Parenting Children to Interact w/ Adults

My friend William asked:

In re: parenting styles, have you become more aware of how you you interact with your children and how you instruct them to interact with adults.

I'm slightly repulsed by children who feel entitled to challenge/question adults without doing some research on their own first. But at the same time, do you want your child overlooking something simple simply because they were too afraid/ashamed to ask?

As I was thinking about the answer, it occurred to me that it actually goes right to the heart of my blog name, so:

The simple answer is that as I've been parenting, I've tried to duplicate those things I feel my parents did well, and improve or change those things I feel they didn't.

However, things are never as simple as they seem: Things that I feel perhaps my parents did less well than I would have liked are not necessarily things they did less well, they are things I perceived that they did less well. So, my perception is not the reality: They may have done those things well, or at least as well as they could, and I chose to ignore or slant my understanding of what they intended.

Which brings us full circle, William. I felt when in college that I wasn't prepared to ask the kinds of questions that needed to be asked to ensure that I had full understanding of the topics – I always felt restrained, that I should just go off by myself and study and attempt to figure it out before bringing a question forward, and always being mindful of the professor's and my fellow classmate's time before possibly wasting it with a nonsense question. This of course followed a pattern established early – and was probably much more restrained than my parents intended.

The problem is that kids can be so literal: Tell them to do or not to do something enough times, and they often (very often!) fail to grasp the nuance that we as adults understand and intend. 'Research and don't ask nonsense questions' can become 'Research, and don't bother others with questions', which in turn is simplified to “Look it up yourself”. And children just keep one pattern of behavior for many years for a situation – so, it becomes a catch all.

What have I learned in eight years, then? My biggest observation is that children are the absolute best mimics. If they ask questions / challenge, and I always give an answer, regardless of what I might say when they do that to another adult, they will always ask. If I instead take their question and show them how we can look it up, and intersperse that with sometimes answering, well: I've shown them both possible outcomes. But what they really need to see is how I decide to ask or look up, since that is the behavior they will most likely mimic (I've seen this from other areas, so feel pretty confident that it is true.) And so, it is very useful for my children to see me interact with other adults, and for me to remain mindful that I am modeling behavior my children will faithfully copy.

From the books we've read, (both Freakonomics and Outliers) we've seen just how powerful culture and the actual milieu in which children are raised is on their outcome. Which made me think about how useful it is to have two people raising children: Although I have patterns and habits established from my parents, and may struggle to change them, and my wife also, her patterns and habits are not my patterns and habits, so our children don't get just one set. And with mindful application of those that we do well, perhaps we can pass on mostly the good ones and submerge those we'd like to change in ourselves...

But, in regards to this specific behavior: I've being trying lately to teach my son that either he looks it up or asks a question: It is not acceptable to just accept that he doesn't know, and do nothing about it. The actual nuance of when to look it up and when to ask may be a few years off – at this point as long as he learns the answer!