Parenting advice from Whitney Houston: Make it the greatest love of all

My high school English teacher, Mr. Montgomery, was an angry man. He was angry at his ex-wife, who divorced him and took their daughter with her. To hear him tell it, she left him destitute. He had to buy a house in one of the worst parts of town because it was all he could afford. He was embarrassed, he said, to have his daughter stay with him, but it was all he had because he was a poor teacher -- unappreciated by the public school system and his selfish ex-wife.

He was also angry with Whitney Houston. He was so angry, in fact, that he spent an entire class talking about her song, "The Greatest Love of All." He hated the song so much that he was able to recite the chorus to us:

Because the greatest love of all

Is happening to me

I found the greatest love of all

Inside of me

The greatest love of all

s easy to achieve

Learning to love yourself

Is the greatest love of all.

He placed his hand over his chin. His index finger on his red bushy mustache as he stood in front of the class slowly shaking his head. This, he said, is what was wrong with our society.

"We should all just love ourselves," he said as he threw his hands up. By teaching our students to love themselves, Mr. Montgomery argued, we were creating a selfish society, one in which a good, decent man like him was forced to live in a dangerous neighborhood because his wife loved herself first. At least that was my takeaway.

No one was listening to him, and I, for one, had heard it all before. My parents were Team Mr. Montgomery all the way.

I am a product of the "I-brought-you-into-this-world-I-will-take-you-out-of-it" approach to childrearing. My father loved the Indiana University men's basketball coach, Bobby Knight, and likened himself to the parental equal of Bobby's chair-throwing, spit-screaming approach to coaching. My dad just did it with his kids -- minus the chair throwing. In my father's mind, if you praised your children, they wouldn't try hard. Tell them they suck. This will motivate them to work harder. (Alas, years of research have debunked this specious theory.)

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As I grew older, I was shocked to learn that not everyone was raised this way, and by the time my husband and I decided to have children, telling kids they sucked and the occasional spanking for bad behavior were not as accepted as they once were. As parents who would not spank their children and not try to undermine their confidence, we adopted the anti-Bobby Knight approach to parenting.

Don't get me wrong. I couldn't shake all of the parenting and Southern Baptist conditioning that had made me an overly anxious child and adult. One thing we were clear on was that we would not adopt the parenting style of "My child does no wrong." Visit any local playground to see how this plays out daily.

My husband and I would not raise spoiled brats. The kind we were often surrounded by. The boys who walked around flipping their hair to the left and right to get it out of their eyes while they stuffed their hands in their chinos and answered adults only in grunts and abrupt head movements. To us, this represented entitlement. We would have none of that, we agreed, but we want them to be confident. And caring. And introspective. And, yes, Mr. Montgomery, we want them to love themselves.

Several months ago my oldest son, who is a senior in high school, came into my room. He sat down in the chair across from me, placed his hands on his knees, and said, "Mom, I need to talk to you about something."

A little backstory. I was not the most motivated student in high school. I applied to a couple of schools. I got into one a few of my cousins had gone to, and, BAM, I was done. I wanted my kids to take a more thoughtful approach when choosing the college they would go to. For this reason, I spent most of my son's junior reading a Facebook page dedicated to "paying for college." Here, parents were navigating higher education together. I would learn from them, I reasoned, and pave the way for my kids to the college of their dreams.

After reading other parents' posts, I would get all fired up and explain to my son what he HAD to do to get into college. "You have to prepare for the ACT and SAT now." I would say without taking a breath. "We need a tutor. I will find you one. I bought you those books the parents on the FB page recommended. Did you read them? The parents also said..."

"I understand that you want to help me," my son, hands still on his knees, continued. "And that you want me to get into a good school, but every time you bring up the ACT or that FB group, it just stresses me out. I am going to have to ask you to back off a little."

I smiled. My boy. He loves himself. He set a boundary to protect himself. Homerun for me!

Yes, I had been causing him undue stress. And I knew it. I could see it every time the words, "I was reading on that college parents' FB page today that..." came out of my mouth. But this is not what I took away from the talk. I took away that I had taught my son to speak up for himself. To use his voice. To, in the words of Whitney Houston, find the greatest love of all inside of himself.