A message from our Director
January is a great time to reflect on our values and take a step back to see how we are managing with the little people in our lives. We all know we should be teaching our kids certain tasks or chores, but sometimes life gets in the way. And then we read what the “experts” tell us is the latest best parenting practice……as if parenting wasn’t humbling enough!
I was raised in the school of “hard knocks”. My folks thought “creative neglect” was a good practice and left us to our own devices.
Then the experts said that self-esteem should be the focus, so when my generation became parents, we praised our kids to death and hovered like helicopters. THEN it was discovered that our overpraising was hurting our children’s self-esteem and that it was better if they actually had to earn it, even struggle a little - can you see the pendulum swinging?
Forbes Magazine recently featured a leadership expert who explained how we as parents are failing our children by coddling them and protecting them (“crippling them”) and listed 7 damaging behaviours that hold our children back. Here are 2:
1) We don’t let them experience risk – we insulate them from healthy risk taking behaviours. Kids need to fall a few times to learn that it’s normal.
2) We rescue too quickly. We think we are helping but we are not. As a result, today’s generation of young children don’t have the life skills that kids had 30 years ago. We swoop in, removing the need for them to navigate life’s hardships - like pulling up their own pants. We are in a rushing society so rather than teaching our kids to hold the railing going down the stairs, we carry them. The message? That they aren’t able.
Trust me – we are not carrying your children, or tidying up for them – or doing anything for them that they are able to do for themselves. Fast forward to when your children are 12, 16 – Do you want to be doing their homework? Putting their dishes in the dishwasher? Start now with the little things they can do. Take the time to train them….set them up for success. Let’s parent our two year olds knowing that someday, they are going to be teenagers. If a two year old gets what he wants by whining, imagine that at 12. Start as you mean to go on. Ask yourself…is this behaviour something I want to see when he’s a teenager? Let’s not indulge in “crippling” parenting behaviours and remember that at the end of the day, we will be raising young adults!
Happy January……Leslie
I was raised in the school of “hard knocks”. My folks thought “creative neglect” was a good practice and left us to our own devices.
Then the experts said that self-esteem should be the focus, so when my generation became parents, we praised our kids to death and hovered like helicopters. THEN it was discovered that our overpraising was hurting our children’s self-esteem and that it was better if they actually had to earn it, even struggle a little - can you see the pendulum swinging?
Forbes Magazine recently featured a leadership expert who explained how we as parents are failing our children by coddling them and protecting them (“crippling them”) and listed 7 damaging behaviours that hold our children back. Here are 2:
1) We don’t let them experience risk – we insulate them from healthy risk taking behaviours. Kids need to fall a few times to learn that it’s normal.
2) We rescue too quickly. We think we are helping but we are not. As a result, today’s generation of young children don’t have the life skills that kids had 30 years ago. We swoop in, removing the need for them to navigate life’s hardships - like pulling up their own pants. We are in a rushing society so rather than teaching our kids to hold the railing going down the stairs, we carry them. The message? That they aren’t able.
Trust me – we are not carrying your children, or tidying up for them – or doing anything for them that they are able to do for themselves. Fast forward to when your children are 12, 16 – Do you want to be doing their homework? Putting their dishes in the dishwasher? Start now with the little things they can do. Take the time to train them….set them up for success. Let’s parent our two year olds knowing that someday, they are going to be teenagers. If a two year old gets what he wants by whining, imagine that at 12. Start as you mean to go on. Ask yourself…is this behaviour something I want to see when he’s a teenager? Let’s not indulge in “crippling” parenting behaviours and remember that at the end of the day, we will be raising young adults!
Happy January……Leslie
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