Children Are from Heaven: When Your Child Meets a Challenge

January 16, 2009

Is she ready for a challenge?

A mother’s natural inclination is to protect and shelter her offspring—which makes it all the more difficult when your  child comes home from her first week of school and says, “I’m so unhappy! Nobody at school wants to play with me.”  But before you troop onto the playground and fight her battles for her, ask yourself honestly: Are you doing her any favors? Or is it time that she rise to these social challenges on her own?

As the years pass we hear about social disappointments and so much more. Disillusioned about not making the basketball team, the teacher not giving them an opportunity to explain  why they had not turned in their homework, or being excluded from the fourth grade inner circle of “cool kids.”

What we don’t stop to consider is that all these hurtful, and sometimes tearful experiences, are the paving stones that they need to create their own pathway to success. Consider, for example, some of these events that happen to most of us while growing up, all of which go a long way toward shaping the adults that we will become.

* Children cannot learn to be self-sufficient without having first known rejection and exclusion.

* Children cannot learn courage and optimism unless they have faced adversity.

* The obstacles placed in our children’s path, allows them to learn self-esteem once those obstacles are overcome. When parents remove these roadblocks, children have no real way of gaining that needed degree of self-esteem.

* Children for whom everything is done and made easy, cannot learn to be persistent and strong.

* Children will never learn to self-correct unless they suffer some degree of difficulty and failure.

Children face many difficult trials and with each trial they can gain increased strength. A butterfly struggles mightily to escape the clutches of the cocoon from which it emerges into the world. If you were to take pity on that poor butterfly and cut open that cocoon, it would survive a very short period of time because it never developed the need strength to fly.

The next time you see your child struggling with a toy, or a homework assignment or a dozen other daily frustrations, take one step back and say to yourself, “If I help right now am I cutting open that cocoon?”  The answer most likely is yes. So stay close but far enough back that your child can learn and prepare for the day when you will want them to fly on their own.

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Tick tock...tick tock...

MVL Valentine’s Day Countdown Tip #3:

Kids and Cupid

Romance is not easy to accomplish with a houseful of children. That said, line up a babysitter at least a month in advance of February 14th.

If you’re still having a hard time finding one, find another couple who has been luckier in finding one, even if your plans take you in different directions and offer to double the sitter’s fee.

The key to making this work is knowing that your children play well with those of the other couple. (And that makes the sitter’s duties a lot easier to boot.)

And remember: To make it worth the sitter’s time and effort, leave her a big tip. That way, she’ll be sure to be available the next time you need her.

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Posted in Parenting