Expectations - Why they're always being met

Thirteen years ago, I joined a parent support group and read Choice Theory by Dr. Glasser, and I learned two revolutionary concepts: (1) the only behaviour I can control is my own - and the only person who can control my behaviour is me; and (2) the solution is never in the problem, the solution is always in the relationship.

This set off a chain reaction of "Aha!" moments. It transformed the way I parented and enabled me to help other parents do the same. It was the single most useful piece of knowledge I had acquired in all my years as a parent.

I've read and incorporated ideas from many other sources since then, parenting and otherwise, and they're useful to me and to those I coach because they add texture and colour to these two key concepts. (Most are listed in the right-hand column of this blog!)

But what I'm about to share with you in this post was (at least for me) the most startling and significant insight I've come across since reading Dr. Glasser's book 13 years ago.

As both a parent and a parent coach, I've struggled with the idea of expectations. When I would encourage parents to work on themselves and focus less on their teens, they would invariably ask, "But aren't I allowed to have expectations?!" And I was frankly unclear how to answer that.

Of course, there's the Buddhist saying that if you don't have expectations, you won't be disappointed. But somehow that wasn't helpful.

Although I would skirt the issue of expectations, we discussed "raising the bar" and learning to trust our teens - which for most parents seemed an insurmountable challenge. They didn't believe they could trust them!

Many attached unhelpful labels to their teens and described them in ways that made me wince. And while this dismayed me, and while I knew that this perception was somehow at the root of all their problems, I was at a loss as to how to explain it.

And then, a month ago, a friend introduced me to a YouTube video of Jean Liedloff discussing the continuum concept. Jean has a lovely, easy, open, friendly style, and her parenting message echoed that. As I watched, I smiled and nodded and smiled and nodded - and then she knocked the wind out of me.

She was talking about expectations. And what she said was so obvious, so crystal clear, so unexpected, and so at odds with everything I'd ever thought that I couldn't take it in. I replayed it five more times until it began to gel. It was beyond, "Aha!" It was, "Oh, good grief! Why did I never see that before?!"

According to Liedloff, children and teens, because they are human beings, are social and want to meet the expectations of their elders. What does this mean? It means that they will imitate and emulate, that they will do what you do and try to contribute and cooperate in order to "fit in", to have a sense that they belong, to participate in and be part of the tribe. And if attachment theory is correct, their need to belong far surpasses any other need - including survival.

So why don't our expectations seem to be producing the desired results? Because we misunderstand what expectations are. Here's what "everybody knows" about expectations:

An expectation is a clear statement of what I want to happen.

For example, "I expect you to go to school," or "I expect you to have a job by the end of the week," or "I expect you to be nice to your sister." In fact, those are not expectations. Those are wants. According to the dictionary:

An expectation is what I believe will happen.

If you believed a child would go to school or get a job or be nice to his sister, why would you say it? And so when you do say it, your child gets the message loud and clear: "This is what I want you to do, but I don't believe you're the kind of person who will actually do it."

The Catch-22 for our children and teens is that we say one thing but expect the opposite. In fact, we expect the worst. And because our children are unable to break away from their evolutionary impulse to meet our expectations, they don't do what we want them to do. They do what they know we expect them to do.

And this is reflected not only in what we say to them, but in what we do for them and to them. Every time we rescue them or do for them what they can and should do for themselves, we send the message, "You're not competent. I can't trust you to take care of yourself." Every time we lecture, we're letting them know, "I can't trust you to figure it out for yourself."

And so we perpetuate those very things that we're trying to cure because the bald truth is:

Our sons and daughters always live up to our expectations of them.

This in and of itself may not be enough to turn things around in your home. But in the next few posts, I'll incorporate this into concepts around the 6 levels of attachment, why principles are more effective than rules, why what we do is more powerful than what we say, the advantages of focusing on character rather than achievement, and how to replace the 7 disconnecting habits with the 7 connecting habits.

If you want to do some homework in the meantime, make a list of all those things you think about your son or daughter that may not be helpful, all those labels you attach to her, everything you think is wrong with him, and let's see if we can bring about some meaningful, lasting change. And feel free to post comments or ask questions. After all, we're all in this together!