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'THIRD-PARTY THING' WORKS

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By DENEEN L. BROWN The Washington Post

The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 4, 2009

WASHINGTON - Sherry Jones was driving son Malcolm, 13, to school recently when he mentioned something about a kid he didn't like.

Something about the kid being a jerk.

Jones told him that wasn't kind. When you speak of people, she said, always speak well of them.

"Look at Barack! ... During the campaign, no matter what, Obama always took the high road," she told him. "During the debates when John McCain would say a dig, Barack would never react. ... He was always positive."

Malcolm, who likes a good debate, was, for that moment, quiet.

In that silence, Jones realized that something about her spontaneous, trapped-in-the-car lecture was working. "If my son didn't agree, he would let me know," says Jones, an accountant in suburban Silver Spring, Md. "He always has something else to say. ... Usually, he will say, 'Yeah, but ... ' When I use Barack Obama as an example, I can see him. He's quiet. He may sit up a little straighter.

"He hasn't gotten to the point where he says, 'You are right.'" But there is something to be said for his saying nothing."

Parenting can be like that. You take what you can get. Any acknowledgment of the parental lecture. Not getting the "yeah, but" can be the change a mother waits for, silent proof that her nagging isn't going in one ear and out the other.

Parenting is lonely, irritating, often maddening work. Parents are often second-guessing themselves. Never sure whether their standards are set too high or not high enough. Never sure what's working. Never sure that the child who seems fine now won't be a mess at 30.

So they reach for help: an ancestor, a cousin, a historical figure - somebody to look up to. Their latest imaginary friend has become the president-elect, a person held to such high standards that if you parented just right, your child could end up like that, too. We know this is fantasy. But Obama's mother probably didn't think she was raising a future president either. So you grab at what strings are out there.

"It's the third-party thing," says Jill Miller Zimon, a freelance writer and mother of three school-age children. "Lots of times when a child won't do something for you, you will ... pretend a third party said it was a good thing to do. If you say the doctor said you needed to do this, or your teacher said you needed to do this, it has more impact than Mom and Dad." They perform better for other people. "Because they are more comfortable around Mom and Dad, it is easier to act up because they know there is unconditional love."

In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama describes his mother's emphasis on education. "Five days a week, she came into my room at four in the morning, force-fed me breakfast, and proceeded to teach me my English lessons for three hours before I left for school and she went to work. I offered stiff resistance to this regimen, but in response to every strategy I concocted, whether unconvincing ('My stomach hurts') or indisputably true (my eyes kept closing every five minutes), she would patiently repeat her most powerful defense: 'This is no picnic for me either, buster.'"

Avis Jones-DeWeever, director of research at the National Council of Negro Women, bought her two children a book about Obama's childhood. "They see it as real. I look at the picture of Barack on the tricycle. They can see themselves in him. I tell them all the time, 'You are brilliant, but brilliance necessitates hard work to get to the level he reached,'" she says.

There was a point near the end of the presidential campaign when Obama's perseverance rang clear for Jones-DeWeever. "Both he and McCain were in Pennsylvania on a rainy day. McCain canceled. But Barack was there in the rain. The rain was pouring, and he was speaking, and the crowds were there," Jones-DeWeever said. "He did not slow down. At that moment, I knew he would win. It is that sense of determination that I want to impart to my children. That being good is not enough. You also have to have that drive."

She talked to them about Obama's "Yes We Can" speech in New Hampshire: "To me, what was inspiring about that speech - that was not a victory speech. He gave that speech after he lost," she says. ("What does that tell you?" she asked her kids. "When you lose, you can still come back.")

Her 12-year-old son, Guy, memorized the speech and delivered it last semester to his sixth-grade class.

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