Parenting Kids Who Are Different

I spend a goodly portion of my professional life (and have for the past 35 years) working with parents whose skills have worked perfectly well with one or more of their children - when they suddenly run into one for whom their established ways and techniques don't seem to work. There is not one was to be a perfect parent, but there are probably tens of thousands of ways to be a good one!

That one style of dealing with discipline, for example, does not work equally well with all children - even those sharing the same birth parents, the same home and a lot of DNA- should not come as a shock. After all, each child is as unique in their own way as is each and every adult. What works for one or for 100, may fail miserably with the 101st.

The issue is further complicated if one of more of the children in the family has diagnosed special needs of any kind - developmental, physical or psychological.

This phenomenon often drives parents to distraction or, more certainly, into the offices of people like myself who, they hope, can help them figure out how to be more successful parents with one or more of their children. Love is generally not absent. It is usually the tools that need augmentation.

What is generally regarded as 'good' parenting has a handful of common features. The adults are comfortable with their own authority as adults and as the parents. They do not confuse being a child's friend with being their mother or father. Good parents are consistent, fair and resist the all-too-common pitfalls of 1) Talking too much, 2) Getting too emotional themselves, of 3) Being inconsistent about the way in which they deal with their child/children. Successful parents provide enough structure to give each child a sense of predictability and security while allowing enough flexibility to allow a child to 'stretch' to their own next necessary level of development. Finally, 4) Successful parents tend to be good at giving their child positive attention - literally catching them doing good things. In this way the potential to feel like the Parent Police is reduced for both parent and child.

I'm sure that there are other fundamental aspects of parenting that tends to work most of the time with most kids, but I think I will stop there. Even with these basic guidelines established, they can often cannot be applied in a precisely identical manner to any two children - siblings or not. Figuring out how to tailor these requirements with the temperament, goals and personality of the parent so that they work effectively with the individual child - This is the 'art' of parenting.

Some children need more structure than others (this is often the case, for example, for highly distractible children.) Some need more words of explanation (often the case with the highly verbal child.) Some children have processing or memory issues that mean that parents might have to repeat themselves more than they really want to or feel should be necessary. The variables are truly vast.

The key to improving the nature and quality of a parent/child situation must begin with the parent acknowledging that something is not working right - and then, it is usually necessary for that parent to move past the extreme explanations that often occur first. These are that 1) The fault is all the child's - The kid is broken, bad or need to be repaired, or 2) That the fault is all that of the parent who believes that their own lack of skill and ability is the root cause of whatever is not working out well.

This is the real world, and in the real world of parenting and childhood, each participant plays a role and is, in some important ways, part of the problem as well as potentially a contributor to the solution.

Talk to friends, watch other parents, read a book, article or two and, failing all else, consult with a professional who may be able to see things a bit more clearly than you can - being there in the middle of it. A professional may well have knowledge of tools you are not familiar with that might improve, in a meaningful and life-changing way, the success of your parenting with your child or children.

It has been said that children do not come into the world with directions and that parents do not automatically know how to go about the business of parenting. These are certainly true - and most of we parents start out bound by the constraints of our own experiences as children - for better or for worse. To know more is to have more and hopefully more effective options.