Parenting - When Loving Care Creates Pressure To Perform
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Following on from last week’s conversation about “helicopter parenting”, I was thinking about some of the other, unintended consequences of pouring so much energy and effort into making life easier for our kids.
Kids are far more savvy than most of us give them credit for. If their parents are running themselves into the ground, pouring all their energy and focus into providing every possible opportunity and advantage for their kids, the kids know that they are darned-well expected to return that investment in the form of material success - getting good marks, getting into the right college, getting a good job, even marrying the right kind of spouse.
The more effort the parents put into their kids at the cost of pursuing their own interests and dreams, the more pressure the kids feel to follow the path their parents have laid out for them, whether or not that path is a good fit for them.
Even when the path is a good fit, and the young person would have chosen it of their own volition, pressure to perform can leach the joy and self-expression out of what might otherwise have been a satisfying and fulfilling career.
Kids can feel this pressure in their business activities, as much as in their schooling.
If you are encouraging your kids to branch out into business, or they have started of their own accord and you are supporting them, it is vitally important that you, the parent, do not get focused on results and accomplishment.
The greatest value from running a business is not the income, or the accolades, or the value it adds to a resume. The greatest value from any business journey is the fabulous growth and learning opportunities which arise from the journey - and the confidence and self-reliance that result from making use of those learning opportunities.
Just as your child can benefit from a few years of ballet training, even if he or she doesn’t ever progress beyond the end-of-year concert at the local church hall, because of the habits of good posture, grace, and core strength it develops, your child can benefit from a few years of running a business, even if that business never makes more than nickels and dimes.
Focusing on the journey, and the lessons learned along the way, will free your child from the burden of parental expectations, and allow him or her to blossom according to their own design. It is this freedom which the children of helicopter parents do not have, and it is this freedom which we yearn for when we look back to the time when kids were left to be kids while parents got on with their lives.
Our kids can have the best of both worlds - interested, involved, protective parents and the freedom to make their own choices and learn from their own mistakes. As long as parents are aware of the downsides of anxious hovering, parents can curb their tendencies to overprotect and work on checking the training wheels and then letting go.
Photo: carf
June 27th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I like happy mediums.