The common good

Homemade coffeecake and juice were on the menu for this week's "Coffee with the Principal."  It was our first-ever Coffee without actual coffee - and without clear actionable steps forward - but what was abundantly clear is that the topic of school climate and culture is a critical one.

I defined the current status of St. Robert School's culture, or way of life, and our climate, or prevailing "feeling."  I shared my goals to maintain a faithful, rigorous program and a nurturing, safe, and comfortable learning environment, and then dissected the responsibilities of the principal, the teachers, and the parents in positively influencing these elements of the school experience.  It became clear that this is one area in which the school's reach is realistically limited by powerful influences beyond our walls.

We identified some challenges and suggestions that surfaced in last spring's survey on community and diversity.  Those comments centered largely around perceived social challenges - not only among students, but within the parent community as well.  After briefly considering some expert advice on how best to manage such challenges, our group engaged in some thoughtful conversation centered largely on the topic of bullying and exclusion.

We learned that programs and policies don't impact these social power structures.  The unsettling truth is that adults have no effective power to control bullying and exclusion. These forces can only be changed from within peer groups by empowering our kids with prosocial behaviors that have more clout than meanness. It's not enough to teach kids what not to do.  We also have to teach them precisely what to do to promote kindness and compassion among their peers.

Harvard School of Education's Making Caring Common project was launched in response to the concern that young people today are more concerned about their own personal success than the common good.  Student surveys conducted by the project reveal that students perceive that among the qualities of goodness, happiness, and achievement, their parents and teachers rank achievement first for them.  We know that bullying is a side-effect of achievement pressure, and that it is less likely to happen in caring, inclusive school environments.  We further know that promoting healthy social-emotional learning leads not only to improved relationships and health outcomes, but, ironically, to academic gains as well.  So it seems that we have to do some soul-searching about the messages we may be sending - in our words and in our behavior - and make sure that our kids understand that their goodness is more important to us than any other achievement.

In the end, we agreed that the way forward comes down to faith.  When our priority is to look outward and create a caring world, rather than to endorse a "me-centric" view of success, we have the potential to create a community of kids postured to make a positive influence on the world in ways that really matter.

This discussion needs to continue.  Watch for a follow-up Coffee on creating a culture of kindness.

Before you were born

I received a message from a vendor today that included a warm acknowledgement of today's Holy Day along with a memory of her own childhood in Catholic school on December 8th.  It made me pause. Are we doing enough to assure that our children will carry forward a knowledge and reverence for the traditions - and essence - of our faith?

Today is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.  As Catholics, we know this as one of the Holy Days of Obligation, but what, exactly, does that mean?

In addition to every Sunday, there are a few other days in each calendar year that are deemed so important as to require our deliberate attention and participation at Mass.

• January 1 - The solemnity of Mary
• Thursday of the sixth week of Easter - The Feast of the Ascension of our Lord
• August 15 - The Assumption of Mary
• November 1 - The solemnity of All Saints 
• December 8 - The solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
• December 25 - The solemnity of the Nativity of our Lord, or what we more commonly call Christmas

Whenever January 1st,  August 15th, or November 1st falls on a Saturday or on a Monday, a diocese may (and ours does) remove the obligation to attend Mass, often leaving just a few remaining obligatory days each year.  But even so, in this age when even Sunday Mass attendance is viewed as optional, honoring these special days has become less and less common with each passing year.  It seems that as it becomes more commonplace to look at the Holy Days as some quaint remnant of an earlier time, it also becomes easier to get swept up in this momentum of turning away and take the posture that honoring the day must, indeed, be optional - because, look around.  Hardly anyone is going to Mass. But the difficult truth is that it's not optional.  These days are fundamental to our identity - and obligation - as Catholics.  So perhaps, before we wake up and realize that we're more than a generation removed from a real understanding of what we believe, some instruction is in order. 

Because of its proximity to Christmas, many good Catholics misunderstand the Immaculate Conception as referring to the conception of Jesus, but of course if we do the math, it becomes clear that this is not what we honor today.  Rather, it's the conception of the Virgin Mary herself in her mother, Anne's, womb.  We acknowledge today, our fundamental belief that Mary was chosen by God to bear his son from before she was even conceived, and was then conceived without sin to be worthy of this remarkable role.  There's much more to the story of course, as we will learn when we read about Mary's Yes in the Annunciation - at the age of about fourteen.

