Parenting: Struggle as a Teacher

I’ve observed many parenting styles over the years, but helicopter parenting stands out as particularly challenging. It involves excessive hovering over a child’s growth, often leading to doing things for them rather than fostering independence. While all parenting approaches stem from a desire to do what's best, a crucial aspect of development has been neglected: learning through struggle and failure. Reconnecting with this lesson is essential for our future generations to flourish.

When we allow children to attempt tasks with relative independence, it fosters important characteristics such as tenacity, resilience, and self-efficacy. Let me further expand on the importance of each of these character traits.

Tenacity

When a child faces frustration while trying to complete a task, it’s crucial to encourage perseverance and to avoid giving up, as this builds the tenacity muscle. Everyone encounters obstacles, whether they are barriers, speed bumps, or hills, but surrendering puts us at a disadvantage. In this learning phase, developing problem-solving skills and critical thinking is essential. Often, the initial attempt fails, and that’s part of the learning process. It’s totally okay to make mistakes. Making mistakes is actually good because it helps you learn that no one is perfect and that being human involves trial and error. After a mistake or an initial attempt, you use persistence and problem-solving skills to find a way to overcome, bypass, or resolve the challenge.

Resilience

Tenacity fosters resilience, which naturally develops over time. Resilience is an internal confidence that you will overcome difficult periods and achieve challenging goals. It also enhances adaptability, a vital trait for adulthood. Since life constantly presents unexpected obstacles, cultivating resilience is essential; otherwise, you might feel overwhelmed or like a victim of circumstances.

Self-Efficacy

Tenacity and resilience build self-efficacy, the confidence that you can influence your motivation, behavior, environment, and emotional state. While many aspects of life are beyond our control, self-efficacy gives you the assurance that you can manage what you do control, particularly your reactions and feelings during challenges, as well as during moments of happiness or stagnation. This confidence helps young people grow into assured adults who expect life won’t always be easy, yet they know they have the skills and tools to handle what comes their way.

Another key benefit of self-efficacy is its link to stress management. The more you feel capable of handling what lies ahead, the less stress you will experience in that endeavor. Young people are growing up with constant exposure to information and images that can create anxiety, undermine self-esteem, inspire fear, and cause stress. If we allow our children to struggle, they can develop tenacity and resilience and, over time, feel the power of self-efficacy, giving them the skills to reduce and manage stress. There is no greater gift to our children than the power of self-efficacy.

As another school year is underway, I hope that parents will be empowered to walk alongside their children, not doing for them but encouraging them to do for themselves.