Whose Pride is it Anyway?

Ron and I had a conversation over breakfast on Saturday that was pretty important - enough so that I thought I should write about it. Funny how I am such a verbal processor that I didn't even know myself what I thought about some things until I started talking about it.

The topic was pride - specifically feeling pride for your kids. Recently, Ron took Orion to one of those indoor play areas. He commented when he got home about how excited he was because Orion went way up to the top by himself, which he had never done before, and he said how proud he was. So I said I didn't think it was a good idea to tell Orion that. To me, it sounds too much like praise, which I also don't believe in, but it turned out there was even more to it once I started talking it out.

One of the most basic arguments against praise, put forth by Alfie Kohn and many others, is that it teaches children to look for external validation. But in my opinion, expressing pride is damaging in other ways as well. I started out with a gut feeling about saying "I'm proud of you," takes some of the accomplishment away from the child. Ron disagreed, so I tried to get him to understand what I was thinking.

First off, I asked if he would be proud of some random kid for doing the same thing and he said no. So I got to thinking why do we experience pride in our children. Do we feel that we get to take part of the credit for their accomplishments? Some could argue that is the case for certain types achievements (although I would disagree with that as well), but for normal stages of development, it makes no sense. Getting to an age to climb a play structure is probably going to come on its own time regardless of what we do!

I asked if he is also going to feel like he is to blame if Orion messes up in life later on. Some parents do this as well, but I think that is really sad. Children are individuals. We have influence to be sure, but at the very best, we should be there to offer unconditional love and support, acceptance and encouragement for the little people they are becoming. If he messes up, I will empathize, and on the flip side, if he is happy with himself, I will share in his joy, but I think that is very different than pride.

I pointed out that when you say, "I'm proud of you," that is an "I statement". You are owning that emotion and therefore taking some of the ownership of the accomplishment. At this point, I could see Ron was starting to get what I was saying, although he wasn't really on the same page yet. I think later it sunk in more and he did start to agree though!

So what to do? Just ignore achievements and milestones? Far from it! We talked about the suggestion I read in Kids Are Worth It to say, "You must feel really proud," but Ron had objections to that which I agreed with. What if the kid wasn't proud? What if by saying that he feels there was an expectation there he didn't meet? I think that making an observation, which is the hallmark of much good parenting, is best for this scenario as well. You can be very enthusiastic while making a comment like, "Wow! You climbed to the very top! That is the first time you did that!"

Maybe the kid will think, hey, that is something to be proud of, or maybe they will think, um, yeah, so what? But whatever they think, it will be their own reaction to their own achievement, and in my book, that is what's important.