“There’s one thing only parents can do: love their kids unconditionally and provide them with a safe base at home. For children who are stressed at school or in other parts of their lives, home should be a safe haven, a place to rest and recover. When kids feel that they are deeply loved even when they’re struggling, it builds resilience.” – William Stixrud/ Ned Johnson
As parents, we can feel so anxious that we need to solve our children’s problems or fix difficult situations that they may be in. Maybe they are having trouble with friends, experiencing conflict with a coach or a teacher, or struggling with school challenges.
It is so comforting for me to be reminded that what we really need to do is just LOVE THEM.
No matter what troubles they are experiencing out in the world, we must reflect back to our children their own inherent worthiness and loveability. This is what will teach them that even though they are struggling, they are not defective or broken. They are good enough. This is true self-worth and is the key to resilience. Difficulty doesn’t crush us: we believe in ourselves and our worth as a person not because of our successes or failures, but because of our essential us-ness.
When we make our children feel loved no matter what and give them a sanctuary, their self-esteem remains intact. Ned (from the quote above) and I talked about this on my podcast in Episode 8. He and I both shared how consciously we tried to provide this when each of our daughters were having a hard time. (🎙🎧 Listen to Episode 8 of my podcast on ‘Raising A Self-Driven Child’ with Ned Johnson HERE.)
We can reduce our anxiety when we know that we don’t have to fix our kids’ problems or join in their stresses. We just need to let them know that they are deeply loved despite any challenges they are experiencing. We get to be the life raft that will help them weather the storms of life.
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Sarah Rosensweet is a certified peaceful parenting coach, speaker, and educator. She lives in Toronto with her husband and three big kids (ages 15, 18, and 21). Peaceful parenting is a non-punitive, connection-based approach that uses firm limits with lots of empathy. Sarah works one-on-one virtually with parents all over the world to help them go from frustrated and overwhelmed to, “We’ve got this!”
Read more at: www.sarahrosensweet.com
![As parents, we all face challenges, but what happens when traditional parenting approaches don’t work?
That’s why my client during this call, Samantha, is actively transitioning to a Peaceful Parenting approach.
We’re talking through how those challenges can feel even more intense when your child is more sensitive and needs additional attention and understanding.
Join us to discover major tips for a more peaceful parenting journey.
Go to https://link.chtbl.com/Z_YOP4jb to listen to this episode now, and share it with a friend you know needs to hear it too.
[ID: Photo of child and parent arguing on a blue background. Audiogram reads, “Yeah. The fact that he brought it up again tells me that he’s got some shame around it and feeling bad about it. So we don’t need to bring it up in a corrective way. I’m going to exaggerate for the purposes here, but, you know, yesterday when you bit me, biting is not okay. We don’t bite in our house. We don’t want to do any of that. He already knows that, right? There’s no information gap where he thinks biting is okay. So the healing that has to happen is around he needs to feel like, back to the beginning when we started talking, he needs to feel like you still think he’s a good person and that’s why he brought it up, because he feels bad about it. So you can say to him and he says, oh, what did he say again? Remember yesterday when I bit you? Yeah. And he said, I’m a bad boy. So you can say there’s no such thing as bad boys. Mhmm, that is, yeah. They’re only boys who sometimes are having a hard time.”]
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