Imagine you went to the doctor but no tests were performed. He didn't listen to your heart, didn't check your cholesterol, didn't order any bloodwork, and didn't ask any questions beyond "How are you feeling today?" And if you answered "ok", he sent you home?
He'd be doing a bit better if he treated whatever symptoms you had - a headache, a cough - by writing a prescription. But even that would make most of us feel cheated. When we go to the doctor, we want to find out what's wrong, so that the root of the problem can be uncovered and dealt with. "How are you feeling today?" is merely the gateway to deeper understanding.
Now, let's review what happened in the stock market last week, and then draw a parallel to parenting. The Dow Jones was down 7 points Monday, then shot up 270 points over the next two days, retreated 85 points on Thursday, before falling Friday 122 points. The key question is: is the economy doing better? And the answer is, you can't make a sane estimation of the stability of the economy by glancing at the Dow Jones one day. You can't really judge the health of something with a snapshot. Snapshots and indicators are reactive. And so it is with a kid, that you can't and shouldn't trust short-term, immediate indicators which give only a snapshot but do little to tell us what's really going on.
Consider as a somewhat absurd example height, something I obsessed over when I was in elementary school (because I didn't have any). It's obvious to adults, though it's not obvious to kids: how tall you are really doesn't matter, and there's not a single thing you can do about it anyhow. But it's a daily worry for kids who think they are either too short (always in the front row of the class picture) or too tall. We tell kids this doesn't matter because "It's what's on the inside that counts". But then we betray that by applying external measurements to our kids to determine "how they're doing".
Here are some of the measuring sticks applied against kids that you should be very wary of trusting:
Grades. Giving grades drove me out of public school teaching. What do they mean? If a kid brings home a D, we immediately assume "they need to work harder". But that, in turn, assumes that more concentration and more repetition is the answer. Yet if a kid genuinely doesn't understand, or in the case of math or science misunderstands the process required, then repetition is only going to perfect misunderstanding. A low grade can reflect a need to buckle down, but it can also be the result of boredom, poor teaching, distraction, poor eyesight, preoccupation with physical safety or home life, hunger, low intelligence, homework not turned in… Yet despite the myriad factors that are at play, one letter on a report card is supposed to mean something?
Happiness/Contentment. How many times have you heard parents say, "I just want him to be happy." But…really? How far will a parent go to keep a kid "happy"? And what is happiness? Is it a perpetual smile on the face? Some kids, once they reach adolescence, would be happy to never eat another family meal or go on another family trip. Or ever go to church. And some parents will respond in such a way as to give them just that, so as not to have to deal with the hassle that comes from insisting on anything. Happiness is a wickedly elusive goal, and what makes us happy today might bore us tomorrow and might harm us in the long-term. Therefore, whether a kid is "happy" is relatively meaningless. Happiness is not wellness.
This doesn't mean we condemn them to misery or ignore long-term sadness, which could be an indication of depression or other real need. It's just that a happy exterior may be the coping mechanism kids adopt that keeps us from seeing what's really the matter. The only way to really tell what someone is feeling is to ask them, and that assumes that you've established yourself as a safe, non-judgmental sounding board.
Manners. If kids are well-mannered because you want to teach them that other people have worth and the best way to honor them is to wait your turn, not interrupt, say please and thank you, and look someone in the eye when you speak to them, then yes, by all means manners are important. And no, you don't expect a very young child to be able to give you the rationale for good manners. Because mom and dad say so is enough. But ideally they will start to knowingly internalize those as they get older, so that a 10-year-old certainly knows why it's wrong to speak out of turn or to laugh at someone else's misfortune. BUT, if you are teaching manners because it will reflect well on you - "Wow, she did such a great job raising her kids" - that's pride. And kids are not raised to enhance parents' self-esteem. They're not trophies, or challenges to be mastered, or animals to be tamed. So when I see a kid with good manners, I admire the measure of self-control I see, but it tells me little about their spiritual wellness. "Polite" doesn't tell me how a kid is doing.
Irritation factor. Then there are parents who are all too ready to relate the latest thing their kid did that's causing the parent a headache. The problem with this is that irritation is a subjective measure, always from the perspective of the receiver. When I worked in group homes for kids in foster care, we were reminded that it's not against the rules to be irritating. Therefore, as a staff, the only thing you could control was your own reaction to whatever annoying thing they were doing. If you didn't or couldn't, you'd end up provoking an unnecessary confrontation, which usually meant hours spent repairing the damage. The best staff were those who could see annoyances for what they were - sometimes the product of a bad day, sometimes a provocation that would go away if annoyed, sometimes boredom that deserved to be attended to constructively, but never a reflection of the boy's worth. I failed at this many times, letting minor irritations that weren't rules violations get to me. If I find myself set off by kids' actions that are not dangerous nor harmful to them, but merely annoying, that says more about me than it does about them.
When we wonder "how is a kid doing?" that's a question loaded with future implications. What really matters, and what we're really assessing, is "what road are they on?" and "where are they headed?" - things mood and grades and manners tell us little about. A far more robust indicator of kids' wellness is something like the Search Institute's Developmental Assets Framework, because it gives a picture of not only where kids stand across multiple dimensions, it also is a tool for predicting future success and adjustment (and research supports this).
As we look at the wellness of kids, a long-term perspective is the best one to take. Trends, not short-term indicators, are the more relevant phenomena. They keep us from getting hooked on right behaviors and right answers and focus us more on motives and issues of character. What are this kid's values, affections, and beliefs? That will tell us far more about who they are becoming, and therefore "how they're doing today", than a glance at outward appearances.
Info, articles, and thoughts for parents of kids at North Coast Calvary Chapel.
