When Safety Limits Growth: Overprotection, Anxiety, and Resilient Children

Subscribe to "Now What? with Yogi Patel - Transformation Through Empowerment" for more insights on Positive Discipline, Traditional Early Childhood and Montessori Education, and Raising Teens.

• Visit www.yogipateltte.com for additional resources and training for parents, teachers, and leaders
• Questions or topic suggestions? Email us at yogi@yogipateltte.com
• Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @Yogipatel_tte for updates and community discussions.

Let me know topics that you would like to hear in the future. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Alfred S. Adler. He warned us that the chief danger in raising children is taking too many precautions. Today we're asking deeper questions about safety, courage, and what our protection may actually teach children. So stay with us till the end because there is something at the end you'll want to remember. Calvin, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to have a conversation.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

So when does safety limit development?

SPEAKER_00 0:29

A baseline of safety. You're not just uh completely neglecting your child or you know, the wolves, whether literal or proverbial. Okay, that's that has to be there for healthy development to happen. But most of the time, that's not so much of a concern. And when we overdo it with safety, what ends up happening with kids is it's multifaceted. For one thing, they're not exposed to very real realities of life that they have to contend with. And when we're not exposed to those things, it's really difficult for us to build the skill sets that are needed to meet those challenges. That's one thing. But then also there's this kind of an unspoken, often unintentional message that's given from parents to children when they overprotect. And that is, I don't think you can handle it. You are too small, too pitiful, too incapable, too stupid, to fill in the blank. And of course, you know, parents, they don't, I'm not saying that they actually want to give their child this message, but the reality is that children pick up all kinds of messages from adults, not even just from parents, but from adults and caregivers that we don't mean to pass on to them. And so I think those are two kind of right up front uh uh reasons why safety can get in the way of healthy development.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Let's say a child is on a place structure or when they're struggling, it's this innate desire or that drives us to want to help. But what happens to rescued children internally?

SPEAKER_00 2:00

A child who maybe they're stuck on the, they're doing the bars and they're stuck in the middle and and they don't know what to do, right? And here's part of what's going on with them is that they're scared. You know, they feel like, oh my gosh, I I don't think I can make it to the next rung. I can't hang here forever. And so eventually I'm gonna fall. And if I fall, if I fall, I'm gonna die. And then the parent rushes in and wreck rescues them. And the problem is the parent also is acting like the child is going to die. But there's this amazing thing about children's bodies, you know, is that they have these bones that they're like compared to our brittle adult bones. And they like if they fall off the monkey bars, they're actually most of the time, they're really gonna be okay. Almost, I mean, whatever, there might be some absolute, but most of the time, even if it's a pretty serious injury, you know, they break their ankle or their leg or something. Kids also are incredibly capable of there's this thing that like if a child falls off the monkey bars, one of the things that they get to learn is how strong and resilient their body is. And they never learn that if they're constantly boiled out of danger.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

So children, they don't respond to events, they interpret them. And that interpretation becomes their private logic. What is private logic for our listeners?

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Sometimes we talk about, oh, well, that's logical. And we talk about logic as if it's this monolithic objective thing. This just it exists out there in the universe, and we can all appeal to it and pull from it and go to it. And that really, when we're being illogical, it's just that we're we've not made a visit over to the logic well. And really, the more you think about it, it's actually a very silly idea, particularly when you talk to people with any level of curiosity, and you find out that people have a logic all to themselves. Like things that, oh, well, this makes sense that things would go this way. And everybody else around them is saying, What are you talking about? That makes no sense at all. And that's that's kind of this idea of private logic that we create internally. We create our ideas about the world and ourselves and other people, and that that's very particular to us. And it makes sense in a kind of way, but not in the common way. So this is why Adler distinguishes between private logic and the common logic, a common sense of the world. And yeah, we make those things through interpretations. We have a good saying that children are excellent observers and terrible interpreters. They're by no means stupid, they're very smart, but they're unsophisticated or unnuanced, which by the way is also true of adults, but they'll see something and come to an immensely complex interpretation of that that's just very limited in its scope, in its sophistication. It misses a lot of other things around it. And so we make these mistaken conclusions about ourselves, about other people, about the world itself. So we gotta, you know, that's just gonna happen, but we can be mindful of how not to set up a child to make mistakes like that.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

