neuroscience

The intention of almost any parent is to do everything in their power to eventually bring a well-rounded, healthy, happy adult into this world. And yet, parents today are uniquely challenged with the anxiety that comes from this false narrative that if you somehow do everything “right,” your child will have all the success in the world.

And if you didn’t do the thing—have the perfect amount of omega-3s during pregnancy, adhere to the most astringent no-screen rules when they’re toddlers, etc.—you take the blame for any shortcomings your child develops.

However, according to one expert, it might be time for parents to reassess how much power they actually do have in the childrearing process.

In 2022, Dr. Russell Barkley, a psychologist who’s done a lot of pioneering work focused on ADHD, had a very tough love speech (one that seems to be going viral yet again) that began with the words, “The problem with parents these days…”

While that might be a little off-putting at first, trust that the overall message is pretty sound. There's nothing overgeneralized or finger-wagging about it, actually. In fact, it’s more of a permission slip for parents to breathe a bit and enjoy the process.

You do not get to design your children.

Nature would never have permitted that to happen. Evolution would not have allowed a generation of a species to be so influenced by the previous generation. It hasn't happened and it doesn't happen and it especially doesn't happen in children.

You do not design your children.

Barkley then gives the example of playing Mozart while pregnant will spawn a “genius,” or that “enough crib toys” will “fire enough synapses” to make a child grow up a “brilliant mathematician." Sure, stimulations matters, but more likely than not, the necessary stimulation is already being provided and no amount of extra effort will take away this truth:

You just don't have that kind of power…it’s out of your hands.

Pregnant woman enjoys music (Mozart, perhaps) smiling gently with headphones.Photo credit: Canva

That can be a tough pill to swallow, but Barkley doubled down on his findings from “twenty years of research in neuroimaging, behavior genetics, developmental psychology, neuropsychology, all of which could apparently be boiled down to:

Your child is born with more than 400 psychological traits that will emerge as they mature, and they have nothing to do with you. So the idea that you are going to engineer personalities and IQs and academic achievement skills and all these other things just isn't true."

Still, there is also a beautiful gift in surrendering to this fact, Barkley said, wherein parents get to view their child as less of a “blank slate on which they get to write” and more of a “a genetic mosaic of their extended family.”

And this is where his famous “Shepherd vs. Engineer” analogy comes in.

I like the shepherd view. You are a shepherd. You don't design the sheep. The engineering view makes you responsible for everything--everything that goes right and everything that goes wrong. This is why parents come to us with such guilt. More guilt than we've ever seen in prior generations. Because parents today believe that it's all about them, and what they do, and if they don't get it right, or if their child has a disability, they've done something wrong when in fact the opposite is true. This has nothing to do with your particular brand of parenting.

So I would rather you would stop thinking of yourself as an engineer, and step back and say "I am a shepherd to a unique individual." Shepherds are powerful people. They pick the pastures in which the sheep will graze and develop and grow. They determine whether they're appropriately nourished. They determine whether they're protected from harm. The environment is important but it doesn't design the sheep. No shepherd is going to turn a sheep into a dog. Ain't gonna happen. And yet that is what we see parents trying to do, all the time.

In this speech, Barkley made sure to note the unique, vital role for parents of children with special needs, suggesting that they often feel the pressure to coax them into people that they are not, as a way of protecting them. But, as he said, “No shepherd is gonna turn a sheep into a dog.”

He then brought it all home with what’s to be gained by loosening the grip:

Recognizing that this is a unique individual before you allows you to enjoy the show. So open a bottle of chardonnay, kick off your slippers, sit back, and watch what takes place. Because you don't get to determine this. Enjoy the show. It doesn't last that long--they are gone before you know it.

Let them grow, let them prosper, please design appropriate environments around them, but you don't get to design them.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Obviously, there’s plenty of arguments to be made on either side of the whole nature vs. nurture debate, but the major takeaway seems to be that a parent’s role is equally active—providing structure, stimulation, nurturing, nourishing, etc—as well as passively observing (and accepting) what organically emerges. That latter responsibility might be even harder to fulfill than the former, but it beats stressing out over “engineering” the perfect child.

At its core, Barkley’s shepherd approach seems to be a way for parents to not only offer their kids a bit more grace, but themselves as well. That way everyone can feel safe to be their most authentic selves.

By the way, here is a link to The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, which Barkley references.