By Dr. Lori Butterworth
My grandmother used to say that parenting is not for the faint of heart. She was right! But she had no idea back then what parenting would be like now.
For most of us, it’s hard to imagine being a kid growing up in this complex world of social media, mental health challenges, and global uncertainty. So, how can today’s parents help kids build the inner strength, self-confidence and resilience they need when facing tough choices?
1) Resist the Urge to Fix. Our parental instincts are to protect our kids and keep them from harm. But often, trying to fix a child’s problems for them sends the message that they’re not capable of fixing things themselves. Instead, validate a child’s feelings but resist the urge to solve every problem for them. Try saying things like, “I can see you’re upset, and that’s okay,” to show you understand their distress. Then, express your confidence that they’re capable of handling things, “I’m here if you need help, but I know you can handle this on your own.”
2) Turn Challenges into Opportunities. When your child is facing a manageable challenge, welcome it. Without taking over, allow them to face age-appropriate challenges that might involve failure. Gradual exposure to difficult situations and bouncing back from failures builds self-confidence and resilience. Share your own experiences with failure and how you overcame it. This helps kids see setbacks as temporary, part of life, and opportunities for growth.
3) Model Values-Driven Choices. In therapy, I use a fun game to help kids express what is important to them. Using the “Live Your Values” card deck, we sort cards with words like independence, honesty, self-respect, and loyalty into stacks of Most Important, Somewhat Important, and Not Important. This sparks conversations about how knowing what matters most helps us make good choices in tough situations. Try the values card game at home and make it a dinner-time tradition to talk about how you dealt with challenges that day. When kids see adults make values-driven choices, especially when it’s hard, it sends a strong message that doing what’s meaningful matters more than avoiding temporary discomfort.
4) Know When to be a Helicopter-Parent. Back in the 1970s, I was a young kid running around the neighborhood with my friends until dark without a parent or phone in sight. The crime rate was higher than it is today, but parents let their kids play freely. So why are parents anxiously hovering over their kids in the real world and throwing up their hands when it comes to the digital world? It’s complicated, but the bottom line is, we need to switch on the parental hover button when it comes to social media and switch it off in the real world.
Recently, I asked a mother why she wouldn’t let her 11-year-old daughter walk two blocks from her school to my office for therapy. Like so many other parents, this mom shared her fear of a stranger taking her daughter. I asked the mom if she knew how long her daughter would have to stand alone on a street corner before, statistically speaking, she’d be kidnapped by a stranger. You could almost hear her jaw drop when I told her it was 750,000. Here’s the irony: her daughter has a smartphone.
It’s not only our responsibility, but it is also in our collective best interests to help kids build the resilience they need to grow into emotionally strong, healthy adults. Here are some reference and resources that can help:
- The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haight
- Breaking Free of Childhood Anxiety and OCD by Eli Leibowitz
- LetGrow.org provides free resources for parents and educators. Be sure to download the Let Grow Project and Independence Kit.
- Angela Duckworth’s Grit (both book and TED ED talk) is a great resource for parents who want to help their children build resilience. Duckworth shows that success isn’t about talent but about passion and persistence, aka “grit.”
- Triple P (Positive Parenting Program) is an evidence-based parenting program offered at no charge by First-5 Santa Cruz.
- The Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health hosts free Parent Drop-In sessions on the last Wednesday of every month on Zoom and in-person parent discussion sessions about how parents can work together to improve youth mental health.
Learn more and register at ccamh.org.
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Lori Butterworth, PsyD, MEd, is a psychologist and founder of the Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Jacob’s Heart Children’s Cancer Support Services. She can be reached at [email protected] or 831-222-0052.