If children repeatedly hear warnings, their nervous system begins to learn about this alarm system, and even natural solutions begin to feel unsafe. So are we teaching the children that the world is safe because or unsafe because what you just shared, they're making decisions about themselves, others, and the world. How does this show up later? So in a childhood, we've made some decisions because as you were speaking, I was thinking about myself, you know, what you decide that you might not be great at math when you were one, and you still hold that belief.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

I think that's why we need to be really mindful of kids developing because these things are sticky and they're hard to scrape off, you know, in a kind of way. I constantly, I work with a lot of young adults and these very, very bright young people who come in and they've read all the great books and they've lit, they're listening to all the right podcasts, and they've heard every self-help slogan known to humankind, and still they feel like, well, yeah, but I'm a piece of garbage if I don't do everything perfectly. For instance, and that's just a for instance, I can sit here and explain to them, right? Logically, I can appeal to them and say, oh, well, of course you're not a piece of garbage, right? And I can lay all that stuff out there, but it sits in there really deep. And that's that's why it is, I don't I'm of course not trying to frighten parents, right? And to be like, oh my gosh, every, you know, your child's emotionally, emotional well-being hangs on every syllable that comes out of your mouth. That's of course also not true, but there is an a level at which we really do need to be mindful about the kinds of messages that we're inadvertently passing on to our children. That there is a kind of not control of the interpretations or meanings that our children are making, but kind of curating, almost like a like a museum curator, right? They don't explain every painting to every visitor to the museum. They do pick the paintings and they put them in a certain order and they light them in a certain kind of way. And there's a progression to how they laid things out. They are telling, or at least attempting to tell, a kind of story. And then, of course, patrons come in and they they make what they will of the museum, but curation is not a meaningless act simply because there's variability in how people experience the museum. And I think that that's a lot of what parenting can be we need to be mindful. We're not just throwing stuff up on the walls and uh shining flashlights at a nice oil painting. Like we have to be thoughtful about what it is that we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

I was talking to Dr. Bill Nichols and William Nichols, and he was talking about, you know, bullyproofing in schools and homes, and often the child who is bullying, what is the home environment like? And it comes from even the adults' beliefs, perhaps, right? Like I have to be a firm parent or I have to be this way for my child to be raised in a certain way. So we already have these, but we will go to the school and expect that this is something that's happening externally that's creating the challenge. So we're talking about the caregivers' most memorable observation, a moment which in from childhood that shapes how we respond today. As I was mentioning about the math. Many of us parent from, we tend to go into that old memory. And the awareness seems to be that key. But not all of us are aware of how that is determining how we're showing up. So let's look at early childhood belief that we might have, or a belief that we might just have held as parents, caregivers, that leads to hypervigilance. What can an adult do now to understand where they're coming from and how they can support or encourage their children? Because that's going to take a lot of effort.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Yeah, I mean, I think a a great place to start is just being aware of what we're already doing. We do so much out of reflex. And so, um, yeah, there's this technique that um we end up using uh a fair amount in parent education, but also in in therapy, called the most memorable observation. We'll ask people to think back to when they were 11, 12, 13, somewhere in there, which that's about the time at which we start making these big picture observations about our family when we're like, my family works such and such a way, and I hate it, or my family works such and such a way, and I oh my gosh, I love that. Um, and we ask people to say, you know, what is it that sticks out? What do you remember noticing about your family that really stuck out to you? That you either hated it and you said, When I have a family, we're never doing it this way, or you loved it and you said, When I have a family of my own, I want to do it this way. What's so interesting about that is that that's really predictive of people's both, both their the things that they're doing really well. But then the problem with doing things really well is we tend to overdo them. And when we overdo them, then we we don't manage the liabilities of a particular way of doing it. So let's say that I grew up, and this wasn't me so much, okay, but let's say that I grew up in a family in which I was, yeah, just really treated horribly by other people, and nobody came to protect me. Everybody was just mean and and awful and hurt my feelings and hurt me physically, and nobody showed up to protect me. And there was this little thing in me that said, you know, when I if I ever have a family, I'm gonna protect. Well, my God, what a and I really do mean this, what a virtuous thing to decide. Like I think that's a beautiful thing to decide. The problem then, right, is that you you overdo it, and instead of protecting your children from abuse, you know, or just like genuine cruelty, you're protecting them from or attempting to protect them from things in life that are they're unavoidable, right? Like not everybody is going to be nice all the time. You get bit by ants when you're playing out in the yard. You you scrape your knee, you bonk your head on stuff. Like uh these are these are natural, unavoidable parts of life. And the only thing worse than the ant bite or the bonk on the head is not getting bit by the ant or getting the bonk on the head and all the things that happen around that. Oh, we couldn't possibly play in the grass without shoes on because you might get bit by an ant. And oh, don't go over there. And and well, we can't ever do anything except walk very slowly and carefully inside because what if you trip and fall and you know hit your head? That's the only thing that's worse than than all the little minor injuries. And so it comes from this beautiful, virtuous place. But also to say, like, hey, the stakes are not the same here. Getting bit by the ant like that hurts. But that is not the same as being subject to the abuse of a father or or an older sibling or another family member or something like this and have nobody knowing nobody coming to protect you. So to sort out those little bits of nuance, Terry Real makes this nice distinction between the adaptive child, which is that thing of like, oh, well, I feel like I'm a little kid again, um, and I have to do all the things that I needed to do as a little kid to make sure that this didn't happen, versus just having an adult disposition to life where it's like, hey, I'm not seven anymore. The stakes are not the same. I'm okay. My child is okay. We're like everything's gonna be all right. Um, I think that that's a lot of it is just building awareness of, first of all, what we're up to, and then recognizing that uh virtue in excess becomes vice. And that's an old idea from Aristotle that I think is a really powerful one.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

