In my 25 years of writing books for children and teens, I’ve had my share of plot problems.   Often, when a writer finds she has written her characters into a situation she can’t quite get them out of, she is tempted by (but must resist!)  the deus ex machina solution.  This literary term (literally “the god from the machine”) comes to us from ancient Greek drama, and refers to the device of lowering a statue of a god onto the stage to resolve a crisis.  Evidently this was perfectly satisfactory to the ancient Greeks, but it is far from satisfactory for us today.  When the hero or heroine of a drama gets bailed out of a tricky situation by some unforeseen and improbable stroke of luck, the reader is left feeling cheated.  There was no clever resourcefulness, physical skill or moral courage at work to save the day,  just a lousy old deus ex machina. “Oh come on, really?” the reader asks.  “How convenient.”

A couple of years ago, Jennifer, my husband and I took our kids to a ropes course called Adirondack Extreme. It is described as an “Aerial Tree Top Adventure” which includes a complex ropes course suspended between trees at 10 to 60 feet off the ground. It promised to be a fun physical courage challenge. Little did I know that it would be more of an emotional and social courage challenge for me. The labyrinth of ropes wouldn’t prove to be my biggest adversary, but untangling myself from my own perfectionism would be.

Jennifer did not climb due to an old injury, but she supervised our daughters on the kids’ course. My husband, our son, and I challenged the adult course. We attended a brief instruction on how to put on our harness, how to securely hook and unhook ourselves along the course, and how to ask for help—if push came to shove and we decided we were done at some point along the increasingly challenging course. I paid pretty close attention to the introductory talk, but only half-listened to the “asking for help” part. As I’ve written about previously in my post “Quitters, Campers, and Climbers,” I’m not much of a quitter. I’m a climber who, I’m embarrassed to admit, even sometimes secretly feels superior to quitters.

By the time I reached mid-course, my then 12-year old son was lapping me. He seemed recklessly, blissfully unaware of all the risks that I was quickly becoming aware of as I looked down from the tree tops to the ground twenty, then fifty, feet below. He just kept saying “Mom, this is SO much fun. It’s easy!”

I can assure you this course was NOT easy! And I was so over the idea of this being fun. The more joyless and humorless I became, the more rigid my body became.  My joyful son, on the other hand, had the agility of a monkey; while I swung precariously, holding on for dear life with increasingly sweaty palms, between the various rope mazes. He was fearless, while I was quickly becoming fearful.

One of the big differences between kids and adults in terms of risk assessment is the cognitive tricks that our minds begin to play with us as we develop. According to child psychologist Dr. Tamar Chansky (2004), in her book Freeing Your Child from Anxiety: Powerful, Practical solutions to Overcome Your Child’s Fears, Worries, and Phobias, we feel anxious when we begin to confuse the possibility of occurrence with the probability of it actually occurring. Dr. Chansky writes that the “Anxious Response= Overestimation of Threat + Underestimation of Ability to Cope.” So, while I was focusing on whether or not the ropes were strong enough to hold me, the possibility of falling, how painful it would be to hang upside down for an extended period of time waiting for help, whether or not my children (who I no longer had in sight) were okay or not, and how embarrassing it would be to quit; my son was enjoying each new obstacle on the course while feeling totally secure in his crotch harness and physical ability.

At the second to last level, all alone now on the course, I was officially scared. But quit? OMG, no way! Quitting = Failure, to the perfectionist mind.  Which is, as Jennifer wrote in her last post Failure is Always an Option, “tantamount to total annihilation.” At the very least, annihilation of the ego. Success for me, at times, can be deeply intertwined with trying to prove that I’m lovable and valuable. In short, I wasn’t a kid who learned that her success in life is based on who she is, not on how she looks or what or how well she does. A perfectionist places more value on how she appears to the world than on who she is on the inside.  This misplacement of her inherent value creates a fragile ego swinging precariously from one success to the next, desperately trying to avoid the identity-crisis pitfalls that mistakes, and especially failure, threaten.  It’s also what makes perfectionists highly competitive and probably not all that relaxing to be around sometimes. Needless to say, this aspect of my personality is not particularly healthy–nor is feeling secretly superior to quitters, for that matter! These are not personality characteristics I wish to pass along to my children. Instead, I parent my kids in ways that focus on their inherent value.  I focus less on how they look and what grades they get, but more on the core qualities they are developing as kind, loving human beings.  I encourage them to listen to their limits and feelings, to focus on their successes, to identify goals that are truly important to them (not society at large), to do their best because there is no such thing as perfect, and to be gentle with themselves when they make mistakes.  I’ve coached them to develop an internal locus of control (you can read my parenting tips here: Are You an Inny or an Outy?) And I’m known for saying “I love who you are, and who you are becoming.”  Let’s be honest, embracing this kind of unconditional acceptance of both ourselves and our children is kind of radical—especially today in our culture of overachievement! Dr. Brene Brown’s book The Gifts of Imperfection is a great resource for anyone interested in understanding and letting go perfectionism!

