s huge!

Resist the temptation to try to handpick your child’s friends.

Sometimes your child decides to strike up a friendship with a child you really dislike. In this situation, it can be helpful to take a step back to try to get a handle on what’s actually going on. Is this simply a matter of your child’s friend rubbing you the wrong way or is there actually cause for concern when it comes to this friendship? This is something else I was speaking with Amanda DeGrace about during our recent conversation for CBC Radio. She told me that, in situations like this, she likes to ask herself a few key questions: “Is the friendship mutually beneficial?” “Are the children showing empathy toward each other?” “Are they demonstrating kindness?”

In this case, acceptance is key: acceptance of this other child and acceptance of your own child’s right to make her own friendship choices. Sure, if your child’s friend is consistently domineering or deliberately unkind, obviously you’ll want to raise your concerns with your child. But be aware that you’re walking a bit of a fine line. If you criticize this friend in a way that seems harsh and unfair to your child, you risk having your child rush to the friend’s defence — and that might only serve to cement the bonds of friendship! Likewise, trying to forbid your child from being friends with this child may only serve to drive the friendship underground. All that said, sometimes you have to intervene because this friendship is causing real harm to your child. But more often than not, you simply find yourself taking a step back, and keeping your fingers crossed that maybe, just maybe, the friendship will eventually run its course.

Ensure that kids get the message that it’s okay to walk away from a really bad friendship.

Not all friendships can be saved nor is every friendship even worth saving. When this kind of situation arises, it’s really important to validate your child’s decision to end an unhealthy relationship. Maybe this wasn’t the first time this friend lashed out in a really hurtful way. Maybe trust has been destroyed and there simply isn’t a way to come back from that kind of betrayal. Your child needs to know that it’s okay to walk away from a really bad friendship. In fact, it’s more than okay. It’s essential.

Accept the fact that friendship skills can be tougher for some kids to master than others, but hold on to hope that this will happen eventually for most kids.

It does take some children a little longer than others to master friendship skills — and that’s okay. Childhood doesn’t have to be a race! I’m thinking of kids who are anxious or impulsive or maybe a bit more aggressive than their peers; or who are simply not quite as socially savvy as other kids. Not every child understands intuitively what it means to have or be a friend. They may need a little extra help from a parents, teachers, and other experts in order to understand how to fit the various pieces in the friendship puzzle together.

The good news is that many kids who start out with a significant social skills deficit do end up mastering the art of being a friend. It may not happen easily. It may not happen overnight. But it can and does happen. That social caterpillar may yet become a social butterfly.

This blog post was based was based on my most recent weekend parenting column for CBC Radio.

Ann Douglas is the author of numerous books about pregnancy and parenting including, most recently, Happy Parents, Happy Kids and Parenting Through the Storm. She is also the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio.

Parenting is a Two-Way Street

Parenting can feel like an impossibly high-stakes activity. After all, what’s at stake is nothing less than the health and wellbeing of the next generation of humans. That’s more than a little daunting, don’t you think? Is it any wonder then that so many of us feel so much pressure to get this parenting thing right?

Well, here’s a simple yet all-important fact about parenting that might help to ease some of the pressure you might be feeling.

Parenting isn’t just about you! It’s actually about you and your kid. Instead of thinking of parenting as something you do to your kid, think of it as something that you do with your kid. Think of parenting as a two-way street.

That may seem like a subtle distinction, but it’s actually a pretty big deal. There’s a growing body of research to show that parents and kids shape one another’s behaviour in intricate and interconnected ways. Your child acts in a particular way and that elicits a particular response from you — which, in turn, causes your child to react in yet another way again. The effect is bidirectional, in other words. It’s anything but a one-way street.

Here’s where the good news piece comes into play. Because the parent-child relationship is constantly changing and evolving, you have endless opportunities to get it right. After all, your child isn’t the only one who is learning and growing. You’re learning and growing as a parent.

This message should be tremendously reassuring to every parent who ever wondered, “Do I actually have what it takes to be a good parent?” (which, quite frankly, is pretty much every single parent on the planet). Because here’s the thing: you don’t have to have everything figured out up front. You and your child can learn and grow together.

How this contributes to child development

Children aren’t just inert blobs of clay, waiting to be molded into shape by their parents. They play an important role in their own development. Parents have an impact on kids and kids have an impact on parents. The effect is bidirectional, in other words.

It isn’t difficult to figure out how an interactive and highly responsive parent-child relationship helps to support a child’s development. It helps to ensure that the needs of each individual child are met in a particular way in a particular moment — and it allows for the fact that those needs are going to change on an ongoing basis over time.

If you think about it, this makes so much sense. Each child is unique, so it makes sense that every parent-child relationship would be unique as well. Every child needs something slightly different from her parents. Add to that the fact that children are ever changing and you can see why it’s important that the parent-child relationship be incredibly flexible and nimble. The needs of a toddler are, after all, very different from the needs of a newborn baby, and they’re very different again from the needs of, say, a teenager.