I this point is really great. It's just jotting down or being aware of that same cause and effect that we keep coming up. You know, it's like our knee-jerk reaction, or it's like the poker, the first hand, first card that we play. So we're talking about this. This is where many parents get confused, right? Support can look similar on the outside, but feel very different on the outside. So encouragement versus coddling. What's the difference?

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Uh yeah, I'll g I'll give you an example. So the other night my daughter uh didn't like the option that I offered her for dinner. There were a few, I was like, okay, kiddos, what are we gonna have? And I offered a few options and she didn't like any of them. And listen, I absolutely adore my daughter. I she also is very expressive, and so she has this look on her face that is just so destitute. You know, I mean, she is she looks so sad and so put out. And so I go over to her and I just pat her on the back. She's very responsive to touch, I pat her on the back and I say, I know this is hard, I'm gonna tell you what I'm gonna do, and then you can decide what you want to do. So I say, What I'm gonna do is I will be happy to warm up or or fix you the options that I provided, or I'm happy to not do that. Also, I want to let you know that I'm not, let's say that we get up to bedtime and then you decide that you want to eat. Like, sorry, like that's room time, that's when we're winding down for the day. So I'm not gonna accommodate that. But past that, you'll decide what to do. So I didn't, you know, immediately be like, oh, well, how about some chicken nuggets or something, you know, to rescue her out of her tough spot? But I did so with gentleness. I expressed this confidence in her that she can decide. Actually, that's a that's a vote of confidence in her wisdom to figure out what she wants to do. And sure enough, here's what she does. And she's a very, very capable eight-year-old. She is not very happy with me. She crosses her arms and she marches into the kitchen. She gets out the pancake mix and she makes herself pancakes, which I thought was awesome. I thought that was so cool. And so then it's I don't have to go out of my way and you know, throw a party about the fact that she's making pancakes, but I was just like, look at you. Look at what you figured out, and not even good job, not anything. Ruby, observe yourself. Uh, and so it was very gentle, it was very positive. There was no lecture, there was no wagging of fingers, no raised voices. There also wasn't an enormous amount of, you know, she wasn't overjoyed. She wasn't, you know, I didn't rescue her out of her tough feelings, but there was just this sense of boundaries of here's what I'm gonna do and here's what I'm not gonna do. And also I understand that you're you have the right to make some choices too. And she figured it out. And so I feel like that's a really good picture of I could have coddled by rescuing her by saying, Oh, well, whatever you want, I'll make you what whatever you want for dinner, I'll make it for you. And I also could have gone the other direction and lectured her or gotten in some power struggle of like, well, you know, you have to eat this and you need to take at least four bites, or you get some punishment. We just avoided all of that by me expressing some confidence in her to figure out what it is that she wanted to do. I hope that answers your question.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