One of the many gifts of being a parent, in my opinion, is that we get the chance to teach (and learn from) our kids what we, too, need to learn in life.  In essence, parenting has given me the opportunity to release myself from perfectionism’s uncomfortable grip and develop the kind of self-acceptance and love that my kids seem to instinctively possess.  And now I was about to model that it’s sometimes okay to quit!

When I reached the next tree post, I found myself hugging and not wanting to let go of that tree with the kind of intense love usually reserved for extreme environmentalists. I was done! It was suddenly much more important to me to listen to my body’s limits and find my kids on the course than to prove to myself and others that I could finish. Suddenly, quitting was not only an option, but it was okay. I couldn’t remember the code word the guide had told me to yell if I needed to be rescued, but in any situation screaming “HELP!” usually works.  I started with a timid “Helloooooo. Guide?!” which quickly progressed to screaming above the treetops “HELP! I need to get down now.” 

In a matter of minutes, a very kind and capable young man arrived on the scene to lower me from the towering heights of my new BFF. I told him I was okay and felt surprisingly calm.  I wanted to reassure him that I wasn’t going to cling to him like a crazy lady when he finally reached me.  He, in turn, reassured me that this kind of thing happens every day.  That made me feel a lot better!  I found myself laughing, recalling my high-pitched screams for help above the tree tops, and relaxing as he lowered us to the ground. I was amazed not to be embarrassed. The earth did not open up to swallow me whole when my feet reached terra firma. Throngs of people weren’t waiting on the ground to laugh, jeer, and otherwise poke fun at my failure. These are the kinds of thoughts that keep perfectionism well-fed, by the way, and keep us from trying things that might mean risking failure in some way, shape, or form. In fact, I felt kind of proud of myself. I had actually asked for help and received it! Trust me when I say, it took more emotional courage for me to quit, ask for help and trust that it would arrive, and social courage to risk embarrassment amongst my peers and family, than the physical courage to force myself to finish the course.

I could have focused on my failure and spiraled down into an abyss of low self-esteem, but I made my failure okay by focusing instead on what I was able to accomplish. I made it okay to quit by untangling who I am as a person from my perfectionist expectations.  I discovered that the belief that you are already “good enough,” no matter what you are able to accomplish, is perfectionism’s personal kryptonite. Adopting a new respect for quitting has also freed me up to be willing to climb again! 

By honoring the type of courage I actually needed to develop, I was able to reframe my perceived physical courage “failure” as an emotional courage accomplishment. We can do this for our kids, too, by helping them to recognize the gains they make everyday, by breaking apart difficult tasks into smaller more manageable and achievable ones, and by celebrating their successes. We can help them identify which of the six types of courage they are developing, and are capable of, in everything they do!

As I was writing this post, I asked my daughter to define failure.  Her answer: “There is no such thing as failure Mom. Whatever you are able to do is okay.”  When I also asked if she’d like to try the adult course with me again this summer, now that she’s almost 12, she said: “Probably not.  I’m not a big fan of heights.”

You can read more about coaching kids to face challenges in my previous post: Discourage/Encourage: What’s a Parent to Do?

Know how you can tell this classic is about physical courage? All the huffing and puffing! Just as The Three Billy Goats Gruff had plenty of act-out-able bits, so does every version of The Three Little Pigs. Straw, wood, bricks – these are all parts of our physical experience (as opposed to tricks or puzzles, which are part of our intellectual experience). A big bad wolf who wants to eat you up is a physical risk. Physical courage may be the most easily recognized of the six types of courage, and so it is one that features in so many tales for the very young.

The Three Little Pigs have also been a mainstay of children’s book illustrator/retellers for many years, and today I offer a few words on a few notables from the Three Little Pigs’ Pen that should be readily available in libraries or stores.

