Raising children to be well-adjusted adults is no easy feat.
Add onto that the emotional toll of our modern lives and you have a challenging task made more difficult. Preparing our children to thrive out in the world requires more than a few lectures, lessons learned, and rules followed. In fact, it may be the actions you do not do that end up making the biggest difference in a child’s development. So what shouldn’t parents be doing in order to prepare their kids for the real world?
Amy Morin is a psychotherapist, a lecturer at Northeastern University, and a best selling author. Her first book, Thirteen Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do was based off one of her articles, which was read by more than 50 million people. Her newest book teaches parents the unhealthy habits to avoid if you want to raise mentally strong kids, it’s called, Thirteen Things Mentally Strong Parents Don't Do: Raising Selfisher Children and Training Their Brains for a Life of Happiness, Meaning, and Success.
I recently interviewed Morin for the LEADx Leadership Podcast, where she discussed three of her favorite rules for stellar parenting. (The interview below has been lightly edited for space and clarity.)
Kruse: Why don't you share a few of your favorite things that strong parents don't do?
Amy Morin: Through my work as a therapist and also as a foster parent, I realized a lot of our most common parenting habits are not teaching kids the skills that they need. The first one, I think is important, which is that mentally strong parents don't condone a victim mentality. We live in a world where it's easy for kids to think if they strike out in the baseball game or if they get a F on their math test, that somehow they're a victim, it's the other person's fault, that life is unfair. We have to change that, or they will always want parents to go to bat for them and advocate them.
A lot of parents feel that too, like, "Your teacher's mean. That's why you got a bad grade." Or, "That umpire treated you bad, that's why you struck out." I think it's really important to teach kids that yeah, sometimes bad things happen. And yes, sometimes life isn't fair but that's okay. You can still make choices and you can still move forward in life without getting hung up on that. We don't want kids to grow up hosting pity parties every time they encounter some sort of hardship.
Kruse: What's another thing parents shouldn’t do?
Morin: Another big one, I think, is that mentally strong parents don't take responsibility for their child's emotions. It's so easy for us to regulate our kid's emotions. When they're sad, we cheer them up. When they're angry, we calm them down. When they're bored, we entertain them. We need to teach kids that they can do those things for themselves. So, whether you have a preschooler and you create a Calm Down Kit and you say, "Go get your Calm Down Kit," and then give your child that responsibility to calm himself down. Or, if you have a teenager and you say, "Okay, when you are irritable and you're struggling and you've had a bad day, what can we do to lengthen your fuse?" Then make it your child's responsibility to do that for himself.
When we give those skills to kids, they're more equipped once they got out of the house to be able to control their emotions.
There was a study that found that 60% of college kids said that, "I was academically prepared for college but I didn't have the emotional skills to deal with it." I think that's quite telling. They're telling us, "We're getting out there in the real world and we don't know how to deal with disappointment, loneliness, and sadness. We need those skills." I think it's important for parents to not take on that responsibility for doing that for kids.
Kruse: If you had to pick a third thing from your list, what would it be?
Morin: I think number 13 is probably one of my other favorites, which is that they don't lose sight of their values. I think it's important to ask yourself questions like, would you rather that the teacher said you had the smartest kid in the class or the nicest kid in the class? It can be tough to come to grips with what your values are. Which would you actually prefer? It's okay whichever one it is that you prefer, but make sure you're giving your kids that message.
When they've interviewed teenagers to say, "What's most important to your parents," the overwhelming majority of them said, "My parents want me to achieve more." Then when they asked their parents, "What's the most important value in your life," parents said, "I want my kid to be kind." So then, parents had to figure out, "Well, how am I sending this message? Am I making homework the most important thing? Am I focusing so much on grades? Do I forget to talk about being nice, and kind, and generous, and helping people?"
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In the end mentally strong parents don’t condone a victim mentality, they don’t hold themselves responsible for their child’s every emotion, and they don’t lose sight of what values they want instilled in their kids. Parenting is difficult, and there’s certainly never a one-size-fits-all methodology, but by not doing a few key things you may find your child is much more able to handle life’s many obstacles.