If we were all able to clearly see our own paths there would be no need for therapists!
Therapists are people who go through years of special training. And they're people whose advice is explicitly requested. And who tend to reserve judgement until they've spent hours listening to various facets of the situation. And, as someone who has seen therapists for both myself and for my son, I can tell you that even then they often are not particularly helpful.
The most helpful child therapist I ever talked to, BTW, the one who most fully and clearly understood my son's situation, in the end did not have any "easy" advice. He didn't even think therapy would work, particularly. What he did suggest is that I learn to ignore other people's criticism because they often won't know what they're talking about, that I proceed by trial and error keeping in mind that what works one week might not work the next, and that it might be helpful to join a support group of parents who actually have experienced similar situations, to commiserate if nothing else.
The point I am trying to make is that you don't know where your next inspiration or light bulb moment is going to come from so why close the door? Sure, peoples lives are complicated and we can't know all the factors that impact a behavior but that doesn't mean we can't have some insight into a path that might result in a different outcome. I might not understand the whys and wherefores or the factors that dictate your choices but that doesn't mean I can't see that changing the behaviors will get you a different outcome.
I agree with this. It's possible that I can hear something helpful from you, or a magazine article or TV show, or an advertisement on the subway, or an overheard snippet of conversation -- something that I can put into practice in my own life and will make a difference. But it's difficult for an outsider to know for sure that piece of advice is workable and useful because, as you say, you may not understand all the factors that dictate my choices.
Using your example-if I want to lose 20lbs and you know I want to lose 20lbs and I lament the fact that I just can't seem to loose no matter what I do and we are having lunch and I have a salad with a cup of full fat salad dressing on it you are going to have some insight into why I can't loose weight. You may not know the thought process behind why I am making the choices that I am but you know the behavior is impacting the problem.
This may be straying a little OT, but it's a good illustration of why what appears to be an obvious and "simple" answer is not always so simple. There are numerous rational reasons why a person trying to lose 20 pounds would opt for full-fat dressing. Maybe she's following a low-carb diet, most of which caution against low-fat dressings because they contain added sugar. Maybe she can't abide low-fat salad dressing, and knows that if she gets it she won't enjoy her salad, so what's the point of eating out and getting a salad. Maybe she knows that the difference between low-fat and full-fat dressing is only about 75 calories (on WW, it's a couple of points), and has already factored that into her daily allowances. I myself pretty much always eat full-fat dressing, even when I'm dieting, because I hate low-fat dressing. (And no, that's not the reason I need to lose 20 pounds. I have managed to lose weight in the past while continuing to eat full-fat dressing -- maybe I'm more likely to succeed if I can enjoy my salads and am not trying to choke down food that I hate.) Heck, maybe your friend is just opting to go off her diet, for reasons you aren't privy to or couldn't fully understand because you don't occupy her body. In any case, your friend probably already knows damn well that full-fat dressing has more calories than low-fat, don't you think? That's not exactly arcane information in this culture.
Now, I'm not saying no information is ever helpful. As we know from the
Eat This, Not That books and others, sometimes a food that appears to be healthy and low-calorie is surprisingly not, and vise versa. So if you've got special information to share, I'm all ears! But if you're going to solve my 20-pound problem on the basis of what salad dressing I choose during the one meal that you witness, maybe not.
This illustrates the point I am trying to make. Many of the problems that they have with the kids are due to the kids' sleep deprivation. Using this example, kids need sufficient sleep in order for their brains to develop and function properly. That isn't my judgement, that's fact. So what in their lives can be more important than their kids' health and development? They would, of course, say nothing is. But when you break down the behavior into its component parts, that is not what you get. Parenthood is one big giant sacrifice and this is just one more. They have to make choices-difficult choices affect a different outcome. The lifestyle changes may not be easy but the reason for them are pretty simple and straight forward.
But they are in the thick of it and just trying to get through each demanding day and aren't necessarily looking beyond that.
They are loving parents and trying to do the best that they can and I am a loving aunt who sees how the choices they make impact their kids. So what I do is step in to help them whenever they need extra hands. I try to show them a different way by doing. How differently the kids behave when they get sufficient sleep. How having a bedtime routine makes it so much easier to get them to bed. How I can get them to do things without yelling at them. My sister-in-law then adopts some of those behaviors and things change. I don't tell her how she should be raising her kids but I do show her how a different approach might get her what she wants.
Well, that's great then, a happy ending. I'm not really in a position to analyze their situation any further, although I WAS wondering why, if you felt you could make a helpful suggestion, you didn't just tactfully make it.
BTW, on the subject of relatives helping out, my kids were always much better behaved when staying with their grandparents. Amazingly, all they had to do was tell them to do something, and they'd do it! For a long time, my in-laws assumed it was because they were more effective at dealing with kids. Eventually they did realize that it wasn't that simple.
And I am going to pay more attention to the person who has a lifestyle and attitude towards food that I know will benefit me in the long run. I may be inspired by someone who has lost weight but I am going to try to follow the path of a person who has a lifestyle that is, and always has been, consistent with what I want.
