A quick answer to the title question – No. In today’s society, there are too many complicating factors for parenting to be innate and too many factors that affect the ability of adults to be the best parents that they can be. My career starting in medical school back in 1972 has led me on a path to help identify ways that I can help others be the best parents they can be. Yet that journey was really challenged back in 1999. Let me explain.
April 20, 1999 started for me in Chicago at a meeting. While at the airport to fly back to South Carolina, I saw the coverage of the events at Columbine High School in Littleton CO. Thirteen people killed, 2 students committed suicide after the rampage, and a community and nation were left to ask why. I subsequently wrote an op-ed for the local newspaper, and that effort led to over 160 plus op-eds over the next 12-13 years. A book was developed from those efforts.1 I asked myself what can I do better as a parent to prevent a Columbine recurrence and what can I do to help others prevent a Columbine recurrence. Unfortunately, mass shootings have continued but I remain undeterred in the quest to be impactful for my children and the children of others.
The book was focused on the Five Steps to Community Improvement that I articulated in my first op-ed piece. All of those steps have their roots in parenting principles—1) learn to be the best parent you can be, 2) get involved, 3) stay involved, 4) love for others, 5) forgiveness). In this blog post, I want to concentrate on the first step.
I chose the words for the first step very purposely.
- Learn – parenting is a constant learning experience. For those that think it is innate and they only need to procreate to become parents, I submit that they are wrong. From prior to birth of their children to their children growing up, parents should be engaged in learning about all the facets of being a parent. Without such learning, adults are inadequately preparing for the lifelong experience of parenting. The stages of childhood and their developmental manifestations are not intuitive and require instruction. Only then can an adult take on the awesome responsibility of parenting – parenting to prepare one’s offspring to become citizens who care for and care about others.
- To be the best parent – There is no “best” parent, but we should all aspire to be better each day. There will be steps forward and slips backward. We must be prepared to deal with those and to be as nurturing as possible every step along the way. Our job is to be the standard bearer of the safe, stable nurturing relationships (SSNRs) that our children need from birth onward.2,3 As Barack Obama is known to have said, ““better is good, and better is actually a lot harder than worse.”4 This is a good premise for parenting – to always be working toward being better and recognizing that doing nothing will often lead to a worse outcome. Doing nothing might seem like an easy path, but it will more often than not lead to a worse outcome. So, we should aspire to be the best parent but realistically let’s strive to be better with all of our SSNRs with our children.
- You can be – It is unfair to say that everyone has the same ability or circumstances as they embark on their parenting journeys. The range of abilities of course vary. Some folks will need more assistance, and we should be ready to provide that assistance without any stigma or embarrassment. And it certainly goes without saying that not everyone has the same circumstances. Due to health, educational, socioeconomic or environmental factors, many parents are disadvantaged and need extra assistance. An oft-used analogy is that we are all in the same sea, that is we are all fighting the same elements in life. The fallacy with that analogy is that we all have different boats in that sea—some have nice fancy boats with powerful motors, and some have dinghies with holes in the bottom. Those in fancy boats can just speed away from the storm, and those with dinghies are constantly bailing out the water and barely making any progress to get to shore. We must be ready to be of service to others so they can provide SSNRs to their offspring.5 We all benefit when others benefit in their parenting, and we should all be working toward that common goal.
My latest book, Conscious Parenting: Using the Parental Awareness Threshold, seeks to emphasize that parenting is a constant learning process. One could argue that it is a job, but I prefer to consider it to be the most beautiful responsibility we will have in our lives. It is not innate. To provide the safe, stable nurturing relationships to allow our children to build resilience and flourish and to care for and about others, we should roll up our sleeves and learn everything we can about parenting. The happiness of our children is not given to them in some tangible form but developed in them by our nurturing parenting. Our quest continues and is blissfully fulfilling.
- Saul R. My Children’s Children: Raising Young Citizens in the Age of Columbine. CreateSpace; 2013. 225 pp.
- https://mychildrenschildren.com/adversity-resilience-and-flourishing-oh-my/
- https://mychildrenschildren.com/my-three-moms-and-ssnrs/
- https://mychildrenschildren.com/better-is-good-incremental-steps-forward/
- https://mychildrenschildren.com/caste-what-now-part-iii/
- Saul R. Conscious Parenting: Using the Parental Awareness Threshold. Robert Saul; 2020. 100 pp.