As our nation’s children head out the door to experience the wonders of another year of educational value added to their lives, let’s join them and refine our skills and outlook to provide 5 potent resources to them throughout this new year.
Individuation is the Workout
Our main job in life is to become sufficiently independent. Ideally, so we can then choose to bond with a community and live interdependently, while both receiving and giving. Individuation, becoming our own person, is the beginning of that journey. It is not treasonous to outgrow our need for our parents. A parent’s best goal is to work one’s self out of a job and into a meaningful relationship with a fellow adult. The nearly 200 school days each year can become great times for your child to learn from others and form his or her own perspective, while the parents encourage this.
But anyone who has ever, ever, ever been in a school- public, private, home school co-op, or even after school teams and clubs, knows these environments have swamps, valleys, precipices, and turbulent waters that every soul will have to navigate. Many a parent wants to offer a path without these hardships, but that is not reality.
Instead of hyper-protecting children, aim to empower them: your kids, your relatives, your kid’s friends, your neighbors, the stranger or newcomer, and especially the unlovely souls. Resiliency is what every person needs, and it is learned! While the kids you know and love are making their way forward uniquely, here are a few mindsets you can adopt to turn yourself into an ever-ready lifeline because not all hard times are apparent.
Validation is a Salve
Humans are hard-wired to belong. This leads to a great deal of our pleasure and angst in life as we seek friends, mates, and companions for the pursuit of our dreams. This wiring accounts for why belonging to a dangerous gang, bad crowd, or abusive mate is often preferred to being alone.
It is less likely for an encouraged person to succumb to misplaced belonging. So, let’s spend time encouraging all the (young) people we know. We take verbal and non-verbal cues to know we belong. People don’t think they belong because of the praise they receive. Overt praise often becomes counter-productive.
Belonging is different. It is doing things together and being made to know it wouldn’t have been the same without you. It is sharing interests, demonstrating talents, asking questions, waiting for answers. Our self-esteem comes from accomplishing something we weren’t sure we were capable of doing. But until we have forged that emotional iron of our accomplishments and constructed a solid base of existence out of it for ourselves, we survive on validation from our surroundings. The best form of this is unconditional love, offered consistently, tirelessly, and mindfully. It is best to grow up knowing you belong unconditionally while learning the tremendous satisfaction that comes from accomplishment.
Some people grow up in undeserved harshness. The simple encouragement of a friend’s family, a neighbor, teacher, or coach can be an oasis in an emotional desert. Give the thirsty a cool drink in the form of recognition, acknowledgement, inclusion.
Kids are always the oldest they’ve ever been, same for parents. As things are encountered for the first time it is extremely comforting when a veteran puts it in a manageable context. It is wonderful to be under a trustworthy wing.
Listening more than twice as much as you speak and asking more questions than you make statements can turn you into a powerhouse of validation for a person of any age. You can’t help with an unperceived problem. Listen. Ask. Repeat.
When I was 8 years old, I would tell my very distracted, “just home from a full day of factory work” mom about things that happened in my class that day. I was in third grade and beginning to act out in school. I made up a classmate I called Lisa and would describe what I had done in school by attributing my deeds to her. Sometimes my mom would just look horrified during these tales and that left me on shaky ground because I already knew it was bad, I was looking to find out if “Lisa” was still lovable. This is where compassion for all really comes in handy. That gracious outlook for all lets a kid know everyone falls short and we’ll wait for them to get back on the trail with us. Having lived this experience helped me be a very different kind of listener during my 35-year teaching career.
There is also the danger that exists when people freely pass judgment as a matter of course, not realizing that someone sitting at our table, driving in our car, or walking the path nearby is struggling with the same issue we’re judging, and now they know the exact degree of alienation to feel. It becomes less likely the person in need will turn to these souls for the help they’ll need down the road. Someone who has trained themselves to be impeccable with their words prevents themselves from doing such harm.
Detoxification is a Tonic
Every person errs. Unavoidable. If a family prizes honesty and asks for that repeatedly, that conditioning may make it easier for a child to fess up. We want kids to tell on themselves much like we want to get pus out of a wound. Things that don’t come to light have a way of making us ill in body, soul, or both.
I make a distinction between shame and guilt and have no place for the former in my life. Guilt is what results in the pressure that leads to confession and resolution of what has been done wrong. Shame paralyzes people, locks them away with misdeeds in ways that make it harder to bring the truth to light.
