Happy New Year to all!
This time of year always brings such joy and commitment to making things new and adopting change in things that we feel need improvement! (I know, I know, at least that is what I always tell myself this time of year!)
In thinking about what to write in my blog this month, I was struck by events in my childhood that truly shaped how I approach new and challenging situations in my life. In our family, my Dad was what I will call a “fixer”. Anytime we needed discipline we heard, “Wait till your father gets home!”. Whenever we got into trouble with others, my Dad would always swoop in and “fix” it for us. This of course was followed by the ever lengthy lecture about how we needed to improve and shouldn’t we remember how this will look on our family, etc, etc. In actual fact, I think that I probably tuned him out after the first two minutes. These fixes carried on well into our adulthood.
The event that changed all of this for me was when I was in my senior year of high school. My sister and brother were both away at school leaving me to be the only sibling at home. My father and mother were embroiled in a political campaign, touring and shaking hands across the province in Canada that we were living in. Since I was still in school, this meant I would be living at the house by myself for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Please do not be shocked or have any sort of pity for me as I truly think that this is why I am able to tackle any issue that comes my way with a sense of confidence in the knowledge that I am capable! This experience truly gave me the “Gift of Problem Solving”.
My gift was done by accident but it gave me so much more confidence and strength in myself that has carried with me all through my life. The hardest things for us as parents is to watch our children fail, but it truly is the best gift that we can give them. I am not saying leave your children to fend for themselves, but give them a chance to work out their small problems when they are younger, don’t rescue them from the little heartaches.
When your child has an issue that needs work to get through it, such as a problem with a friend,
- Provide them with a strong and sincere dose of empathy – “Oh, that makes me so sad when that happens to me too.”
- Lovingly hand the problem back to them – “What do you think you want to do about it?”
- Get permission to share ideas – (if they don’t come up with some by themselves) Would you like me to give you some ideas of what other kids have tried?)
- Give a brief list of some choices and ask them to evaluate – “Do you think any of those might work?”
- Give them support in the choice that they make (no matter what it is – do not give your opinion on how you think it will work) – “Awesome honey, let me know how it works out for you?”
- Check back in to see how things went – if not positive, restart the steps again, if it turned out well, then give them a high five and let them know you believed that they could do it.
Of course, if the problem is too big for them to solve on their own or too dangerous, then you step in to help out. Otherwise, give them the gift of solving those problems on their own. It truly is a powerful self-esteem builder to know that they can handle things and gives confidence in tackling problems in the future.
And that’s what Ms. Marinos says!
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