But beautiful solution creating, right? So from what you shared, it's like wow to remember. Encouragement says, you can handle this, and I'm here for you if you need me. You're making pancakes, great.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

I am making no claim to it going that way.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

We are teaching that hey, you can handle this, I believe in you, I trust you. However, the coddling would have said, I'll handle this for you. You're not capable. You need me to help you. And, you know, the encouragement builds that courage, courage to say, I can do something different because my adult cares about me. I had Montessori schools. And one of the biggest things that we talked about with parents is if they're very dependent, where they believe that I'm safe only when my adult is near me, and the first experience away from us, that can be really, really disruptive for this young person. That stretch creates a lot of challenges for this individual because now they're overwhelmed, feel helpless.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

We have these two phrases that come up a lot in uh in attachment theory and attachment research, and that is a safe that we well, we hope for is a secure attachment figure that we want them to be a safe haven and a secure base. So the safe haven bit, okay, that bit of, okay, well, is this adult interested in me? Do they notice me? Are they kind to me? Are they gentle to me? Can they protect me? All of those kinds of things that are, I would say, more commonly talked about in attachment, like when people are talking about secure attachment. But this secure base thing on the other side is actually really important. The idea of a base implies that they move out from the base, right? Like a base is a place that you can come back to, and that means that you have left it. You can only come back to something that you've left. And so I think always there are these little opportunities for parents to create little bits of exposure to some distance from a base, almost just like stretching something out, right? That we don't just immediately pull it way far away, but that we start with these little bits of movement away and then back together, movement away and back together. And this can really be even something as simple as listen, if you have a uh a baby who is entertaining themselves on the f on the floor, and you can walk into the kitchen, which is all of you know, 10 feet away, like nothing is going to happen. That you walk 10 feet away into the kitchen where they can't see you anymore. And obviously, if the baby starts freaking out and crying, well, go back to your baby. But but often babies are they actually are really fine if you do that. And even that is this little act of stretching and coming back together, stretching and coming back together. The other thing that I would say is that it is okay for our children to have a disruptive experience if after the fact we are also able to debrief that with them, to talk with them, to listen, to understand, to attune, to show that we care. Even in couples work, I do a fair amount of couples' work, and there's this idea that a lot of couples come in with of the only way that we're gonna have a good marriage or a, you know, a good relationship with one another is if we never hurt each other. And that is such a crock. People in an intimate relationship are going to hurt one another. Now, hopefully not all the time, and hopefully not, you know, hopefully below a certain degree of severity, but they're gonna hurt each other. And it's less important that nobody ever gets hurt, and it's much more important that when people get hurt, there are skill sets of repair that are that are there to pull on. And it's all of that, by the way, can be developed in childhood. So, like a child getting really upset with a parent of like, I don't know where you were, and it was so scary, and I didn't like I was in school all day and you weren't there, and I Got freaked out and I missed you and I and I didn't feel good and I had a stomachache because I just I just wanted to be with you. Oh my gosh, kiddo, how many more? But there's this listening and there's this process of repair. What could be different uh tomorrow? How could we help you to reassure yourself? Just building a skill set rather than saying, oh my gosh, I could never do this to my child. They're gonna be traumatized forever. They will get traumatized if they go and they have an experience like that, and then they come home and they get the sense that you really don't care. That's that's actually where we're gonna have a problem much more than if they're just having a really tough time and they're upset and anxious, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

And it's healthy to often talk about things that are happening, going back to anxiety. Anxiety is not inherited, it is one of the learned behaviors. Now we have a family where maybe one adult is anxious and we are fearful of our child because we love them so much. It's from care that they're going to either get hurt or they're going to get traumatized because we are not there for them. Let's talk about some of the ways that this person can take the first step, which is awareness. What are the some some of the things you help parents understand in this aspect?