In my experience, someone who has struggled for a long time with their weight usually knows more about food and exercise and what it takes to diet than someone who has always been thin. And among people who have always been thin, there are those who exercise and eat healthy, and there are those who wouldn't walk around the block and spend every night eating chips in front of the TV. Lifetime thinness often has more to do with genes than lifestyle. Even for thin people who DO all the right things, there is generally much less "sacrifice" involved -- those choices often just come more naturally. My ex-husband genuinely LOVES to exercise -- he doesn't have to force himself into the gym. I've known people who might have a plate of homemade cookies on the counter and not even think about them, whereas I would be constantly aware they are there and eventually devour six of them. The thin people are not consciously sacrificing, or exercising all their willpower, as I would have to -- cookies just aren't important to them. (BTW, if we both lived 500,000 years ago, or maybe even 500, I would likely be flourishing and the thin person who doesn't really love fattening foods would be dead.)
So no, if a thin person says to me, "Just don't eat the cookies! It's really that easy!" I'm not going to take it as seriously as someone who has lost 20 pounds and gives me advice based on having struggled with a similar situation and found a solution (make a kind of cookies you dislike, allow yourself one as a treat but write down the calories, or whatever -- not saying these are necessarily magic solutions, either, but they're more constructive).
If the question is "how do you stay slim" the answer is easy. I'm certainly needing to lose those 20 lbs. and, for me, that would be easy if only I were willing to make the sacrifices I need to make to do it. There is nothing complicated about that and I am not going to make any excuses about it. If 20lbs is all that needs to be lost and it isn't happening that is due to a lack of commitment. You can make every excuse under the sun but the bottom line is those 20 lbs are there because you don't make the changes you need to make to get rid of them. I am a chub and I have been rocking slim so I can speak from both perspectives.
I am a chub and have been rocking slim, too, and I see it as far more difficult than that. Losing weight involves sacrifices, yes, but sometimes those sacrifices are relatively easy and sometimes they aren't. Sometimes I can eat nothing but healthy stuff for a week or two with very little effort, maybe lose a few pounds, and think, "Wow, I could go on like this forever!" And then -- BAM. Suddenly, I can't. I can't fully explain the reasons, but I suspect they have to do with biological and/or psychological processes that are far more complicated than simple matters of discipline or willpower.
If the answer to weight loss were "easy," weight loss wouldn't be a $75 trillion (or whatever) industry of books and programs and foods and whatnot. And you wouldn't have scientists starting to admit outright (as they did in a
NYT Magazine article a couple of weeks ago) that successful permanent weight loss is so rare that they're beginning to consider it not really possible, at least not for most of the population. Is it possible to lose weight? Sure, I've lost 20 pounds probably six or seven times in my adult life. And I do know a few people who've lost weight and kept it off for, say, 10 years or more. I myself have never made it more than about three.
I know for damn sure that rewarding kids for bad behavior will continue the bad behavior and rewarding them for good behavior will result in continued good behavior.
You would think so, wouldn't you? It certainly makes logical sense. Sadly, it's not always that simple. For example, I have two sons. One of them has probably spent more time confined to his room in a given week than the other has spent cumulatively in his entire life. Which do you think is the better behaved?
In the same way that one can't lay all the fault on the parents' doorstep, one also can't blame the outside influences when one refuses to do whatever it takes to keep ones kids on as good (I was gonna say straight but I'm not about that ) a path as possible. I talk to plenty of parents who complain about their kids but won't take a stand for fear the kid "won't like me" or other but but but.
I can think of buts, there are plenty of buts. I guess "the kid won't like me" would not be one I've heard much, myself, though.
Could some parents improve their parenting? Sure. My point here was not that every parent is already doing everything perfectly. My point is that their situations are often more complicated than they appear to a casual observer.,
Nor should you, and that isn't about arrogance. And it isn't even about you. I don't know anything about kids or your struggles or much of anything about you really. I only know what you tell us. Maybe the feedback that we get/give is shit, maybe it's gold. You won't know unless you let it into your world of possibilities.
Oh, I let it into my world of possibilities. All I'm saying is that you should understand that my world of possibilities also include a three-foot-tall stack of books, four or five therapists, advice from who knows how many teachers, endless hours reading papers and articles by prominent cutting-edge researchers, a handful of phone interviews with some of these same researchers and other child-development experts -- including one child psychologist who quoted me in his book -- a handful of articles I've written myself, and 17 years of thought. Parenting challenges have been not only a personal thing for me, but a good part of my professional career. I have written articles debunking much of the well-known research on parenting -- it's mostly seriously flawed, because it's based on studies of biologically related families, but that's not surprising because parenting advice itself has always been something of a snake-oil business, much like the weight-loss business.
So yeah, if you're going to say, "Here's some feedback for what it's worth, maybe it's shit, maybe it's gold," I'm fine with that. I'm not covering my ears and singing "Lalalalala." But if someone spends five minutes hearing my situation and thinks she can immediately provide an "easy" answer that will solve the entire problem based on what her parents did when she was a kid, I'm probably just going to find it annoying.
BTW, here's one interesting thing that many people don't know or remember. In
The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan goes off on all the lax, overindulgent parenting she sees around her and how those parents are raising lazy, helpless kids. That book came out in 1963, and those kids would be us.