By Pat Mooney
Coastal Parent

When Lilli, our first granddaughter was two years old, her mother, our daughter Tara, wondered aloud why all of Lilli's recent pictures featured our darling with her hand on her forehead.

I allowed as how I didn't know but would try figuring it out.

Within a day or so, Tara saw another "Kodak Moment" and pulled out the camera. She pushed her bangs out of the way, held the camera to her eye and snapped the picture. I realized why in all of Lilli's recent pictures, she had her hand on her forehead.

Tara wasn't verbally telling Lilli to put her hand on her forehead. Tara was putting her own hand on her own forehead to move her bangs aside and Lilli was following along. Tara's gesture had a reason and was so natural it was out of her own awareness. Lilli, was following Tara's lead and Tara wasn't even aware she was leading.

How often do we wonder what the heck is going on with our kids or why they do what they do? There are many times when we proudly, or not so proudly, recognize ourselves in our kids. We may wonder how we can communicate with our kids. We may have to look in the mirror and to "The Lilli Lesson" for the answer. It is a prime example of observational learning or "modeling" a phenomenon first quantified in scientific terms by Albert Bandura in the late 1950s.

Parents are role models for their children. Every parent I know was once a child, had parents or parent figures, and grew up for better or worse. Some had good childhoods and some were not as fortunate. Some parents do better by their own children, some are about the same, a few are worse. There is choice involved. There is inborn temperament and there is parental influence. Parents from unhappy, unhealthy childhoods may have to work particularly hard if they are to overcome the handicaps their upbringing imposed on them. In most cases, they must look to some other caring adult, whom they knew as a child, as a model of how to be a responsible, caring adult. They may also have to examine their own thoughts and feelings and work toward changing the unhealthy ones. They may have to work at changing how they perceive situations or how they react and respond to them.

I worked with a family in another town and the parents were having some trouble with their daughter Joni's behavior. During the course of our work together Jim, the father in the family, spoke of his difficulty controlling his unreasonable irritation with his nine-year-old son, Jimmy. It seems Jim's dad, James, had been very harsh with him when he was growing up and Jim hated it. But he found echoes of his father in his own attitude toward his own son, Joni's brother. We had a total of about eight sessions and the family went their way.

About a year later, I ran into Jim and we chatted about how things were going. They were going well. When I asked about his relationship with Jimmy he said, "Much better. When I find myself getting unreasonably irritated, I just remember what you said and I calm right down and am able to be the kind of father I want to be."

Well during the eight hours of counseling, I'd said a lot to things so I inquired about which "magic words" had made such a big difference, expecting some deep or profound insight.

He said, "Oh you remember, you told me to 'Remember, he's only nine!' and that's made all the difference." What had also made the difference was that Jim brought his thoughts and feelings out into the open with a determination to make a change. He had awareness that he wasn't as good a parent as he wanted to be.

When we are aware of what we need to do better as parents, we are in position to make changes. Awareness then is one key to better parenting. If we are fortunate enough to be part of a good parenting team, then much of this awareness and knowledge comes from that relationship.

Single parents may need to generate our own parenting team by finding another responsible adult to serve as a support and sounding board. It may a parent or trusted friend, but it needs to be someone who is the kind of person you'd like for your child to become and whom you respect as well as like and trust. This person can listen while you talk and, as you talk, you will bring to light things which may have been out of your awareness. Recall our two examples and you see how awareness can lead to change in thinking and better parenting.

I recently spoke with a woman who's discovered how to talk to her teenager. She doesn't! She listens and lets her teen talk. She listens respectfully and with interest. She knows that her teen is "trying out ideas" and that next month her teen will be trying out other seemingly incompatible ideas. Once her teen "caught on" that he was being treated more like an adult than a headstrong child, he began to ask what she thought. Her response is honest and respectful. You know what she gets in return these days - honesty and respect. She doesn't always agree with her teenager and he doesn't always agree with her but they talk. Overall, things are going much better now that she's learned how to "talk" to her teen age son. She is modeling listening and respect and that's what she's getting in return. She's becoming the parent of an adult child.

Modeling isn't the only parental communication that influences our children, but it's a significant one and the great thing is that you don't have to be a perfect parent. You get to model "mistake making and correction" too! How else will your kids learn that very vital skill?

Pat Mooney is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Savannah. You can e-mail him with suggestions for future columns at: patmooneylcsw@bellsouth.net


Active parenting information:

The National Institute of Child Health & Human Development publishes a lot of good information and is an excellent resource. Many of their publications are available on the web. One is "Adventures in Parenting," in which the authors describe the RPM3 approach to good parenting. RPM3 stands for: Responding, Preventing, Monitoring, Mentoring and Modeling.

In the Modeling section they offer five tips to help parents become good role models. These tips are:

• Do as you say and say as you do.
  
  
• Show respect for other people, including your child. Respecting their opinion doesn't mean letting them run the family.
  
  
• Be honest with your child about how you are feeling. Children can sense how you feel and may think your bad mood is their fault not your reaction to a bad day at work.
  
  
• Make sure your child knows that being angry does not mean, 'not loving.'
  
  
• Pinpoint things that you wouldn't want your child's role model to do, and make sure you aren't doing them.