One remarkable gift for us today is the reminder that God has chosen each of us for some particular role in his grand plan.  To be able to say "yes," we have to hear him calling.  To hear, we have to be listening.  To listen, we have to be in relationship.  Advent is a great time to deepen your relationship with God.  The Holy Days are an opportunity.  Don't miss the opportunity...go to Mass, show your children that this is essential, and reap the harvest of God's amazing plan for your life!

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.     
Jeremiah 1:5                                                                                                      

Simple parenting for a complex age

I had the privilege a couple of weeks ago to attend the presentation on raising resilient children hosted at University School by REDGen, our local youth mental health advocacy organization.  The speaker, Dr. Robert Evans, is a clinical and organizational psychologist and former teacher who works with schools nationwide to support innovation and change.  An area of his particular interest and expertise is the impact that American families have on schools.  Evans is a grandfatherly figure, educated at Princeton and Harvard, which gives him the clout to say some things that could be potentially difficult to hear.  I expected that he might share some new techniques for parenting kids through the complex challenges of our contemporary world.  His message, however, was almost radical in its simplicity, and an important reminder to parents and educators alike that, despite the rapid changes in the world around us, the basics that undergird healthy child development have not changed - and never will. Evans reduced them to three simple - but not always easy - things that children need from their parents:  nurture, structure, and latitude.

Nurture refers to the instinctive relationship between a parent and child.  It forms the bedrock of psychological strengths involved in learning how to relate to others and be part of a community.  The need for it is so primal that babies will fail to thrive - or even die - without it.   Given this knowledge, it is concerning that the amount of time that parents spend with their children has dropped about 20 hours a week over the past 20 years.  Dr. Evans's debunked the fallacy that bursts of intense "quality time" will make up for quantity.  He was very clear that we have to be physically and emotionally present to our children in large doses of low-quality interactions to effect healthy nurture.  And he took us a step further in making the blunt statement that soccer sidelines and virtual or distracted connections are not a substitute for real presence.

Structure is that box of boundary lines that we place around behavior and expectations.  You might be surprised to learn that it's not only comforting for adults to have defined boundaries for their children, but powerfully comforting for children as well.  Fewer children today, however, are learning from early on that that "there's some stuff they have to do and there are some limits on what they want to do."  Dr. Evans pointed out, by contrast, that kids who grow up in homes with clear boundaries have clear advantages when it comes to success in school and in life.  They are better able to see things from another's point of view and to learn from their mistakes, for example. Interestingly, defining and maintaining  limits also conveys our confidence that children can actually accomplish the things we expect of them, thereby building theirs.

Dr. Evans defined latitude as the freedom to learn from logical consequences of non-catastrophic problems.  Healthy latitude, of course, avoids the extremes of maximum autonomy with no protection from danger and maximum protection with no exposure to danger (or opportunity for growth).  Dr. Evans reminded us that the most important lessons in life are learned in a context of loss and disappointment.  What distinguishes children, he says, is not whether these things happen to them, but what they do when these things happen to them.   Today's parents, it seems, are much more likely not only to lack clarity in boundary-setting, but to support their children's outrageous behavior.
His empathetic explanation for all of these radical shifts in parenting was thought-provoking.  He claims that parents are no longer trusting their primitive parenting instincts because of insecurities about exactly what it is they are preparing their children for.   With the rate of societal change so rapid and the choices for children's futures exploding, it has become really hard to be confident about how best to mentor children for success.

Parenting is, in truth, more challenging today than it has ever been.   We can't, of course, change the forces that surround us, but we have to simultaneously acknowledge that the complex ways we're living our lives today does interfere with the healthy development and resilience of our children. Our instinct might be to turn to parenting manuals and self-help gurus for new or better parenting techniques, but Dr. Evans's view was refreshingly simpler.  He advised parents that we're better off being the best of who we are than something we're not.   Kids don't need their parents to be perfect. So, find something you're good at and do more of it, he said.  All kids have fragile moments, but most kids, he reassured, are mostly resilient without any extra effort.

Three simple takeaways that any parent can do more of to improve the outcomes for their children -wherever their futures may lead:

• Don't do things for your children that they can do on their own
• Don't leap to fix problems for your children before they've had a chance to grapple with them on their own 
• Remember that your children don't have to like you all the time, but they do have to learn to be like you

Finally, look at your children's grandparents for some clues about how to be truly present to your children; and, every now and then, act like a grandparent and just enjoy your kids.  Speaking as one, I think you'll find it truly delightful!