Musings :: Helping Our Children Navigate Through Life

My hope is to provide my daughter with the emotional tools to handle whatever might come her way!

 ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Over the past few weeks I have had this conversation with friends about how much do we protect our kids from life’s hardships.  I think it is a natural reaction for most to try to shield our kids from the things that will come up in life – teasing on the playground, being excluded from certain groups, first breakups, loss, and everything else in between.  I think it is a fine line we walk as parents from protecting our children and allowing  them to experience life’s challenges.

The other day we had a function with a group of girls.  The nature guide asked the girls to get in groups of three’s.  And if anyone knows, asking a group of eight year olds to group together is probably not the wisest course of action as someone usually gets excluded.  I sat in the back watching my daughter go to a couple different groups asking to be a part of their threesome.  It was heartbreaking to watch her being told that she wasn’t part of their group at least three different times.

At the moment, I was torn between stepping in and asking that she be a part of one of the groups to sitting back and letting things play out naturally.  It is funny how mamma bear comes out when you see your child in a situation like that.  She ended up getting paired up by the nature guide with two girls who had not  joined a group as well and had a blast with these two.  She didn’t say a word of it to me afterwards so I figured it wasn’t something we needed to talk about if she wasn’t upset about it.  She is usually pretty good about telling me when she is upset about something.

So how much do we step in as parents when we see these types of situations with our children?  Are we doing them any favors when we don’t allow them to have some hardships along the way through childhood?  I think most of us had challenges along the way – some more than others and some more intense.  I know that I would not change a single challenge I had to face as a child because it made me who I am today.

I also know that the women I met in college who were somewhat overprotected at home  – you know the ones you met who didn’t know how to do a load of laundry or make a decent meal because mom or dad always did it – were the ones who usually couldn’t handle being on their own and ended up leaving after a semester or two.  They just didn’t seem to have the emotional strength or confidence to handle being out on their own.

Does shielding our children and doing everything for them do them any favors when they go out into the world as young adults and find that the world doesn’t always play out fairly – that it is a normal part of life to experience hardships along the way?

Maybe the solution isn’t so much about shielding them, but more along the lines of providing tools to help them get through what will come up along their path.  My daughter has seen me mourn the loss of my father this past year and sometimes I wonder how much that has affected her.  I do not go to another room or hide my emotions if I am sad about my losing my father and have cried in the car with her asking me what was wrong.  I hope that I showed her that it is normal and healthy to grieve openly for those we love and have lost.  That by sharing our thoughts and feelings we open the door to a more real picture of what life might offer. But then also show that one can and will overcome these things that sometimes stop you in your tracks.  One of the signs of emotional intelligence is the ability to persist in the face of difficulty.  My hope is to teach my daughter these tools so that she too may persist through her journey.

Read more about steps for cultivating emotional intelligence in your children at Parent – Child – Development.