Roxane Lehmann, Ph.D.

The “C” in Claire Stands for Control

Season 4, Episode 19

The Framework

When parents worry, they respond. That’s what knotted the storylines on “Modern Family” together tonight. Mitch and Cam worry that Lily doesn’t have a female role model. And Gloria worries that Manny is losing his cultural heritage. But the storyline that best captured parental worry (and response) was the one that took place in the Dunphy household.

The morning started with Claire in full-on control.

Claire: Luke, please stop taking appliances apart.
Luke: I’m making something.
Claire: You’re unmaking something!

Haley: I’m giving my notice today.
Claire: Wait. What? … What do you mean that you’re quitting?! Your manager just started letting you open and close the store.
Haley: It’s boring…
Claire: Honey, you need to learn to stick with things. And you just got the big keys.

Alex: I need caffeine today.
Claire: How late were you at that party last night?
Haley: She snuck in at 10:00 and spent all night reading under the covers with a flashlight.
Claire: Alex, what have I told you about staying out after your curfew?
Alex: I need to do it more often.
Claire: Exactly! You need to learn to have some fun. You’re going on that spring break trip with Nicole.
Alex: No! I can’t! I have to study for the PSATs.

And that’s when Claire turns to Phil for backup. Instead she got this:

Phil: All right, everybody, listen up. Haley, you’re not quitting; you’re resigning. It sounds better. Alex, you have all of spring break to lock yourself in your room and study. And, Luke, “coffeebots” is a nonstarter. But I do like the idea of popcorn kernels in pancake batter so they self-flip.

Perhaps Claire’s over-the-top efforts to control were due to her fears about the angiogram she had scheduled for later that day. When worried, we moms instinctually tend to hold on to our kids tighter.

Though, as it turns out, Claire’s worries were just beginning. Because while she and Phil are at the hospital waiting for Claire to be wheeled away for the procedure, the older fellow in the bed next to Claire gets a visit from his three kids who look like grown-up versions of the Dunphy brood. And Claire and Phil do not like what they see.

With this unsettling vision of their future kids dancing in their heads, they switch parenting roles – each taking the typical style of the other in phone calls made to their kids.

Claire: Haley, I love you. If you don’t want to work in that store, I’ll help you find something you like better. Alex, you don’t have to go on that trip with Nicole. You can study as much as you want. Just know that I love you.

Phil: Haley, you’re not quitting your job. … Listen to me. You are dangerously close to getting on a path that you can’t get off of. Alex, book down. Run a brush through your hair. You’re going on that trip with your friend.

Flipping the Frame: My Notes

So much of parenting teens is about control. And Claire and Phil are at opposite ends of the control spectrum.

Claire is hands-on. She believes she owns the controls. Under this micromanaging regime, teens often superficially comply with their parents’ demands and then dedicate much of their energy to sneaking and lying in order to do what they want.

Phil is hand-off. He often relinquishes control entirely. This permissive parenting style gives most teens less structure than they need and more freedom than they’re ready for.

The sweet spot for parenting teens is in the middle of the control spectrum. From this spot, parents believe it’s their job to help manage the controls – neither owning the controls nor relinquishing them completely. Below is a short list of tips that will help you get to this spot:

• Think of control as a swinging pendulum. We’re at our most influential when the pendulum is at the midpoint – when we’re guiding our teens rather than being too hands-on or too hands-off. Parenting from this midpoint means striking the right balance between restrictiveness and autonomy.

• Help your teen explore both sides of the situation. Rather than giving ultimatums like Claire and Phil did (You’re not quitting your job!), it’s better to encourage teens to explore both sides of the situation. For example, “Haley, I’d like to hear what’s going on with your job. Please help me understand what’s working for you and what’s not.” Then listen.

• Don’t push your point of view. How we say what we say can make a huge difference. So when it’s your turn to share your ideas, don’t make the mistake that Claire and Phil made when they pushed their point of view on Haley: Honey, you need to learn to stick with things. … You are dangerously close to getting on a path that you can’t get off of. Statements like these can force teens to take the other side.

You’ll have a much better chance of getting your ideas across if you think of it as floating them by your teen and if you can offer some information that your teen might not know. For example, Claire and Phil might have gently but firmly reminded Haley that while she’s not in college, she needs a job to cover rent and other personal expenses. And they might have encouraged her to consider securing a new job before quitting her current one, relaying that it’s almost always easier to get a new job when you already have one.

• Know where the line is. Know where “guiding” is on the control spectrum and be ready to step back over the line if you find yourself going too far in one direction or the other.

Even when our teens don’t immediately respond as we’d hoped, they are listening. And if we respect their right to have an opinion different than ours and give them some time and space to think about the situation, they’re more likely to see us as someone who can be trusted, to be open to our influence, and to seek us out when they need help.

The BottomLine

Phil: Look, all we can do is give Haley time to find out who she is.
Claire: Or I can save that time, and I can tell her who she is.

We’re determined to do what is right for our kids. But often our deepest desire to do what is right causes us to act like Claire and Phil and lean too far in one direction or the other.

Yet the evidence overwhelmingly links parenting from the midpoint of the control spectrum with healthy adolescent development. By staying connected with our teens and helping to manage the controls, we are:
• Giving our teens self-assurance and adding to their ability to withstand stress and negative influences.
• Helping them develop reasoning skills.
• Making them more open to our influence and more likely to have similar values and attitudes.