Paul Galdone’s version from 1970 is a basic, friendly start. The trim size is small, making it comfortable for little hands. The story is straightforward and the illustrations are bright and dynamic. It’s perfectly satisfactory and we move briskly from one pig’s fate to the next. From 1989 we have the beloved James Marshall offering his trio of roly poly piggies, each dressed in a distinctive costume. I particularly like the pig who builds with sticks – he wears colorful, striped shorts, and his house is decorated with flags, balloons and wind chimes. The brick-building pig in this version looks like a London banker, with waistcoat and bowler hat. In this version, as in Galdone’s, the unfortunate straw-builder and stick-builder are both gobbled up. Both books end gleefully with the provident third pig gobbling up the wolf in turn.

Steven Kellogg’s 1997 version adds a subplot of a mobile waffle business that supports the pigs financially, and and enterprising mother pig who comes to the rescue at the end. Although the art and the subplot are both full of fun and interesting details, I would only share this with kids who are already well-versed in the story, for two reasons. For one thing, the subplot slows down the cadence of the main action. As you may recall from my post on The Rule of Threes, classic stories make use of triads to carry the emotional punch. It’s useful to keep that triad clear of clutter, however, so the pattern can emerge. The echoes of “Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin,” and “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in,” should ideally still be in the air by the time the next round comes. The second reason I feel less than enthusiastic about this version is related to the internal v. external locus of control, which Lisa has explained so well in earlier posts. Mommy pig comes to save the day – emphasizing that forces outside of the little pigs are in control. It’s so much more satisfying to have the final pig (even if he is poignantly the last pig standing) be the one to thwart the big bad wolf and deliver revenge, as in the more traditional versions. That shows the internal locus of control that we want our kids to develop for themselves.

Finally (and yes, I realize that this makes four) we have David Wiesner’s 2001 The Three Pigs, the Caldecott Medal winner for that year. It’s a brilliant tour de force of illustration and revision, but again, I would share this with older kids who are already perfectly familiar with the traditional story. You can’t even understand this book without knowing the model it subverts. This is a book to be enjoyed by a more sophisticated audience than the one that will squeal with delight and huff and puff as ferocious wolves. This is one that demonstrates qualities of intellectual courage – flexibility, creativity, and inventiveness – rather than physical courage. Enjoy the Galdone or Marshall versions of the story with your small kids, and then once they’ve gone to bed, appreciate the Wiesner book with your wordly-wise middle schooler.

In the West, we frequently use dragons as a metaphor for evils, wrongs, or unnamed fears that must be conquered. In China, however, dragons are benevolent. Powerful, yes, but benevolent. One beautiful legend from ancient China speaks of the Four Dragons: Black Dragon, Yellow Dragon, Long Dragon and Pearl Dragon. Here it is, as I retold it to my daughter:

A very long time ago, there were no rivers in China. No lakes, no ponds, no streams or springs or waterfalls, either. There was only the great ocean in the east. Fortunately, the land was watered by rain, sent by the Jade Emperor, who ruled in Heaven. A time came, however, when the Jade Emperor stopped paying attention to the earth, and forgot to send the rains for a very long time. The earth began to dry out, and crops withered.

One day, as the Black Dragon, the Yellow Dragon, the Long Dragon and the Pearl Dragon were gliding through the air, they noticed an old woman kneeling in the dust below, her face streaked with tears as she prayed. Then they noticed that the earth was cracked and brown. “Why has the Jade Emperor sent no rain?” the Pearl Dragon wondered. “Let us go to him in Heaven and ask.”

When they arrived at the throne of the Jade Emperor, he was annoyed that they had come to him, pointing out his failure. “I’ll send the rain, now go away,” he snapped.

The dragons left, relieved that all would be well again on earth. Yet when ten days passed with no rain falling, they knew the Jade Emperor had forgotten about the people on earth again. “Let us help them,” said the dragons to one another. “We can fill our bellies with water from the great ocean and spray it onto the earth, can’t we?” And so this is what they did. The moment the water touched the dry soil the wilting rice and wheat stood tall again, and the people rushed to catch the water in bowls.

Up in Heaven, the Jade Emperor caught sight of what the dragons were doing, and shouted with anger that they had taken it upon themselves to help the earth. “Bring mountains!” he roared to the Mountain God. “Crush those dragons!”

