You Must Be a “safe Parent”
Knowing when and how to help your child is one of the biggest challenges parents face. Intervening too quickly means they risk missing out on the chance to learn how to do things on their own, while intervening too late can lead them to become so frustrated that they give up altogether. And in any case, children do not learn the lessons they need.
“Parents are under so much pressure,” says Caroline Leaf, neuroscientist and author of How to Help Your Child Clear Their Mental Clutter: A Guide to Resilience Building and Mental Health Management . “There is a tendency to slip into helicopter parenting at the sign of any stress.”
Instead, according to Leaf, the solution is to practice “safety parenting” where your child is allowed to make mistakes in a structured environment. With a parental safety net, children are given the opportunity to solve a range of problems, which helps them learn to solve problems face-to-face, while at the same time feeling safe knowing that their parents will be there for them in case they find themselves hopelessly out of their element. plate. “This kind of upbringing allows the child to realize that he can make mistakes, and this is normal,” Leaf said.
How to be an “insurer parent”
As a parent, it can be frustrating to watch your child fail at something or go through a long period of struggle, whether it’s watching them forget their homework at home or having a prolonged fight with a friend. When this happens and you find yourself wanting to step in and help, Leaf’s advice is to pause for a moment and consider what your reasons are and what help you plan to offer.
As Leaf suggested, ask yourself, “Am I trying to fix this or help them learn how to fix it on their own?” Helping your child can take the form of talking to them about what’s going on and discussing ways to deal with it, such as figuring out the best way to share toys with your sibling, or the most efficient way to climb to the highest point. playground. It could also be in the form of talking to them about what steps they need to take to make sure they are ready for school, or why their friend might be mad at them. “Forget that you are a repairman,” Leaf said. Instead, focus on helping your child figure out how to solve their own problems.
While helping them solve their problems may seem less effective—and more time-consuming—in the long run, this is how they end up learning. “For a child to learn, they need it to be connected to their brain and body,” Leaf said. For this to happen, your child must go through a messy process of figuring out how to do something, which often means making multiple mistakes before finally doing it right. As much as you’d like to step in by dropping forgotten schoolwork or talking to their friends’ parents about their latest fight, solving their problems for them won’t teach them the lessons they need to learn.
How to deal with your emotions as a parent
One of the reasons many of us find ourselves drawn into parenting despite our best efforts is that it can be incredibly uncomfortable to watch our children struggle. We want to help them, and we also want to make their struggle easier. Ultimately, solving our children’s problems makes life difficult for them and for us. “The bubble wrap of a child makes him feel very upset and at the same time entitled,” Leaf said. “It can actually halt their mental development and growth, and children can actually move backward as a result.”
If you find yourself overly anxious or nervous watching your child fail, Leaf advises being honest with him, in a developmentally appropriate way, about how you feel and letting him talk about your own coping mechanisms, such as , taking a few deep breaths, pausing for a moment to collect your thoughts, or whatever. In this way, you let them know how you deal with your emotions, which leads to modeling these strategies for them. “Children are much more perceptive than we think,” Leaf said. “They love authenticity.”