Keeping your children safe is quite a large chunk of being a good parent. But what is safety? Safety can be contradicting if you look at it from different lenses, or different time-scales. On the one hand, we can wrap up our child in bubble-wrap so they don't get bruised when falling. On the other hand, teaching them how to pick themselves up after falling, can save their lives.
That last sentence really sums up what a lot of parents these days fail to recognize. I don't blame them for not seeing it initially. We react in the short term. Seeing our child trip on carpet and slam their forehead into the table is painful. One could rationalize that removing the carpet could stop the accident in that one particular case. But how many cases are there?
We don't know how many cases there are. At least not until we can harness the power of Laplace's demon. So until that day arrives, we need a backup plan. We cannot prevent our child from falling in every single scenario in our home. Even if you could, what do you do when we send our children out into the world? We don't know how every home sets their carpets and tables. So what we do instead, we build small algorithms into our children's brains.
We create program that can deal with a multitude of different scenarios. Level 1 of these programs could be something like: "Don't run inside". Or: "Keep an eye out when running". These very primitive rules help our children with some very basic ideas of cause and effect. They don't last very long unfortunately. Firstly, they suck, so children might ignore them, and secondly they do not guarantee success.
This brings us to Level 2. Now that we have laid the groundwork that decreases the rate of accidents, we set up a system that can deal with the inevitable. Accidents happen. Shit happens. When our children do fall, we comfort them, ensure that everything is fine. What we must also do, is show them how to get up again. You must take this with a grain of salt. You cannot sit with your coffee in hand and tell your child to stop being a cry baby with a lash across their forehead and bleeding out on the couch. I know, I know, that was quite dramatic. I put that image in your head purposely however.
I want you to ask yourself where you draw the line? A small gash? Are they crying, not crying? Did they loose two teeth? I fear that a lot of people don't ask themselves this enough. The end result of not knowing where you stand is that you fall back on your default, which is comforting them, always. I think this is a mistake. I think that is how we get to a state of coddling.
It is no easy task to decipher the signals of an accident from your child, and why not just make sure everything is ok? What's the harm in that right? The harm is long term. You don't get immediate feedback on your harm. The harm creeps in slowly. Years and decades later, when your child throws a tantrum at work because things aren't going the way they want. It shows when they give up after failing a single time.
Level 3 is impossible to get to. Level 3 is a perfect score. Every parent knows, that we are lucky if we get half of our interpretations right in any single day. Every day our children evolve. Every day, our children are influenced by outside factors out of our control. Every single day, poses new challenges on the relationship between parent and child. Level 3 is a guiding star.
A level three parent has a perfect read on their child. They see them falling and can see in their eyes if this bump in the road is small enough for the child to handle, and grow from. Or, if they might need a parent for support on this one. As the child ages, the need for the parent to help them overcome things should shift. This does not necessarily mean less. The types of problems they need help for shift, as previous challenges, like tripping is something they can deal with on their own, while a breakup might need the emotional and physical support of a parent to understand and cope with.
- Trolz
That last sentence really sums up what a lot of parents these days fail to recognize. I don't blame them for not seeing it initially. We react in the short term. Seeing our child trip on carpet and slam their forehead into the table is painful. One could rationalize that removing the carpet could stop the accident in that one particular case. But how many cases are there?
We don't know how many cases there are. At least not until we can harness the power of Laplace's demon. So until that day arrives, we need a backup plan. We cannot prevent our child from falling in every single scenario in our home. Even if you could, what do you do when we send our children out into the world? We don't know how every home sets their carpets and tables. So what we do instead, we build small algorithms into our children's brains.
We create program that can deal with a multitude of different scenarios. Level 1 of these programs could be something like: "Don't run inside". Or: "Keep an eye out when running". These very primitive rules help our children with some very basic ideas of cause and effect. They don't last very long unfortunately. Firstly, they suck, so children might ignore them, and secondly they do not guarantee success.
This brings us to Level 2. Now that we have laid the groundwork that decreases the rate of accidents, we set up a system that can deal with the inevitable. Accidents happen. Shit happens. When our children do fall, we comfort them, ensure that everything is fine. What we must also do, is show them how to get up again. You must take this with a grain of salt. You cannot sit with your coffee in hand and tell your child to stop being a cry baby with a lash across their forehead and bleeding out on the couch. I know, I know, that was quite dramatic. I put that image in your head purposely however.
I want you to ask yourself where you draw the line? A small gash? Are they crying, not crying? Did they loose two teeth? I fear that a lot of people don't ask themselves this enough. The end result of not knowing where you stand is that you fall back on your default, which is comforting them, always. I think this is a mistake. I think that is how we get to a state of coddling.
It is no easy task to decipher the signals of an accident from your child, and why not just make sure everything is ok? What's the harm in that right? The harm is long term. You don't get immediate feedback on your harm. The harm creeps in slowly. Years and decades later, when your child throws a tantrum at work because things aren't going the way they want. It shows when they give up after failing a single time.
Level 3 is impossible to get to. Level 3 is a perfect score. Every parent knows, that we are lucky if we get half of our interpretations right in any single day. Every day our children evolve. Every day, our children are influenced by outside factors out of our control. Every single day, poses new challenges on the relationship between parent and child. Level 3 is a guiding star.
A level three parent has a perfect read on their child. They see them falling and can see in their eyes if this bump in the road is small enough for the child to handle, and grow from. Or, if they might need a parent for support on this one. As the child ages, the need for the parent to help them overcome things should shift. This does not necessarily mean less. The types of problems they need help for shift, as previous challenges, like tripping is something they can deal with on their own, while a breakup might need the emotional and physical support of a parent to understand and cope with.
- Trolz