SPEAKER_00 23:23

One thing that comes to mind right away is there's something that children do called social referencing. Um, and a great example of this, okay, is the child is running around in the yard, let's say, and then they trip, because kids at particularly at certain developmental stages are a little clumsy, they trip and face plant. Okay, and then they don't start crying right away. They kind of lay there and then they look up and they look over at their parent. And that's social referencing. And in essence, what the child is doing is something big just happened. Let me look to my caregiver. And this is all instinctual, by the way. They look to their caregiver to say, How bad is it? And sure enough, if what's happening is, you know, dad or mom or you know, whoever is the caregiver is, you know, leaping up, sprinting over to the child, huffing and puffing. Well, what the child sees is, oh my gosh, this is so bad. Something terrifying must have happened to me. And instead, if they look over and parent or caregiver is looking at them, so, hey, I'm watching, I'm aware, you're not alone in this, but I'm just going to wait and see what you, the child, decides about this. Then what happens is that, of course, sometimes kids actually are they're pretty hurt, you know, they're injured. And the kid will inherently they'll check in with their own body and they say, Oh, ouch, I'm I'm really hurt. And they will cry, in which case, of course, then the parent can go over and pick them up, help them out, whatever. But with such a high level of frequency, what happens is the kid faceplants, looks over at mom and dad, and if and if the parent or caregiver or whoever doesn't freak out and just watches, it turns out that the child is fine. And also, it's so cool that the child gets to decide that they're fine. So there's some real agency that's there. But let me just say, I want to say this experientially. I have watched my two children faceplant, and it is so hard to just sit there with an interested face when every cell in my body wants me to get up and sprint over there. But I think that there's a this awareness of learning to take responsibility of that's about my fear. It's not actually about what's going on with my child and what's best for my child. I think that there's this kind of bypassing that we tend to do as parents. Please hear me, me too. We're what's going on is that we have this stuff inside of us: wounds, fears, anxieties, whatever else. And it sits inside of us. And then we we solve those problems with maladaptive parenting strategies or caregiving strategies, and we call it love for our children. And that's, I mean, it is really hard. But I think so much of what we have to do as parents is to take responsibility for our own stuff, for our own wounds, and say, well, that's me. That's my stuff that I can work out with my therapist. Or, you know what? I'm gonna maintain a level of calm, of necessary calm with my child here, and then I'm gonna go to the bathroom and have a have a little panic, you know.

unknown 26:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

But because I have my stuff and and that's valid too, but I I can't be solving that through my child and calling it love. That has to be something that I'm doing with with myself, taking responsibility for my own stuff and understanding what it is that my child actually needs. And it's not incessant protection.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Yeah. Calvin, caregiving has become really, really jumpy. Let's dissect everything that we've talked about. So over-safeguarding versus safety, right? How can we encourage ourselves and our children? How do we move from over-safeguarding to safety for all? What are some of the ways that children can help out?

