Making Home A Safe Space Part II

One of the key aspects of making our homes a safe space for our children is to know how to handle their failures and mistakes. “Parenting is for better and for worse. Just as our children thrill us, they are bound to let us down. How we handle this task - parenting our children when they fall short, when they disappoint us, when they take us away from our warmth and love and into the darker and more unhappy feelings - is one of the greatest challenges parents face”, states Dr Madeline Levine.

Research indicates that parental warmth and acceptance are silver bullets against all mental health issues, whilst rejection and criticism are dangerous. Does that mean we cannot correct our children when they make mistakes, or they fail? We can and we must! However, correction is objective and informational; whilst criticism is personal and inflicts shame on our children. Shame is toxic. How would we react to our child when they come home with a particularly low score on an exam which they did not work hard for? There is a world of difference between “I am dissappointed in the way you prepped for this exam” and “I am disappointed in you because you are lazy!”

Correction Over Criticism

When things do not go as planned, we need to start from a positive place rather than a negative one. A negative place would be assuming our kid being a lazy, forgetful person who will never grow up to be a responsible adult. That’s called catastrophising. Generally, kids want to make their lives work. They don’t enjoy the stress of facing a teacher for not handing a homework or being in a bad place with a parent over a low exam score. So what is getting in the way? Being curious, asking non-judgemental questions and helping them with some strategies can go a long way in both supporting their academic journey and keeping home a safe space. We need to remember that, parts of pre-frontal cortex that are responsible for executive functioning skills like planning, strategising and prioritising do not fully develop until the age 25. Until then, a little bit of emotional and practical support from us will help them build these skills. Let’s see how this looks in practice.

Let’s say, our child had forgotten to take their homework to school, even though you had reminded them a thousand times the night before. S/he is calling you from school and begging you to bring it to school. At this point, you have options. Let’s say, your child is generally very responsible and this is a one time incident and you have spare time. I would say go for it and take the homework to school, but ONLY if you are free to do so. Never, if going to school will mess up your schedule. Every now and then, every one of us needs a hand. If, on the other hand, you find yourself often helping your child with missed deadlines and forgotten homework, my answer is ‘NO, you do not take that homework to school’. In this case helping our child is actually enabling them. It’s time, they learn the consequences of their behaviours so they do not make the same mistakes over and over again.

When they come home, after school, instead of “I told you so” or “You are so irresponsible” (criticism and shame and not correction), we start by acknowledging how stressed they must have been when they realised they forgot their homework. And, maybe ask them how it went with the teacher. Only after showing some empathy and understanding, you observe and ask. “I realise you keep forgetting your homework quite often. Why do you think this happens?” Let them find what is getting in the way of homework reaching the teacher’s desk. Maybe, their room is so messy that the sheet gets left in the rubble; or they always forget to put the homework into the folder because they prep their school bag late at night … There could be hundreads of other reasons, but once your child finds theirs, they need to come up with a plan. If they say, “I need to put the homework sheet into my folder as soon as I finish homework”, there you go! They have a plan. You can only support them, if need be. A simple “If you need help reminding you for a few days until this becomes a habit, let me know. Happy to help!” is enough. Mostly, especially older teenagers would say no. If yes, help them for a few days, then stop helping. When we help our children this way, we actually support the development of pre-frontal cortex.

The same startegy would work with a low exam score as well. Rather than starting from a negative place and criticise our child for being lazy, we start with empathy and tell them “You must be upset about your score.” Guess what? Kids do not like to fail! Then, delve into your investigative skills and ask questions. Was it because they did not work hard enough? Or, was it because they did not plan ahead and come up with a study plan for revision and therefore could not revise all the subjects included in the exam? Once you know the problem, you can work together to find a solution.

As you can see, we did not let the problem go unnoticed. We tended to it with our child, so they know that we expect them to be on top of their responsibilities such as homework and exams. We, also helped them find out why this was happening and find a solution for it. They did the work; we were just there to support. When repeated over and over again, these experiences sculpt our children’s brain and develop their pre-frontal cortex. We did all of this, without inflicting shame, criticism or rejection on our child. Instead we stayed close and supportive whilst setting a high expectation. It is easier said than done, I know! I know because, this whole week I have been trying to do this with my daughter. It required a lot of self-restraint and patience…

Although it involves a lot of effort on our side, this is how we keep home as an emotionally safe place with high standards and expectations, and it’s worth a try.