Children - Negotiating Independence

Excerpted from
Put Yourself in Their Shoes; Understanding How Your Children See the World
By Barbara Meltz

When our children are very little and totally dependent upon us, we have this tendency to think they will always be that way. The intellectual side of us knows that isn't true but the emotional somehow doesn't believe it. The thought that there will come a day when they can do without us, well, like Scarlett O'Hara, we'd prefer not to think about it. So it happens that the first signs of independence take us by surprise. For me, there's a moment frozen in time when my son was 15 months old.

Every night at bedtime, we would sit in the rocker in his room and curl up with a book, his blankie, and his favorite stuffed animal, a penguin. It was a cozy time, something I looked forward to, an anchor to my day. On this particular night, though, after he cuddled in my lap, he climbed back down and headed for the window seat where more of his stuffed animals sat. I thought he was getting another one to join us but, no, he was getting a different book. That's fine, I thought. But then, instead of climbing back in my lap, he sat down on the floor and began to "read" by himself.

This had never happened before. Good for him, I thought. But moments later, I felt disappointed and sad. In bed that night, I thought about all the times ahead of me when I would need to let my son go: when he wants to walk outside without holding my hand, to dress himself, to cross the street by himself, my God, to stay overnight at a friend's! I remember feeling a sense of panic. There must be some way to prepare myself in advance for this, I thought. Otherwise, how will I know when to let go and when to hold on?

The next day at work, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I decided to do a column. Bruno Bettelheim, the late renowned child psychologist, scoffed at my question over the phone from his home in Santa Monica. "You never let go of your children," he said. "You just let them move toward independence."

It was a remark full of wisdom but also full of comfort, and it has stayed with me over the years. Unfortunately, though, attempts to be independent don't come with blinking neon lights: "I'm trying to be independent right now, Mom and Dad, bear with me." Not to mention that what often is a healthy sign of independence can also look a lot like brattiness to the nth degree. No neon lights for that, either. The trouble is, the move toward independence comes in fits and starts continually throughout childhood with great lurches forward and giant steps backward. To complicate matters even more, assertions of independence look different at each stage of development. Just when you think you have things figured out, you get hit with some new developmental twist.

Intertwined inexorably in all of this are our own feelings. No parent purposely sets out to overprotect a child, or to be neglectful. Yet sometimes our need to keep her close, physically and emotionally, compel us to be smothering while at other times we seemingly unfeelingly push her forward. Not surprisingly, the times when our buttons get pushed the most are when a child is feeling her oats. She experiences a burst of developmental self-confidence that enables her to do, or want to do, something for the first time and we feel threatened. She wants to soar and we clip her wings. In the life of a child, "firsts" are full of great excitement and high anxiety all at once, and that can fuel some pretty complicated behaviors. A child's world, after all, is full of rumor, myth, and misinformation, and whatever information she has, accurate or not, is bound to be embellished by her imagination. As parents, the better able we are to understand what's behind our children's behaviors, the better we will be able to negotiate them in a healthy, loving way that enables them to climb the next rung on the ladder toward competence and independent living.

Imaginary friends

There is a little man who lives in a corner of the basement of Courtney's house. He is small, under a foot high, and has a wife and children. Sometimes he goes on trips and brings back presents for them. His name is Mr. Neckit and he is Courtney's imaginary friend. "I believe he is real, but I know he's not," says Courtney, who is 6. "No one knows where he lives except me. He sleeps with me every night. I take him to school with me every day. And," she adds softly, "he has magical powers."

Having an imaginary friend is one of the early concrete ways in which a child exerts autonomy. For parents, it can be a rude awakening, especially if a child is as young as 3; there is no escaping the fact that she has a mind and a life distinct from you, totally beyond your control. You can enter this world if you want; in fact, it's preferable if you do. But many parents are uncomfortable with a child's imaginary friends. It feels weird to watch or encourage a relationship with something that isn't real, weirder still to become involved yourself. Other parents find a child's immersion into a fantasy character troubling. They worry that their child may be developing a personality disorder or suffering from an inability to distinguish fantasy from reality.

Research puts such fears to rest. Studies show that young children who have imaginary friends are perfectly normal and, if anything, tend to grow up to be more cooperative, less aggressive, more advanced in language skills, and better able to concentrate than peers who didn't have any. Psychologist Robert Brooks of Needham, Massachusetts, who lectures internationally on children's self-esteem, says bluntly, "It's a myth to think that kids with imaginary friends are disturbed." Indeed, he says, imaginary friends can serve important functions, providing companionship, helping a child fight off fears or express an emotion. It can even help develop a sense of conscience and self-control.

Spend a little time with Courtney and you can see what Brooks means. Angry one afternoon that her mother said it was time to stop playing, she stormed out of the room in a huff. Moments later she returned, considerably calmer. "It wasn't me who didn't want to stop playing," she said. "It was Mr. Neckit. I explained to him that it was just time to do carpool and we could play again later. That calmed him down."