A previous article, Turn Blame into Opportunity, focused on recognizing times when blame overtook our problem-solving ability. This time, let’s review your role as a parent in this process. This article is part of my series, Recollections from 22 Years as a Father.
I was sitting in a hotel lobby the other day when a couple of kids came running through chasing each other. The first one fell down and immediately looked back for their parent. At that moment, the child contemplated two scenarios: Either I get up and keep on running, or I stay down and work it for attention from my mom or dad.
This is where it starts. Plenty of unexpected events or unfair things will happen in your children’s lives, whether it is getting hurt or being disappointed. How your child manages through these situations prepares them for becoming independent adults. As a parent, how you insert yourself and the manner you choose will have significant impacts on your child’s development. Your choice either helps them dust themselves off and move forward or has them seeking solace and reliance on others.
Let’s talk about working with your child when things don’t happen right or go the way they were expecting them to go. In these moments, your role is not a fixer or an assistant, like Siri or Alexa. As a parent, your role must focus on developing your child into an independent and fulfilling adult and it needs to start early.
Teaching children to deal with the bumps and bruises of life is a critical component of being a parent. The more you prepare them, the more adept they will be when things start flying at them in the real world. Here are some ideas of moments you can use as developmental opportunities with your child:
- Being tormented (or chased) by a brother or sister every, single day
- A sports coach doesn’t give them the playing time they think they deserve
- Your child’s car or bike has a flat tire and they cannot get to their friend’s house
- Their best friend no longer wants to hang out all the time and has found a new circle of friends
Keep it Rational
When something doesn’t go right, the human reaction is to find fault or to blame someone. Many of us have been conditioned to think a poor outcome demands someone to be at fault. Everyone makes mistakes. You cannot learn to avoid mistakes, but you can learn to resolve them once the inevitable mistake does happen.
This is where you, as a parent, enter the picture. You come in to guide them through a scientific process and forgetting about fault and blame.
Prompt them to Move Forward
Your mission is helping your child figure out what happened so it can be fixed and prevented from occurring again. A good process avoids dwelling on emotions and fault finding. Focus them on moving forward and taking action. Track the series of events back to where things went off track. This is called the root cause.
Identifying the root cause creates a starting point for fixing whatever problem that has been encountered. From here. guide the process along by asking good questions to nudge your child into problem
Ask Questions
Have you ever gone on a tour with a great guide? If yes, they likely prompted you to discover things on your own, or, at least, make you feel like you discovered them on your own. How do they do that? The ask you pointed, yet open-ended questions.
Several years ago, I went on a guided tour of a Costa Rican jungle. The guide did not just point things out. When he saw something, he stopped and set up his telescope and said, “What do you see?” Depending on your answer, he would follow with other questions. You felt like you were discovering animals right along with him (even though he really knew all about it).
As a parent, guiding the discovery process is your role. Similar to the tour guide, you know more information. You could easily just provide all of the information required. Unfortunately, the only thing your child will learn from this strategy is to lean on you and come right back to you with the next problem to solve.
Try to employ a strategy similar to my Costa Rican guide with your child. For the person trying to learn, having someone guide
- What was going on when this happened?
- Why do you think this occurred?
- What are your options for dealing with this situation?
- How are you going to figure out what to do?
Value of Asking Questions
Asking questions focuses the mind on making an assessment of what happened and why it may have occurred. The questions push the brain into problem solving mode, which is right where you want it to be.. This is your brain conducting triage and starting to form a hypothesis about corrective steps to put in place for next time..
Chances are, your child will answer at least one of these questions differently than you would. By asking the questions, you embolden them to make decisions and take control of the situation and make it their own. You want to have them drive the actions and own the process.
Construct a Hypothesis?
Once they start working with you on questions, the answers to those questions create ideas about what triggered the problem. What part of the sequence of events really led to the problem? This is the area you want to focus your efforts to create a solution and you may need several of these ideas because the first one may not work.
There are all kinds of ways you could probably change a sequence of events to create a better outcome. Let your child think through these and brainstorm. Encourage them to go to Google or watch an Internet video to get more ideas. Let the creative juices flow. Try not to evaluate the validity of their idea. Use more questions:
- How would that fix your problem?
- If you do that, will that be something you can do every time?
Once your child has a list of potential solutions, free them to experiment with the one they feel yields the best opportunity for success. The experimentation process teaches what works and what fails. It is experiential learning. As such, let them conduct the experiments, analyze the results, and decide the next move on their own. Whether they implement the solution or keep experimenting, it must be up to them.
Remember, you are a guide, not the Shell Answer Man!
Don’t Become Their Problem
Regardless of their hypothesis or the outcomes of their experiments, your child is the owner of the problem and the actions required to fix it this time and to avoid it occurring over and over again.
You want them to own the process because the problem or predicament is theirs. Not yours. This is a hard thing for many parents. You are supposed to make sure things work out well. But, if you do it for them, they will be unprepared to handle it when you are not around. Furthermore, they will continue to repeat the same problems over and over again.
Due to this fact, it is not up to you how the problem gets fixed or if it gets resolved at all. You are there to point things out, steer them through the situation, and help them make decisions. Not make the decisions for them.
A Poisonous Example
Let me provide an example. One of my sons is terribly allergic to poison ivy. So, allergic, in fact, that once he contacts it, the rash spreads quickly all over his body. Several times, this situation has caused a trip to Urgent Care for a shot. He engaged in a behavior and kept falling prey to the same problem over and over again. When it arose, he came to me to get it resolved.
The last time this happened, I realized I was owning the problem, not him. He was not taking any precautions against getting poison. In fact, he didn’t even know what it looked like. Once he noticed the rash on his skin, he came to me for help and I would tell him what to do. It’s never too late to realize that you are taking the wrong approach and to guide your child instead of being their problem solver.
By the way, we did discover an effective home remedy for itch relief and treatment for poison ivy. Take 2 ounces of grain alcohol (190 proof) and squeeze in 10-20 drops of tea tree oil. Apply as soon as the rash appears for most effective results.
Summary
As parents, we get involved in their problems because we love them and we don’t want them to get hurt. We feel like we are not doing our job if we don’t just jump in and start fixing things. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Your influence helps your child realize they cannot control the situation. They can only manage their actions and emotions. To help your kids learn to overcome challenges and obstacles, guide them through the process by focusing on the following actions:
- Remain rational and focus on the problem
- Ask them questions to prompt them to think and move forward
- Use questions to guide them to finding root cause
- Hypothesize solutions and ask more questions
- Give them space to experiment without interfering
- Let them own the problem and the solution
As with all things parenting, you are not going to get this right every time. Being a pragmatic thinker, I hope I get it right more than half the time. That keeps me from being too hard on myself. Your child doesn’t need guilt on top of everything else which they are trying to deal. Just a helpful nudge to guide them down the path of discovery toward independence.
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