By April Manning
Have you heard the phrase helicopter parent? It describes a parent who hovers closely and removes all obstacles from their child’s path in life. As parents, our instinct is to protect our children. We love them fiercely. It is our responsibility to keep them safe. Keeping them safe, however, doesn’t mean never letting them fail. When we pamper and overprotect our kids, we rob them of important life lessons that teach essential life skills. We owe it to our kids to let them experience frustration, disappointment, and yes, even failure.
As the parent of teenagers, letting my kids experience disappointment is more challenging. Since the stakes are much higher now than when they were younger, I am glad I started this method early. It took a lot of practice!
I had to stop myself from assisting my kindergartener when she tried to pour her own milk for the first time and the entire gallon spilled onto my floor. And I resisted consoling my second- grader who sobbed because she forgot her homework at school again. This time, I wouldn’t call her teacher and she would have to face the consequences in the morning. I have been practicing how to let my kids experience what we call in our family “hard things.” They sob and beg and plead in the moment when life hands them something tough, and I repeat the mantra I have been saying to them since they were tiny: “This is hard. You can do hard things. You have done hard things before. You can do this too.”
It is a mantra I use in my own self-talk all the time. (And yes, it took some therapy to get there!) I, too, have done hard things before, and will do hard things many more times in my life. Each time, I gain a new skill or new insight. I become a better me every time I face something difficult. I want that for my kids and for your kids too! I want them to become the best versions of themselves – equipped with all of the skills they need to be successful, no matter what life puts in their path. They can do it! They need practice doing the hard things now while the stakes are fairly low in the safe space of early childhood before they are teenagers or young adults and the stakes are much higher.
This looks different in every situation, at every stage of development, and even for every child’s temperament. There is no one way to use this strategy, but we owe it to our kids to start small and let them experience and believe that they are capable. If we pamper our kids all the time, we are wasting opportunities for them to learn frustration tolerance, coping strategies, patience and perseverance. We are robbing them of the good feeling that comes from knowing, “This is hard. I can do hard things. I have done hard things before. I can do this too.”
April Manning is Director of the St. Joe’s Child Development Center. Become a SJ Stories subscriber to learn more tips!
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