Understanding this simple yet all-important concept can be a huge relief to parents. Suddenly, parenting becomes less about following a particular pre-scripted set of one-size-fits-none operating instructions and more about trying to answer the question, “What does this particular child need from me right now?”

This is something I was speaking with Dr. Jean Clinton about recently. She’s a child psychiatrist, a mother of five, and a grandparent of four. She encourages parents to recognize and celebrate the fact that parenting is all about parents and kids learning from and about one another. “It’s a relationship that evolves over time; and what grows in each of us as we’re learning about each other really is the heart of the matter,” she said.

A case in point: how babies learn how to talk

Want a concrete example of how this bidirectional thing plays out in real life?

Consider the way that babies acquire language. Their coos and babbles are designed to elicit a particular type of response from parents — that over-the-top exaggerated speech known as parentese. This is why, when you encounter a very young baby, you find yourself speaking in a repetitive, sing songy voice, “Are you just the sweetest baby ever? Aren’t you just the sweetest? Yes, you are!” Babies find this kind of speech utterly captivating. They listen attentively to these over-the-top speech sounds and, over time, they gradually figure out how to make these sounds for themselves. In other words, those babies elicit the very type of language learning that they need a particular moment — and those needs change over time. That’s why, by the time they’re ready to celebrate their first birthday, babies are communicating in a very different way, pointing at objects and asking, over and over again, through words or gestures, “What’s that?” They will have shifted their focus from sound construction to vocabulary building.

Another example: how parents and kids influence one another’s physical activity levels

But the bidirectionality of parenting isn’t just a phenomenon that happens during babyhood. It is baked into each and every single stage of parenting. There’s a growing body of research to show, for example, that more active parents have more active kids — and vice versa. Yes, more active kids have more active parents, too!

Let’s think about how things might play out in the life of a particular family — a family where the parents led pretty sedentary lives until Junior arrived on the scene. Let’s say Junior is one of those really high-energy kids: a kid who is in perpetual motion from the moment he wakes up until the moment he reluctantly heads to bed. The parents of this kind of high-energy kid might find themselves heading to the park after dinner to try to let him run off some of that steam — which could encourage them to become more active than they might otherwise have been. Lounging on the couch after dinner is no longer an option in their world — at least not now that Junior has arrived on the scene!

I don’t know about you, but I find this endlessly fascinating, thinking about the many different ways parents and children end up affecting one another — and how that continues to change over time.

What this means for parents who are raising more than one child

If you happen to be raising more than one child, you could be in for a bit of an exciting ride as you attempt to meet the needs of very different children in very different ways all at the same time. It can also be incredibly humbling as you come to terms with the fact that parenting isn’t 100% about you!

This is something I was speaking with Nicole Johnson about recently. She’s the mother of four school-aged children. She thought she had this parenting thing down to an art until her fourth child arrived on the scene. “I call my fourth my humility child,” she explained. “My [first] three went to bed super well: I had no battles with bedtime. And I thought it was all me. I just thought I was fantastic at this. And then I had my fourth child. He is a night owl and I realized very quickly with him that my other three went to bed well because that was just in their nature. It really didn’t have as much to do with me as I thought it did.”

Again, this all makes perfect sense. After all, if every child is unique, then every parent-child relationship is going to be unique, too, as each child works at getting her own unique set of needs met in a unique way by a particular parent.

This also helps to explain why siblings growing up in the very same household with the same set of parents can have very different experiences of being parented — to say nothing of very different relationships with each of their parents.

How learning about bidirectionality can help you to ditch some of your parenting guilt

Understanding that the parent-child relationship is dynamic and ever-changing can be a game changer for you and your child. It allows you to ease up on some of the pressure you might otherwise be putting on yourself to have everything about parenting figured out ahead of time; or to feel like you have to force yourself and your kids to conform to one-size-fits-all parenting advice that isn’t a particularly great fit for either of you.

It’s been my experience in my own life as a mom of four that one-size-fits-all parenting advice fits about as well as one-size-fits-all pantyhose (which is to say not well at all). So trust yourself to figure out what your child needs from you and trust your child to help you figure that out as well.

Of course, it’s helpful to learn about child development and to have a broad sense of what most children need at particular stages of their development, but don’t allow all that expert advice to cause you to overlook how much you already know and how much you will continue to learn as a result of your relationship with your child.

A couple of decades into this adventure called parenting, I now understand that that’s how things are supposed to work: that my relationship with each of my kids will always be changing and evolving because we as individuals are constantly changing and evolving.

Who knows where this parent-child adventure will take us in the years and decades to come?

I honestly have no idea, but I can’t wait to find out.

Ann Douglas is the author of numerous books about parenting, including, most recently, Happy Parents, Happy Kids. She is also the weekend parenting columnist for CBC Radio. This column is based on her most recent CBC Radio parenting column.