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“I just want to support my child the best I can.”
This is something I hear from every (caring) parent, x10 since school closures. A common follow-up statement:
“I know I can’t keep being the one to make sure their work gets done…but I don’t want to see them fail.”
There’s a myth that support means sitting down and doing your child’s homework with them every day, especially if there’s resistance to getting it done. Many parents feel that they have to be the driving force and take up an exhausting mantle of responsibility for keeping their kid on track with school work.
The assumption is that if they DON’T do this, their child will spiral and fail, emails from teachers about missed assignments will start to pour in, etc.
This type of support is common and well-intentioned, and ultimately crippling for the family. The parent becomes burned out and at a loss when nothing gets better, while inadvertently maintaining or increasing their child’s dependence on them. Both parties suffer and feel like they’re not capable of doing what they feel they should be able to do.
Support that actually works, that shifts away from feelings of failure and frustration, is the kind that leads kids to sitting down and doing the work, on their own.
If you’re thinking, “well yeah, that’s what I want, but they won’t do it”, then I’ve good news for you.
Your child’s resistance is not permanent.
In fact, it generally goes away as soon as they learn how to do their work. They see the stuff they’re learning actually matters and relates to them “in real life.”
They don’t need someone else pushing them to just get it done. The pushing is what keeps them stuck. They just need help figuring out how and why they should do it themselves.
This is exactly what happened with our client, who I’ll call M. M’s son started out as most students do, with resistance. But M showed him how to learn how to learn for himself, and that resistance melted away. He’s doing his work independently and his GPA shot up from 2.0 to a 3.5. Most of his growth actually happened while we’ve been in quarantine.
This reflects the MASSIVE opportunity to help our kids learn how to learn right now.
She got to step back completely and marvel at it. She shared her thoughts and surprise with me yesterday, take a listen here.
The bottom line: support that makes the biggest, most positive difference is the kind that helps your child show up as their best self.
Confident. Knowing they can do it on their own. When kids see that this is possible, they WANT it.
It’s not about establishing yourself as the driver of their success, but empowering them to do the work. If you want help on getting clear how to do this exactly, book a free 1:1 strategy call with me here.
