Set a Positive Example

Strength for Their Journey: 5 Essential Disciplines African-American Parents Must Teach Their Children and Teens
by Robert L. Johnson, M.D., Paulette Stanford, M.D.

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Parents often ask us why their children don't heed their warnings and advice, even after countless repetition. The short answer is that boys and girls are far more focused on what parents do than what they say. It follows, then, that the mother who tells her daughter that it's important to read shouldn't be surprised if these words fall on deaf ears if she herself is constantly glued to the TV set. Likewise, the hard-drinking father who chides his son about the dangers of alcohol can reasonably expect those warnings to be ignored.

Your children are observing you all the time - looking for messages about how they should act and view things. The notion of "do what I say - not what I do" is a poor substitute for taking the lead in showing children the right way to act. Still, if you're going to engage in negative or unhealthy behavior, the worst thing you can do is to try to justify that what you're doing is right.

We all know people who will go to great lengths to defend their actions, however self-destructive they may be. "If I'm doing it," the flawed reasoning goes, "how bad can it be?" What makes this wrongheaded approach worse is telling your child that it's okay - or even desirable - to follow your lead.

We understand how difficult it can be for adults to change certain deeply ingrained habits and attitudes. Still, can you think of a better reason for making such positive changes than protecting your child's future?

Let's look at some examples of how parental behavior affects children. Take health habits. When it comes to habits such as eating right or avoiding tobacco and alcohol, your child is watching you carefully and comparing what he sees to the messages he gets in school, on TV, and from his peers. If the child has observed you eating moderately, and abstaining from tobacco and alcohol throughout his life, chances are good that he will follow your lead. If he sees you break an unhealthy habit and make positive lifestyle changes, that can have an especially positive long-term effect.

When parents make positive behavioral changes, children take notice and often ask questions. Here is an opportunity to discuss the matter in detail, and to explain the reasons for the change. You might talk about how hard it is to break long-time bad habits, and point out that it's easier not to start them in the first place.

We are well aware that some parents have difficulty with healthy eating, just as others find it next to impossible to stop smoking. In these cases, we suggest that parents explain their behavior as an unfortunate but human weakness, one that they will hopefully correct sometime in the future. At least then the parent can honestly say to a child: "Smoking cigarettes is wrong, but someday I plan to stop. I want you to understand that, once you start smoking, it's very hard to quit. Look at how much trouble I'm having. So, please, don't you ever smoke."

This approach is not an easy sell to skeptical teens, but it's far better than justifying your actions. For example, we know one mother named Mary who continued to chain-smoke while she breast-fed her infant son.

"Don't you realize that you are putting your baby's health at risk?" friends and relatives would ask.

"That's a bunch of propaganda by the baby formula companies that want women to stop breast-feeding and use their products," Mary would answer. "My smoking isn't going to hurt my child in the least."

There was a time when many more people smoked cigarettes around their children. But that was before the dangers of secondhand smoke to children became widely known. As always, there are some hard cases who refuse to change their behavior, or even admit that there's a good reason for making such a change. This destructive approach extends to many other key areas of life.

Caution: Passing on your own limitations to your children can stifle their potential.

Try to take a clear-eyed look at which of your behaviors and attitudes you want your child to emulate, and which ones cry out for change. If you are truly committed to your children's future, you don't want to burden them with your own destructive habits, outmoded ideas, and personal limitations.

The ability to help children go beyond parental limits is unique to human beings. In fact, humans are the only species in which each generation must teach its young different skills from the ones it possesses. These unique generational shifts among humans make parenting in the twenty-first century an exciting but complex challenge.

Coping with change is never easy. Still, in this fast-moving age, it's important to recognize the skills and social codes that may have been totally foreign to our parents - and even to us - have become critical to the future of today's children.

Take the Internet, for example. Many of today's parents grew up in an era where computers were not widely used and the Internet hadn't even been invented. Today, grade-school children know how to log on to Web sites to search for information and exchange e-mails with their friends.

People tend to be comfortable with the things they know and believe, even if they no longer make much sense. Too often, they pass these attitudes and behaviors on to their children without thinking about the possible consequences. It's as though they're saying: "This is the way I've always done it. Therefore, it must be the right way. I want my child to follow my lead." This approach to parenting is not in a child's best interest.

Copyright © 2002 by Robert L. Johnson, M.D., and Paulette Stanford, M.D.

About the Author

Dr. Robert L. Johnson, M.D. is a nationally recognized authority on African American youth and has been featured on numerous news shows, from "20/20" to "The O'Reilly Factor." He is also a member of the planning board for the U.S. Surgeon General's Report on Youth Violence, serves as medical and cultural advisor for "ER," and lectures extensively throughout the country. Also a frequent guest speaker in the media and at workshops.

Dr. Paulette Stanford, M.D., is the medical director of START, an adolescent-HIV program. She is also the principal investigator for a National Institute of Health research and study on high-risk adolescent behavior. Both authors live in New Jersey, and are professors at the Universiity of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ).