Child Development is a complex process. As a parent, we do our best to support our child health and well-being which includes their vibrant spirit and empowering them to face the world as they grow up. Child education shouldn’t be a tiring chore, if all we feel is tiredness, anxiety, stress, anger, and pain during our child’s upbringing, this means that the method that we used is wrong. Raising a kid should be an enjoyable process and we should focus on the three pillars every child needs the moment they are born which are Unconditional love, a Sense of Worth, and a Growth mindset.
Unconditional Love
Unconditional love is loving your child without any conditions and limitations. It means that “no matter what happens, I am going to love you”. Unconditional love allows us to truly build intimacy and strong relationship bond with our children. Learn to respect your child’s feelings and communicate with them effectively in a calm and gentle manner.
Many parents may speak up saying “what happens if my child becomes a spoiled brat if I pamper them and provide them with unconditional love?” Unconditional love does not mean love without boundaries and pampering your child with all their demands. As a parent, you need to know when and where to set healthy limits and boundaries for your child. If a child is pampered without boundaries, meaning they have the freedom to do whatever they want — scold or hit anyone, bully other kids, etc. Under such conditions, the child’s inner’s self is actually in panic mode because they do not know where the boundaries lie. They are able to feel that their actions (e.g hitting another child) is not welcome by others and start to think to themself “I’m being naughty and hit a child but it looks like my parents are not angry at me” Over pampering a child and letting them do whatever they like actually cause them to feel insecure. This insecure feeling is the same with a child that grows up under abusive parents because both children felt that no one loves them.
Although, every parent loves their child unconditionally but are we expressing them correctly? Have you ever spoken to your child in such a manner before:
- “Stop misbehaving or I will leave you here alone!”
- “OMG! Can you stop? If you going to continue throwing tantrums, I’m going to give you away!”
- “Annie, we love you when you are a good girl but if you are naughty then we won’t love you.”
- “If you get first place in class next semester, we shall go to Disneyland!”
Notice that every sentence comes with a condition/exchange and using love to threaten the child. We should NEVER joke to a child about loving or stop loving them even if they are naughty. Assure your child that no matter in what situation, we will still love them. Parents should learn not to threaten their children and set conditions. When we set conditions for a child they will feel betrayed, abandoned, and not loved. In return, they will start to rebel and go against their parents. Hence, never use conditions/ exchange and threaten your love with your child — This is one of the key components of unconditional love.
Sense of Worth
Alfred Adler a physician, psychotherapist, and founder of Adlerian Psychology shares in his book “What Life Could Mean to You” that a person’s entire life is in search of two types of feelings — Sense of belonging and Sense of Worth. A sense of belonging is developed when unconditional love is provided whereas a sense of worth is required to be developed. An important concept to remember before we dive deeper is about building a child that is self-independent with positive self-esteem. This is related to developing any individual sense of worth because if a person lack self-independence and self-esteem, he/she will feel that whatever they are doing is by force and there is no freedom of choice. For example, if a child lack self-independence and self-esteem, they will feel that doing homework after school is because my mum asks me to do it and often respond by saying “I have no choice”, “I’m being forced”, and “That’s the only way for me”.
Many people in today’s lives often move from Trigger to Response — If a person treats them well, they will in return treat the person good as well. If a person scolds them they will in return scold back the person. My primary school science teacher is horrible and unfair hence I don’t like science and continued to perform badly in the science subject. What this indicates is our path was decided by the first trigger point, my primary school teacher helps me decide that I dislike science. We have forgotten that in between Trigger and Response, there is a huge space called “Choice”.
Trigger → Choice → Response
Even though my primary school science teacher is horrible and unfair, I still have the choice to learn this subject well. This is the space of “Choice”. In life, there are always challenges being thrown at us, people mistreat us, trigger us, betray us, ignore us, and if we often give up the right to “Choose” and respond with “I’m being forced to be the bad person”, then life will become more and more narrow. If a person’s self-independence and self-esteem are not well developed while they are young will results in them losing their space of “Choice” as they grow up and start putting blame on what triggers them. Hence, the best gift we can provide for our children is to help them develop their self-independence and positive self-esteem right before they turn 5 years old, 10 years old, or 18 years old.