The only way to detox our self or others is to access/offer grace or mercy. Technically, grace is needed when you had no idea you were doing the wrong thing but still made a mess and mercy is needed when we knew better and went ahead with our misdeed anyway.
If someone is already burdened with shame, I offer grace or mercy first. Sometimes you have to tell someone exactly how grace and mercy are going to be offered before they find the strength to confess. I often explain to a young person my own experience of a similar shortcoming and how I moved beyond it as a way of extending a fellowship of souls who overcome errors.
My father used to have the curious habit of turning a question inside out. He thought highly of me and unfortunately that worked against me. When something bad had happened he’d say, “such and such happened and we’re wondering what happened. You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you?” I would look into his eyes and see his faith in me and want desperately to not disappoint him with the truth. I remember shaking my head “no” in agreement with him, while my heart was crying out to confess! I took a different route with my kids as a result, saying something like “You know it isn’t uncommon for most kids to be tempted to do such and such. I have, and sometimes I did do those things. We all make mistakes. Someone has done that now. If it was you, I will help you make it right. What can you tell me about what happened?”
We learn through practice, again and again and again. We cannot be shocked that errors occur. It needs to be factored in our budget, on our calendar, and on our radar screen.
Intervention is Therapy
When my kids were very young I came up with a “Pom-Poms and Kleenex” theory for parenting. I thought as parents we should be much more quiet in the presence of our children as they processed their experiences. When they were marching toward a challenge or returning home from one victorious we would pull out the pom-poms and cheer wildly! When defeat was theirs instead of victory, we bring out the box of Kleenex and maintain our solidarity with them in the low moments or seasons. I still think that is a great plan, especially the quiet we would bring as we draw near.
However, there is another sort of action that we must always be prepared to take. When bodies, property or deep feelings are being harmed or threatened with harm, it is time to act. For me that statement is what distinguishes tattling from telling. Kids should be taught this throughout their life so when they stumble into gray areas in their youth they have a good Geiger counter for when intervention is needed, to understand when it is wise to ask for help.
Empowerment as a mindset has your child solving as much of a problem independently as possible. This holds true for times when an adult or older kid needs to weigh in or directly intervene. Try to bring as little weight to bear as possible when doing so. How you react reveals your sense of your child’s competency. Your child and the society he or she is immersed in witness this. This is a big “harming or helping” moment. Try to wisely do no harm.
Rites of passage historically lead to greater maturity for the one making the passage. There is a theory that as we created the concept of being a teenager in the early 20th century we sanitized our children’s lives to an extreme and culturally eliminated our traditions of rites of passage. Our youth filled the gap with the dangers at hand: drugs, sex, and rock and roll. A true rite of passage carries the possibility of real harm.
There is a place for learning how to face our battles, whether we’re winning them, enduring them, or becoming wise enough to avoid them. However, if you deem the situation to be seriously adverse remember, the best dogs growl long before they bite. Try to reserve your protective instinct to “bite” for life-threatening moments.
Some societies are toxic and will not improve in your lifetime. “Getting the heck out of Dodge” is sometimes the only option, but retreat for some souls becomes an unintentional pattern. If you see this urge in yourself or your child, dig in. If a retreat is the only wise option now, “set the timer” for trying to persist in the next situation for significantly longer than you were able to this time or last time. That goal may require developing new strategies for getting along, such as not oversharing information or not trusting prematurely. New skills may bring new results.
Vision is a Remedy
Your view of your child can be a magical elixir in the darkest moments. There is a reason most women don’t labor alone and why coaches often run down the sidelines near their player: by design, we do better with encouragement.
Though we may sometimes be nearly as frightened as our child by what is ahead, we must marshal our voice and use it to “see” a better future. This is a way of speaking life as a blessing to your child at any age. The parent, even the careless parent who hasn’t used his or her authority wisely, is still imbued with a role as visionary in the child’s life.
This is why the words we speak matter most when said in the presence of a child. We give them a script they will read from or have to overcome. Tell young people the good you see in them. Make note of their courage and kindness on a regular basis. Each person came here for a reason to accomplish many unique things. Be excited about your child’s unique offerings and giftedness throughout his or her days, but especially in a moment where perhaps all others, even your child, has lost sight of what is precious within. In that moment speak like the oracles of old and tell the truth, “You matter, you are here for a reason, and anything broken can be fixed. Your best days are ahead of you, and we can’t wait to see it come to pass!”
Allowing room each day for your children to become individuals, while you offer validation and detoxification liberally, intervene judiciously, and share your encouraging vision for your children when it’s most needed, will strengthen children in their core and let them flourish.
