You Have to Grow with Your Children

June 10, 1982. Someone once noted that rearing children is like making pancakes; you have to practice on the first one. And most parents readily concede that we practice becoming fathers and mothers on our first child. In doing so, we probably make mistakes with our first child that are not made on those that follow. Call it hindsight, learning, or whatever you want.

The age of the first child also determines where we are in the family life cycle. Several years ago, Dr. Evelyn Duvall outlined eight stages of family life. They are:

• Stage 1 – Married couples (without children)
• Stage 2 – Childbearing families (oldest child between birth and 30 months)
• Stage 3 – Families with preschool children (oldest child between 2 ½ and 6 years of age)
• Stage 4 – Families with school children (oldest child between 6 and 13 years of age)
• Stage 5 – Families with teenagers (oldest child between 13 and 20 years of age)
• Stage 6 – Families launching young adults (oldest or first child leaves home)
• Stage 7 – Middle-aged parents (empty nest to retirement)
• Stage 8 – Aging families (retirement to death of one or both spouses)

You will note in this model that as the first child matures, the entire family is launched into a new stage of development. This change sometimes requires new or additional skills for successful family living.

And this may be why the oldest child is often perceived as an inconvenience or even a threat to many parents. We may sometimes feel uncomfortable with our oldest child because as he or she changes, so must we. About the time we become used to the way or first child functions physically, emotionally, and socially, he or she changes, through not fault of their own. Simply put, it is called growing up.

This point was vividly brought to my attention a few years ago when we were living in Wisconsin. A friend, Dr. Frank Bockus, and I were traveling to Madison to conduct a family life seminar. During the trip we started talking about children and parenthood. It was at this time that I suggested to Dr. Bockus that being a parent is forced humility. And then he shared something with me I have never forgotten.

Frank, a successful marriage and family therapist, told me that he and his wife Alice had learned something very important about their son Keith as he was growing up. About the time they would get used to Keith at one particular age, say age 10, he would soon become 12. And frustrations would arise when they tried to treat a 12-year-old boy the way they did when he was 10. And after they changed to accommodate the world of a 12-year-old, he soon became 14.

Dr. Bockus, (who incidentally now resides with Alice in Salt Lake City), suggested that some of our problems in families come from parental lag. This is the inability or unwillingness of parents to keep up with or adjust to the natural growth and development of their children.

We parents still try to apply rules and discipline that worked with a 13-year-old when the child is 15. A 15-year old can and ought to be able to do things that he or she could not or should not do at age 13. Likewise, most parents with teenagers soon realize that the teen world of a 16-year-old son or daughter differs vastly from that just two years earlier.

Times, conditions, and children change more, perhaps, from evolution than revolution. That is, most changes will be gradual than abrupt. And if we parents expect to survive the decade of the 80’s, we too must change along with our children.

Of his eldest child, the biblical Jacob said ‘Reuben, thou art my firstborn . . . unstable as water” (Genesis 49: 3-4). And this statement may be more revealing of Jacob and Leah than it is of Reuben.