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Oh, okay. So I think where we have to start is with an awareness that we're not gonna do it particularly well a lot of the time. We do have to maintain a courage to be imperfect about this, to leave room for us to, whoa, I way overdid it, or oh my gosh, I underdid it. And we can course correct, you know, and that we had just have to accept that that's part of it. I think when we get too rigid either with ourselves or even with an approach, we turn good parenting into an assemblage of skills rather than a heart. And I think that so much of what encouragement about is a heart. It's not about say these words and not these words. And when we get to the heart, there's just a lot of room for imp, there has to be a lot of room for imperfection and course correction and whatever. So I think that's one place that we start. I think also there's this thing of, you know, there is not a one size fits all approach to parenting. Um, I'm just even thinking about my two children who, of course, share a very large amount of genetic code. Okay, so they're like very similar people in so many kinds of ways. And what is encouraging to my son is not, those are not the same things that are encouraging to my daughter. Now, I need to the idea that they both need encouragement, that is unwavering. But what that actually looks like is very, very different. And I think so much of what that demands from a parent, there's this back and forth between parent or uh between caregiver and child of I do something and I just, I just watch. What is it that that stirs up in the child? Does my daughter's face fall when I say this thing? And not just a oh man, that's not what I wanted, but like the wind just got sucked out of my sails. Okay, swing and a miss on my part, which is weird, right? Because I just did the exact same thing with my son and I just hit a home run, right? Like it was, it was perfect with my son, and with my daughter, it's not so good. That's part of how children can help, is just by expressing what's going on. And I think so much of that also is it's incumbent upon parents to create an environment in which our children feel that they can share what's going on and how they're taking what we're putting out. They can share that. It matters, they're going to be heard, they're going to be seen, and that they're going to be responded to. Again, maybe not even accommodated, but really responded to. So I think that's a a huge part of things is just really watching, watching what emerges, almost in an experimental way of let's try this, see how it works. That didn't work so well. Let's try something else. Let's come up with something else. To just keep trying those things.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Parents, steps to move from overprotection and vote of no confidence to safety and confidence.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

Yeah, what a what a shift that is, right? Of again, it's it's not that safety is unimportant or something that we should dispose of. We we see all these dangers out there, so to speak. They're out there, okay? And so we think, oh, well, if I just back up and I get further and further away from those dangers, then I'm safer. I'm really okay. And that that's not a stupid idea. It's just this, it misses that there's a danger behind it. You know, it's almost just, oh, there's all the tigers out there, so I'm gonna back up, back up, back up, back up. And the further I back up, I'm great. Except that we're about to walk off the back of a cliff. And so there's this thing of kind of keeping our head on a swivel of saying, okay, there are dangers out there. There's also a danger back here. Let me can I just keep my eye on both of these and make sure that I'm finding some kind of middle ground here. It's not even really balance, but it's just uh kind of an awareness where we're not leaving our backs unprotected in how we're going about managing kids. And then we do find this place of relative safety, not absolute, of relative safety, but where we're not discouraging our children or giving them this idea that they can't handle hard things.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

Private logic, understanding our own logic only private to us, and moving from the past to the present.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

There are these little moments where I get scared and I get frightened and I feel like I'm six again. And there's this great power in realizing, okay, hold on. Like I'm 37, I have a supercomputer in my pocket, I have a driver's license, and I have keys to a car, and I can articulate myself. I have people that I can rely on. I'm six foot two. I feel the you know, full size of my body, and just really pull myself into the present moment. I I'm able not to do away with all those wounds from when I was six, but just to hold them differently and realize that the stakes are not, they're not the same. Same as like abuse versus an ant bite. Like both really hurt, but they're not the same. Like we're not talking about things that are in the same category. I think that's a really powerful idea to come to as a parent.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Yeah. So anxiety as a learned response.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Of course, there are things in life that we should, in fact, be anxious. You know, if there's a rattlesnake, I want people to be anxious about the rattlesnake. But uh, but there are these other things that, yeah, we learn. You know, there's there's not there's nothing actually inherently in our genes to be frightened about with a B minus on a test. You know, that is that is something that we learn to be anxious about. And so much of how we develop and learn those kinds of anxieties is through observation. And so that is why as parents, we need to be really careful about what we're modeling to our children as best we can.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

Yeah, we use the word anxiety quite often in one of the Adlerian psychology conference when we use appropriate language. So, what is anxiety really?

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Anxiety is our vigilance emotion. It is the emotion that we call upon in order to help us prepare for potential threats in our environment. And, you know, I think we should start by observing that without anxiety, our species would not last a month. We have to have anxiety. Now, we can overdo it. We can be frightened of things that maybe are not quite as dangerous as we think. It's a it's a actually a really important, valuable tool that we have as human beings. And also life, we have to have it in life. We can't have an anxiety-free life, or our life will be very, very short. That's the reality of it.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

