Thoughts from a Head - the parenting challenge...

Parenting is a challenge – but don’t take the joy out of it: How to turn your child into a superstar whilst raising her to be rounded and grounded…

All children have specific traits and characteristics which will predispose them towards certain forms of achievement or growth and one of our major roles as parents is to spend time observing and understanding our children as they grow and develop, to try to assess who they are deep down. Our understanding will grow as they grow, as long as we are acutely aware of them for who they are.

As parents, we often bring our own agenda to our children’s lives. We want them to be different from who we were and are, or to follow in our footsteps. Almost certainly we want them to have better opportunities than we had, and to turn out more successfully than we did. There is nothing wrong with this, but there is a lot wrong with the rest. If we seek to impose our own expectations on our children, then we risk undermining their growth. They are who they are, not necessarily who we want them to be and our role as parents is to recognise this and to encourage their growth.

We are aiming in fact for something quite general but equally quite spectacular. Your child may be particularly gifted in music, languages, sport, drama, maths, or art, but unless they grow an inner confidence and self-esteem and we find a way to help them achieve this, they are not going to attain the inner contentment we know they need to see them through their lives. If we can help them to be free, as far as possible, from self-imposed limitations and to believe in themselves, they will have a bright future ahead of them, and the world at their feet. If you recognise your child’s interests and passions and provide the right opportunities, you can go a long way to respond to them and help facilitate them, allowing your child to deepen their experience and thereby enrich their lives.

Outings and visits are important too. Seeing different things and meeting different people will allow your child to expand their world-view and an understanding of their place in it. Voluntary work and community service are a tremendous opportunity as well: from helping out with siblings at an early age to volunteering in the community in his or her late teens, your child will benefit from taking responsibility and learning how to deal with other people.

You can of course take the notion of opportunities too far – and it will be counter-productive if you do. Sometimes parents can feel a kind of competitive pressure to schedule in as much as possible to their children’s lives, rushing them from ballet, to French, to extra Maths, in an attempt to cram in as many experiences and as much learning as possible. ‘Why play when you can learn?’ seems to be the mantra on many parents’ lips today, and so the race is on to squeeze as many extra classes into the day as possible. The truth is, of course, that our children learn through play and need time just to learn to be themselves. Does your three year old have a diary? If so, bin it! Over-organisation and relentless scheduling leave no time for a child to breathe, and having space and time to do nothing – just to think and grow – are essential.

Education – the choice of school – is one of the biggest opportunities we can give our children. You are looking for a school which will match your child’s needs, a school where your child will feel comfortable, happy, ready to be inspired and somewhere where people genuinely care about the individual in front of them, and do not try to turn your child into someone she is not.

In this, time is important. If I were to give just one piece of advice in the raising of superstars, then it would be this: spend time with your children. It is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children – time to be together, time to listen, time to laugh, time to share, relaxed time, time just to be and do nothing. Time is precious for all of us, but setting time aside for our children is absolutely invaluable in their growth.
Life is full of uncertainty and unplanned-for occurrences; rather than seeing these as a problem, we should understand that actually, we need to build up resilience in our children by allowing them to experience many unexpected and challenging new environments.

As parents we cannot choose the people our children will encounter at school and in the wider world but we can observe, be aware, help explain how others think and behave, and encourage our children to grow as a result.

One of the essential truths I have realised over the years is that a child’s development is rarely a linear, bump-free process. It will go up and down; just when you think they should need you less, they need you more; just when they think they need more independence, you might realise that they need more boundaries. Don’t be surprised by this, embrace it! Raising a child is a lengthy process.

Hard though it is to let go, it is what we are destined to do as parents, and the absolute fulfilment of our role comes when our child grows up. There is a glorious moment of achievement when you recognise that your child has a rich grounding and can happily be their own, individual person.

There is no such thing as the perfect parent and it is in fact, probably recognising our own inadequacies and believing in our children for who they are, that the best parenting occurs.