Mindful Parenting
- Janet Nash, LISW-S, C-IAYT, RYT500
- Apr 2, 2018
- 4 min read
Do we invalidate our kids by cheerleading them too much? Perhaps it’s the type of support that we provide to them that makes the difference? I’ve watched extreme cheerleading by parents backfire horribly, causing some kids and teens to feel invalidated and unheard.
One well-intentioned parent told me he thinks of himself as his daughter’s primary cheerleader. He said, “I just keep telling her that she can do it and that she needs to keep trying.” Sounds good, right? And, usually, it is. But, his daughter happens to have severe depression and anxiety. Sometimes we just can’t will our kids into doing or being what we want. All the cheerleading in the world is only going to make them feel “not good enough,” “like a failure,” “unheard,” and “invalidated,” as this teen told me.
Now is a good time to consider whether our expectations for our kids are unattainable for them because we set the bar too high or because there is some other obstacle that keeps them from succeeding.
Also, if we don’t give them the tools (the “how”) to follow through on things they struggle with, they get set up for frustration and a sense of failure if they cannot meet parents’ expectations. Somewhere there is a balanced approach to providing support and encouragement. Here are a few ideas about providing children effective encouragement:
1. Listen to your child’s feelings about their struggle. Listen with presence and curiosity. Truly hear their description of what’s troubling them, but reach for the emotion behind the words. Repeat it back to them to make sure you understand. (“Am I hearing you correctly that you feel worried and stressed because math is getting really hard, and you want to do a good job?”)
2. Validate your child’s feelings about their struggle. Let them know you understand their feelings and their struggle. (“I know, math can be really confusing and frustrating. It was for me, too.”)
3. Offer Suggestions/Support. Give ideas or suggestions about how your child might be able to obtain help or ask them what they think they need to succeed. (I’m always surprised by how thoughtful and articulate kids are about what they need.) (“What can I do to help you feel better about math? Maybe we can get you a tutor. What do you think?”)
4. Ask Questions. Maybe there are other underlying issues that need addressing. (“Is there anything else going on that may be making math hard for you? Do you feel sad? Or distracted? Or stressed?”) Sometimes depression or anxiety can cause poor concentration. This would be something else to consider and address.
5. Mindfully Encourage. Make expectations attainable and reasonable. (“I think if we get you some math help, you’ll feel better about yourself and about school. I appreciate that you want to be a good student, and I want to help you.”) Some of our wishes for our kids may be unattainable and unfair of us to impose on them. We need to explore our need to live vicariously through our kids or our need to feel validated as parents by their successes. To use the above example, take the child who is doing poorly in math. Suppose his parents push him hard to put more time into study and keep insisting that he can do it, but he continues to struggle with poor grades. He begins to feel incompetent. If he has an undiagnosed learning issue, no amount of cheerleading will make him succeed. And, the fact that the parents are unable to support compassionately and effectively only makes the boy also feel unheard and unseen.
6. Teach Them to Fail. I know you’re thinking, “What!? I thought this was about encouragement, not failure!” My thought here is that even after your effective encouragement and guidance, there will be occasions when your child fails, anyway. Teach them that they have choices about how they want to conceptualize failure. Truly successful people are failure experts because they’re willing to get up again and again and try over and over rather than give up too quickly. (I know it sounds like the opposite of what I’ve been saying all along, but it’s not.) Listen, as long as your child knows that you are not judging their failure, they will be better able to accept it, too, and will be less likely to give up too easily. They won’t feel ashamed of their performance because you unconditionally accept them no matter what. If they know you’re disappointed in them, or even angry with them, their resilience and grit will diminish because the negative consequence of failing is too great. By teaching kids how to fail, we are encouraging an internal strength to strive to improve by risking getting up and trying again versus cheerleading which is an external parental expectation that doesn’t give effective guidance and support that fosters giving up for fear of failure. Teaching kids to fail is really about their honest effort and less about the outcome. Honestly, the outcome is so much less important but in our culture, it’s all about the bottom line, so this concept may feel strange to you. Another way of saying it is it’s all about the journey and not the destination. The process is what’s important and letting go of the outcome can free our kids up to better trust their performance.
Perhaps we might rethink the parental role as less of a cheerleader and more of a sounding board and guide. We don’t have to fix all of our kids’ problems – though it’s so tempting. In fact, let them do the work and offer guidance when it’s asked for – or when not giving guidance is neglectful.
Cheerleading as a form of support and encouragement can leave our kids feeling unhappy and feeling like failures because no matter what they do, they cannot live up to our expectations for them. In truth, all they ever really want is to please us and to know that we are proud of them – even though they sometimes seem deaf and blind to parental involvement and intervention.
Mindful encouragement may be more time consuming because it requires presence, listening, problem solving together, and communicating more effectively with each other. It’s so much easier to say, “Keep trying; I know you can do it” and move on to something else in our own busy lives. But the reward of offering conscious, mindful encouragement is a happier, well-adjusted child who is better equipped to ride the waves of life’s uncertainty in a sturdy, grounded, and healthy way.
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