Faster than wind over rice paddies, four mountains came and bore down upon the dragons, pinning them to the earth. Yet the dragons were still full of water, and continued to pour it out, even as they were crushed. And so the four great rivers of China were formed, the Yellow River, the Long River, the Black River and the Pearl River, bringing water to the people forever.

I asked my daughter how many kind of courage she thought were involved in this story. “It took courage to show the emperor he had forgotten his job,” she said. “And it took courage to go ahead and do the job themselves.” “Do you think it also takes courage sometimes to pray for help?” I asked. She shrugged. “Maybe.”

Compare this story of self-sacrifice to the story of Fenrir the Wolf, from Viking mythology, and The Legend of the Banyan Deer, from the Buddhist tradition. In all of these stories, the powerful put themselves at risk to help the weak. Endurance, love, charity, compassion, stewardship, responsibility and leadership are values that parents can model in their own behavior toward their children as examples of all six types of courage. Of course, it’s often much easier said than done!

I know that, for myself, explaining to my daughter why I’m making a sacrifice is key. The sacrifice might be giving my money, or my mental time, or my physical effort to something other than my myself and my own immediate needs. Because fear is correlated to lack of control, we can infer that the opposite is true: courage is correlated to taking control. When I see something in the world that grieves me (poverty, injustice, hunger, etc.) I could allow feelings of helplessness overwhelm me. I could begin to fear that the world is a hopeless place. On the other hand, if I take even a small step, make a small sacrifice of money or time or effort to help alleviate that problem, I gain a measure of control. As a result, my feelings of futility diminish, and my fear subsides. Dr. Lisa has explained this eloquently in her posts about an internal v. external locus of control.

When we help others, we truly help ourselves. The greater our sacrifice, the less fear we will experience. Two quotations say this better, and more succinctly, than I have:

Two frogs decided to go on a journey and see something of the world. Eventually they came to a farmyard, and while they were hopping across it, the farmer happened to set down a pail of new cream in their path. As they were both in mid-leap, they could not help but splash down into the bucket.

As a parent, I find that the more widely I read on subjects not related to parenting, the more I find ideas that give me a new way to think about my parenting decisions. While reading articles on business and marketing, I came across the subject of Regulatory Focus Theory.

This theory, formulated by Professor E. Tory Higgins at Columbia University, proposes that there are two categories of people when it comes to goals. There are the people who have a Promotion Focus, and people who have a Prevention Focus. Promotion Focus is what motivates a person to move toward an aspirational goal, working actively to achieve something that counts as an advantage. The Higgins lab puts it this way: “A promotion focus emphasizes hopes, accomplishments, and advancement needs.” The Prevention Focus creates more cautious behavior, motivated by preventing loss, and is guided by obligation, duty, and rules. As the Higgins Lab says, “A prevention focus emphasizes safety, responsibility, and security needs.” A person’s regulatory focus can either be chronic or momentary, i.e. normal state or induced by a given situation.  Promotion-focused individuals may speak of their goals using language such as “I could” “I want to” “I plan to” “I hope to,” while prevention-focused individuals may use language such as “I should” “I have to” “I’m supposed to” while discussing goals.

In marketing and communication, knowing what chronic regulatory focus your audience is likely to have helps you get your message across effectively: “This product will give you a healthy, youthful glow!” vs. “This product will reverse the signs of aging!” “Help your kid get a jump start on his next grade this summer,” vs. “Don’t let your child lose ground this summer!” It’s a subtle difference, but one that advertisers can use very deliberately. And since regulatory focus can be induced, marketing and advertising can play that card as well. (I read about this first in a business magazine, remember?)

So what’s this got to do with parenting? There are at least two connections that I see:

1. We are well-advised to have some idea of our own chronic regulatory focus when it comes to our goals and decision-making, especially as they relate to our families. If we have a prevention focus, we will perhaps be more susceptible to product advertising that plays on our fears and our impulses to be cautious to avoid negative outcomes. The myriad of safety products in the parenting marketplace is stunning, and is clearly targeted toward parents with a prevention focus. And here’s the catch: as the Higgins Lab has found, regulatory focus can be experimentally induced, or situational. Thus when it comes to parenting, we may all skew toward the prevention focus, because what parent doesn’t want to prevent harm or danger to her children? 