And you mentioned earlier about being hypervigilance. It's it's really exhausting. Plays Dr. Daniel Siegel and other scientists have talked about. Being constantly under stress creates all these chemicals and hormones that really are not healthy. They're not able to clearly think because they're in the emotional part of the brain versus the logical brain where they're problem-solving or critically thinking, like this aspect of looking at our anxieties and perceived ideas. Sure, we should be mindful of danger, but not see danger in everything because then we're going to go backwards. Let's look at the encouragement versus coddling. Most parents, we just want the most for our children. So, how can we build life skills in our youth so they can have this most amazing future in the world that we live in right now? Because I know I'm hopeful when I go into a classroom. I am inspired because these beautiful humans are amazing. So let's look at encouragement versus cuddling.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

I think that's so much of where the heart of encouragement lies is in an expansive confidence in children. Children are there there are situations in which parents, adults, caregivers overestimate the capabilities of children. But I would say that is generally not the mistake that we are making. I think that we chronically underestimate children and don't provide them with opportunities to do hard things and figure stuff out. I really do think that the heart of encouragement starts from this idea that the child has something to offer. The child has something to contribute, no matter how small. If you're trying to encourage your child to clean up their room, okay, when they're a toddler, okay, let's say there's 70 toys on the floor, you know, and the reality is that it probably is a little much to ask a three-year-old to pick up 70 toys. Okay, I mean, like over time they might be able to do it, but like that's probably a little too much. But then what parents do or caregivers do is that we we're just like, oh, well, they're too young. And so then we pick up all 70. And it's like if you picked up 69 of them and let the kid pick up one and notice it of wow, thanks for picking that up and putting it back in the bin. This is a categorical difference to either demanding that the child pick up all of it, which sure that's going to be end up being discouraging because that is gonna be overwhelming, or just doing it for them. We've gone, I yeah, it's one toy. It doesn't feel like it's that big a deal, but it is a categorically different experience for that child. And so to always be saying, what is it that the child can contribute? What's their part in this? How can I involve them? Maybe it's like really just handing it over to them. Like when we talk about in family meetings, if there's a problem in the family, starting by asking the children, what ideas do you have for what we could do differently? And they they're also so creative, they come up with these ideas that are zany and they don't even make sense to adults, and then they work. I think that that's also really special. We we just have to have a higher opinion of children and what it is that they can contribute and handle.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Yeah. So you're talking about encouragement, expand capability, and the coddling shows the pro the to the child that they need a ton of help. So, what does encouragement sound like in the moment of risk?

SPEAKER_00 38:37

I think a lot of it just sounds like noticing of wow, I saw you try that. Just even that. Okay, not wow, that was so great that you tried that. Just I noticed you you tried that. Oh, you tried to put your knee up on the couch to climb up there. Wow. Oh, and look, now you're trying something else. So it's it's almost this. I mean, and this happens all the time in kind of classic play therapy settings, right? Where that's most of what you're doing, you're just verbally noticing what a child is doing. I think what's so effective about that is that that's encouragement, just this noticing. Yeah, and then and then uh an invitation, much like I did the other night with with my uh with my daughter of here's here's what I'm gonna do. Now you'll sort out what it is that you want to do. So I'm inviting her not to tell me, not to give me an answer for what she's gonna do, but I'm inviting her to in herself to explore her agency of what is it that I want to? What is it? I have choice here. I have some say, I have some some agency. Um, I think that that's uh a huge part of it too. So noticing and then inviting a child to consider what it is that they want to do, what they want to choose, what they want to offer.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

So many parents who might think I am doing this all wrong because they're not raising children is so challenging. And hopefully this conversation has been helpful. Calvin uh is also presenting at the caregivers conference that we're having on March 28, 2026. If you missed that, please join us on the recording. And one thing I'd like to leave you with is that I really, really thought I was going to break my children. Now they're 28 and 31, and everything turned out fine. So there is hope, after all, for all of us parents, and thank you for listening to Now What Podcasts with Yogi Patel and Calvin Almerding. And you can find both of us in the show notes. We'll present more topics to you. This conversation we talked about Adlerian psychology is based on Alfred Adler's work of individual psychology. And you can find a lot about Alfred Adler and many parenting programs and other programs on NASAP's website, N A S A P North American Society for Adlerian Society. Thank you for joining us.