There are many circumstances that can affect a child’s self-esteem, one of them would be how parents criticize when a child misbehaves. Many parents like to respond by being overly harsh. For Example:
- “You are a bad child, you have no moral”
- “You lied, You are a thief!”
- “You betrayed everyone!”
A child stealing an item is an action, but if you say the child is a thief, you are actually labeling them. A child is too young to resist temptation and is often tempted by toys, ice creams, chocolates, etc. and without realizing that picking up a bar of chocolate from a shelf is called “Stealing” and may not have developed the concept of stealing. A child is also too young to be able to differentiate the difference between lying and imagination. Hence, when their parents say they lied and is a thief, the child actually believes them and their self-esteem starts to deteriorate. Children easily trust what adults said to them, therefore they will believe that they are bad and naughty because their parents said so. Hence, self-independence and self-esteem develop a child’s own sense of worth. You will realize children with a sense of worth will always find a way to solve their problems on their own.
Growth Mindset
Carol S. Dweck shares in her book “Mindset” that there are two types of mindset a person can have — “Growth Mindset” and “Fixed Mindset”. A growth mindset occurs when we believe our intelligence can be further developed and we continue to seek new knowledge whereas a Fixed mindset occurs when we believe our intelligence, talents, and personalities are fixed traits that cannot be changed or developed further. Children are naturally growth mindset as they are constantly curious about their environment and explore through their observation and senses.
If you observe back closely, why do children tend to learn faster than adults? Why children are able to learn a new language faster than adults? That’s because children before the age of 3–4 years old are not afraid of failure. They can easily speak many words wrongly, recognize wrong words, pronounce the word wrongly and still feel happy about it and not worried about being evaluated by others, which is why they learn faster than adults. If I were to ask you to learn a new language (E.g Korean), we will notice that as an adult we will tend to learn slower because we have developed self-consciousness and learn how to compare ourselves with others whereas a child has the growth mindset to learn everything they see, hear and touch.
As a parent, it is our responsibility to nurture our children into a person with a growth mindset. One of the key concepts to keep in mind is to stop praising your children for being genius. Stop using phrases like this:
- “Darling, that’s amazing, you are so smart!”
- “My baby boy is a natural-born genius, He got first in class !”
When we praise a child for being smart, it promotes a fixed mindset and sends a message that their accomplishments are due to their natural ability and learns that winning others is important. From then on, with a fixed mindset, happiness is dependent on external rewards — being better than others, and receiving praises and rewards. Instead of praising your children, try and use phrases like this:
- “Darling, your hard work revising last night has paid off!”
- “Wow, you got first place in class; you must have studied very hard!”
Always remember to praise the child’s effort not the results. By praising their effort, they learn that any setbacks can be resolved by practicing harder, continuing learning, and improving their own capabilities. The child will also learn to enjoy the process of learning and understand that no one is gifted, it all comes with deliberate practice. Mozart was not a musical genius, it was his passion that he enjoyed and he practiced very hard — These are the concepts we should share with our children.
Conclusion
Academic education is important for every child but this should not be a focus point. In fact, there isn’t a need to obsess about your children’s academic learning and grades that you end up hurting your child and yourself. Parents should let go of their anxiety, self-blame, and stress during child development and understand the three basic pillars — Unconditional love, a Sense of Worth, and a Growth Mindset. Take the time to understand these three basic pillars and connect them with your child. Let’s hope that more parents take the effort and time to learn about child development so that every parent and their child can grow up happily and enjoy the process of life.
On a side note, I encourage every parent to dive deeper and understand more about each pillar. There is so much more to learn in each pillar, what was shared in this article is a summary or surface understanding.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Caroline Hernandez on Unsplash