Your Parenting Matters

In my counseling practice, I often heard from parents about their attempts to treat each of their children ‘fairly’. Their efforts and preoccupation with making sure each child got the same amount of everything from shoes to what activities they participated in caused a great deal of problems and stress. And, as one might predict, the more ‘fair’ the parents tried to be the more ‘unfair’ their children thought things were. How could this be, the distraught parents would ask.

Well, just at the obvious level, children in the same family (with the exception of multiples) are not the same age, have different needs, different interests, etc. So, with that in mind how could anyone be ‘fair’ all the time? And, more importantly, what does that teach children? Life is not fair. It does not operate on the “everyone gets the same’ principle.

The job of parents is to teach children that they receive certain things based on need, some things based on their efforts and some things….well just because.

The big mistake parents make is that their concern over being fair has created the expectation in their children. It can be difficult not to give in to the demands of an upset child. There is a parenting strategy that you can learn that teaches you how to deal effectively with the “it’s not fair” syndrome. You don’t need to feel guilty or give long explanations about what you have decided.

When parents are unimpressed by the “it’s not fair” whine and refuse to react to it, they will notice that their children quickly give up protesting why they should get new shoes like brother Tommy.

I am reminded of one of my favorite stories about my mother and her sister told to me by my grandfather. My mother and her sister were arguing over who was going to get the biggest piece of the two leftover slices of pie. Her sister took the largest piece. When my grandfather showed up on the scene, my mother complained that it wasn’t fair that her sister got the biggest piece of pie. My grandfather calmly said, “well if you got to decide who got the biggest piece, who would you give it to?” My mother, thinking she would score some points here, proudly said. “I would give it to her to be nice”. My grandfather smiled and said, “Well, she’s got it!”.