So instead of thinking of control as something we say or do to teens or giving up on them (hoping that time will do what we can’t), we’re at our best when we look for ways to stay connected and work with our teens.

Flipping the Frame: Your Parenting Experiences

Think of the various topics you communicate with your teen about – topics such as grades, curfew, clothes, friends, attitude, alcohol, drugs, music, chores, sex, and driving.
• Where do you think you are on the control spectrum (controlling, guiding, hands-off) for each of these topics?
• Where do you think your teen would say you are?
• Are you purposefully more hands-on about some things and more hands-off about others?

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Look Who’s Manipulating Now

Season 4, Episode 18

The Framework

Wow! There sure was a lot of manipulation tonight on “Modern Family.” Every house seemed to have some of it going on.

The Dunphy household had its share of it. Alex sweeps up spilled sugar as though she’s never used a broom in her life, and Haley complains that she can’t change a light bulb because the ceiling is too high. Observing all this, Phil becomes alarmed – not that his daughters are playing him for a fool but that they know nothing about house maintenance. And he decides it’s up to him to show them what a modern, self-sufficient woman looks like.

First he demonstrates how to use a stepstool to reach a light bulb before moving on to bigger things like how to restart a water heater. And that’s when he gets in over his head. After bemoaning (with mini flashlight in mouth) that he can’t get the crupid thing relit, he sends the girls on a concocted errand so that he can Skype his father on the down-low for help.

Over at the Pritchett house, Jay cons his way out of an event he’d promised Manny he’d attend by convincing Gloria that he’ll take care of baby Joe so that she and Manny can have some mother-son time. At first Gloria is delighted. But then she finds out what Jay knew all along: The event is a reading of “Moby Dick” which Manny gushes is going to be four hours you’ll never forget. In the end Gloria lies to escape the event, telling Manny the book reading is sold-out. But she doesn’t stop there. She has a couple more tricks up her sleeve:

The first is on Manny: I lied, but I earned that lie, Manny. I’m so sorry, but you know I’m always trying to do everything for everybody in this family.

The next on Jay: But you – you only do what’s good for you. Let me tell you something, Jay Pritchett, when it comes to raising kids, you get what you give.

Meanwhile Mitch is adamant that nobody in his house is going to be bullied. Suffice it to say that Mitch has suffered from this overt and meaner form of manipulation in the past. So when he learns about Milo – a kid at Lily’s school who’s been bullying anyone who tries to play a child version of handball on the playground – Mitch vows to get good at the game and give Milo a taste of his own medicine. And with Luke as his trainer, he does – drawing an audience of disapproving parents and teachers in the process. Of course, there were consequences:

Mitch (to camera): Cam’s gonna be doing drop-offs for a while.

Lily (forlornly): We got a letter.

There was even manipulation going on in the house bought for flipping. Because when it comes to making decisions about the renovation, Claire and Cam are mostly at odds. And they both use trickery to get their way. Cam uses a method he calls a Trojan Horse:

The key is I let Claire think she’s in charge. I hide what I want in something bigger and more expensive. Then, when she rejects that, we ‘compromise’ on what I wanted all along. … You know how I got Lily? I asked Mitchel for triplets.

But Claire is not to be outdone. She rattles off numbers about square footage and cost to rattle Cam and get her way:

I employ something I call the “number dump.” Yesterday I accidently said “elevendy-five.” (She also said “forty-twelve.” But who’s counting?)

Flipping the Frame: My Notes

Manipulation is a deliberate thought process. It takes advanced social skills to lie well and spin good stories, to con others into letting you do what you want, or to know how to push people’s buttons and intimidate. Manipulating is something kids grow into.

And, of course, as we saw tonight what adults model isn’t always stellar:

Phil fibs to get his daughters out of the house.

Jay cons his way out of a four-hour father-son event.

Gloria lies to Manny to get out of the same event and rationalizes as she tries to justify her lie. Then she gets up on her high horse and lays a guilt-trip on Jay to keep him on the defense.

Mitch, determined to give bullying Milo his comeuppance, uses shame in the form of sarcasm and putdowns to do it.

And Cam and Claire trick each other so they can each have their own way.

Truth be told, these characters aren’t all that different from the rest of us. Most of us occasionally manipulate a situation to advance our own cause. And our kids have probably seen some of it. Yet our best chance to make a difference in our children growing up to be trustworthy adults is to be straightforward and honest when we deal with others – especially when dealing with our own children.

The BottomLine

Handball trainer Luke to Mitch in the tag scene tonight:

Close your eyes. It’s okay; we’re off the court. And then just as Mitch lets down his guard, Luke knocks the water bottle out of his hand and hits him with this parting shot: You’re never off the court.

If you’re a parent, you’re a model. Like it or not, we cannot, not model. And we’re never really off the court. In fact, our day-to-day modeling is our highest form of influence in our children’s lives.

So to tell our children to be trustworthy and to be disappointed and scold them when they’re not, is all well and good. But we’re kidding ourselves if we think that this alone will teach our children not to be manipulative. Our words have meaning only when we practice them on a regular basis.

Flipping the Frame: Your Parenting Experiences

• What do you think the letter from Lily’s school said? If you were Milo’s parents what would you want the letter to say? How about if you were a parent of one of the kids watching from the sideline?

• There seemed to be a number of missed opportunities for setting a positive example tonight. For instance, Phil sent his daughters on an errand instead of modeling the rightness of asking for help when you get in over your head. What missed opportunities did you notice?

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