However, intellectual courage allows us to be critical consumers of information and ask questions about the assumptions that are at work in the media.  If we have a chronic prevention focus we can ask if it is being deliberately poked and prodded into a heightened and exaggerated state by the the messages we hear and see; if we find ourselves favoring a momentary or temporary prevention focus we can question whether it is being induced by manipulation of the information we are being shown. We know about internal vs. external locus of control in parenting; we know that being overly protective of our children robs them of the ability to develop self-efficacy and self-reliance. So can we deliberately induce our own prevention focus to become more of a promotion focus (where the advantage is a more courageous and empowered child)? Can we step away from the blazing red warning signs that flash at us from every side and say, “Actually, go ahead and climb that tree, sweetie. I believe you can do it and I’ll watch you from here.”

2. The second reason that Regulatory Focus Theory may be useful to think about in a parenting context is to understand our children’s regulatory focus when it comes to goals (our goals and their goals). It’s essentially a more subtle understanding of a rewards vs. punishments system, carrots vs. sticks. We may be promotion-focused ourselves, and think that offering goodies as incentives is a great way to motivate our child. But if the child is prevention-focused, the goodies may not be that tempting, or not tempting enough to make up for a perceived loss (loss of play time while doing chores, for example). Conversely, we may be prevention-focused ourselves, and find that our dire warnings about consequences fall on the deaf ears of our promotion-focused child (the child who is busy climbing the bookcase to ferret out the t.v. remote for the seventh time, for example.  There may be other reasons, such as lack of impulse control, at work in this example, but I think it’s a good illustration of climbing toward a goal!). 

I have learned through experience that my own daughter is much less motivated by potential rewards than she is by potential losses. Right now (she’s 12) we operate in a “sleepover-based economy,” where the status quo = two sleepovers (Friday and Saturday) each weekend. Because I want her to develop an internal locus of control, I have told her I will no longer remind her about her chores, and that if she forgets any of her chores on a given day she loses a sleepover. Forget another day, and there goes the second sleepover. What I could do is experiment in shifting her to a promotion focus by making the status quo = zero sleepovers; then, doing chores without reminding for half the week earns one sleepover and doing chores for the second half of the week earns a second sleepover. But for right now, her prevention focus is helping her achieve the goal of remembering her chores.

“But wait, Jennifer!” you say, “Why would you want to shift her to a promotion focus if the prevention focus is working?”

Let’s go back to the Regulatory Focus Theory. An eager, promotion-focused person is likely to be more flexible and creative in finding ways to reach a positive outcome; a vigilant, prevention-focused person is likely to be more thorough and diligent in taking steps to avoid a negative outcome. Both can generate success, both can achieve goals. (Both approaches can potentially create an A+ student, for example, or a junior tennis champ, if that’s your idea of a great goal.) A prevention-focused child might be very good at studying for and acing tests, but not so good at thinking outside the box – he  likes the box.  He wants to stay in the box.  A promotion-focused child will stack the boxes in order to climb up them to reach a goal, but might not study for a test in a subject that doesn’t interest him. 

So why favor promotion focus? Because Lion’s Whiskers is about courage! By definition, the prevention focus is protective and vigilant against threats and losses; in other words, it’s about fear and external locus of control. The duties, obligations and responsibilities which guide the prevention focus come from the outside – from parents, teachers, society, church, and state. Is innate temperament a factor in regulatory focus? Yes, research suggests so, but research also suggests that environment and nurturing play a role as well. Babies are mostly aspirational, promotion-focused – they know what they want and do whatever they can to achieve it (screaming is an effective strategy).  It’s only as they mature and learn rules and expectations that they may become more prevention-focused. Thus, as parents we may have the opportunity to influence our children’s regulatory focus and nudge it toward promotion and away from prevention. Ultimately, we want our children to eagerly reach for their own goals, not just follow the goals we impose on them because they have to.

Regulatory focus isn’t the only factor at play by any means, but it’s a useful one to take into account in our conversation.   I hope you find it that way.

Sources:

Halvorson, Heidi Grant, Getting Others to Embrace Risk, Harvard Business Review, May 23 2011

Kirmani and Zhu, Vigilant Against Manipulation: The Effect of Regulatory Focus on the Use of Persuasion Knowledge, American Marketing Association

Mooradian, Herbst and Matlzer, The Interplay of Temperament and Regulatory
Focus on Consumer Problem-Solving Modes, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2/4 (2008)

Summerville, Amy and Neal J. Roese; Self-Report Measures of Individual Differences in Regulatory Focus: A Cautionary Note, 2009