Managing Expectations

One of my favorite parenting books is Not What I Expected: Help and Hope for Parents of Atypical Children, by Rita Eichenstein. And honestly, a big part of why I like it is the title. Despite being a child psychologist and working with parents prior to having kids, everything about having my own kids has been not.what.I.expected. And I’m starting to feel there is something to this – something to unpacking what it was we expected when we became parents – of ourselves and of our kids. Then taking that next step in critically examining why we might expect some of these things, and what a more appropriate expectation is.

Appropriate expectations of brains

We expect a lot of our kids, and some of these expectations are subtle – we haven’t actually verbalized out loud that this is the expectation. Let’s unpack a few that I’ve heard (and had):

We expect that they listen to us, most of the time or (ideally) always
They do everything we ask without protesting (there’s always a good reason for us asking them to do something)
They follow our routines and schedules
They don’t lose their marbles in public, or they rarely get dysregulated (even at home)
They always follow the rules/they don’t get in trouble
They don’t display any (or minimally) challenging behavior

I’m exaggerating a bit here for effect, but I’m hoping you really critically examine what it is you are expecting of your child and where that comes from. Is this how you were as a child, or how you were expected to be?

Now let’s explore what we might be expecting of ourselves as parents:

We won’t get frustrated/yell/lose our marbles with our kids
We are a bad parent if our kids don’t comply with us
We should know how to handle all situations and behaviors
Good parents enjoy parenting most of the time

While a deep dive into age-appropriate expectations would take up far too much space on this post, let’s explore what is normal in the developing brain.

Toddlers are supposed to negotiate and test limits – daily;
No one likes to do non-preferred activities, and it’s okay to gripe about it or put it off (don’t we also do this as adults?);
School age-kids will lose their marbles (emotion regulation is still quite unreliable at this age);
Knowing the rules, but not being able to apply them in the moment (inhibitory control and thinking through consequences is still developing);
Kids want things to feel “fair” and for everyone to follow the rules (flexible thinking develops later);
Teenagers should struggle with time management and procrastination – they are still learning how long it takes them to do things and how to work on things incrementally;

Are there any expectations you are ready to let go of? Or modify? Let’s start to adjust our expectations about challenging behavior and what it means (about either us or our children).

Managing Expectations