One of the hardest challenges for parents is to know when to be gentle and when to push.
If your son wakes up the day of a test and says he feels sick and wants to stay home, do you relent or do you roll your eyes and push him out the door? Your daughter is crying and shaking, saying she does not want to go to dance class today, what do you say? Your normally resilient child is asking to miss a classmate’s birthday party and you already bought the gift and RSVP’d a ‘yes’, what do you do?
These are innocuous examples, but an attempt to represent all the many moments in family life when parents are faced with a dilemma, when do you push, when do you be gentle and accepting?
When you add in a child that is sensitive, anxious, stressed or all the above, it can become a real drain on a parent’s brain on how to manage the situation.
I think we all worry that ‘giving in’ will create bad habits; it is allowing your child to ‘take the easy way’, but then pushing too much can feel wrong and can create more stress.
So, how do you navigate this little moments throughout parenthood?
The quick answer, is there is no straight answer. Each situation and child and parent is unique. One parent may have better luck getting a child out on the ice, whereas there are explosive moments with the other parent in the same scenario. How can that be? And what is easy for one child may be a monumental task for another. Each situation needs to be looked at from the larger context.
Let’s step back and look at this larger context.
Our general goal with parenting is to help our kids become their best selves.
What does that mean?
Best self takes into account the child’s unique talents and strengths and also the things they are not going to thrive with. And what we all hope for is some resilience, the ability to push through when there is adversity, when there is a challenge. And here is the kicker: you cannot create resilience without that ‘pushing through’ and facing the challenge.
Resilience is not made in the lectures or the pump up speeches. Real resilience happens inside the child’s brain when they feel themselves stressed and worried and yet make it to the other side of that challenge; important to note that ‘making it to the other side’ does not mean they succeed, it means they learned that regardless of success or failure, they were ok.
Here are some steps to keep in mind when faced with the next dilemma of whether to push or to be gentle
- Take a quick pulse of the situation. Is this something new, or something that you have already discussed? If it is new, just pause, start to ask questions, be curious. Slow things down without making assumptions. Before jumping in with a solution we want to fully understand what they are experiencing. If it is an ongoing problem, where did things end last time?
- Try to stop thinking in black and white and absolutes. Missing one hockey practice does not mean they will begin to miss ALL practices, but there is truth that allowing the child to avoid something stressful tends to strengthen that desire to avoid in the future. When you are going to choose to allow your child to ‘take a pass’, do it without any drama. And then after the stress settles, go and talk, try to discover the child’s thought process and inquire how they would feel if they were able to face the challenge. Try to help the child think up a plan how they can get over the stressful part in order to participate.
- Break the situation down into mini bits. Can we just get to the car and continue to discuss it. Are there concessions that can be made that will help in the short term? And we don’t mean bribing or paying kids to do things. This strategy generally backfires in the long run. If they are stressed, they need a supportive friend, not a dictator, so cajole, be kind and see if you can partner with them to help push them forward.
- Try to avoid escalating things and making it a fight. See if you can be casual and find a work around. “Hey, I have been craving ice cream, how about we hit Baskin Robins on the way home, will feel great after a good workout.”
- Most important is to discuss these challenges outside of the actual stressful time when it is happening. Try to get some good dialogue separate from the event and ask questions and then stop yourself from talking! We want to hear what they think. And so to help them continue talking, do not start to challenge your child on their flawed thinking, just keep asking and listening. Only then can you begin to make a plan. Lastly, the plan needs to be made together, not the parent spelling out, ‘this is how it is going to go’.
