Speaker 1Blood donation is now more inclusive. More LGBTQ plus individuals are able to donate blood with the American Red Cross due to FDA guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation. The Red Cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood. There's a place for everyone in the mission of the Red Cross, including you. The Red Cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply. Join us and help save lives. To learn more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org slash LGBTQ. That's redcrossblood.org slash LGBTQ.
Speaker 2Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. This episode, Ditch the Fairy Tales to Raise Resilient Adults, is about reframing the narrative we bring our children up in. Now, as you can imagine, because I talk a lot about this sort of reflective piece, I've been thinking a lot, probably prompted by, some sort of big news stories about the sheer number of children and young adults that are struggling to some, in some extent. So, whether that's they're struggling with their mental health, they're struggling with emotional regulation, or they're struggling because they're severely lacking in confidence and resilience. And I've racked my brains really thinking about what are the factors that might be playing a part, which we might be able to reverse through parenting. Now, it's a complicated issue, 100%. This isn't, I'm not trying to make it simplistic. I guess I'm just trying to think of all of the sort of moving cogs and the moving parts. Is there some piece of the puzzle that we as parents can do either differently or change that might begin to sort of turn the tide on this? It genuinely really concerns me the pathway and the trajectory for a lot of young people. And as somebody who's really passionate about equipping you as parents with tools and strategies, it's really important to me that I reflect on these things so that I can maybe present some potential options for what you can do. So I think I want to start by saying that it is not helpful to hop back at the good old days. Because the reality is children are growing up in a whole different world. However, it can be helpful to reflect back at maybe some of the values with which we raise children. Have those changed? Have our parenting styles changed? Which, if we shifted and tweaked, might benefit. So hear me out. This is my working theory. Yeah, working. Because it's not fully formed. And I'm sort of still trying to pull together some of the research evidence, but also some of the sort of finessing some of this. But this is what I'm, certainly in my own reflections, this is what I think might be a piece that we can do as parents. So I'm presenting it to you to consider. Now, I am going to make some slightly sweeping generalizations. And I'm going to do that because I guess we have to start somewhere. The bottom line is every single child is unique and individual. And we can't have a blanket approach. So I'm thinking much more around some broad approaches that we can then apply to our individual children. So let me just take you back because I've started on that reflection piece of just what's the difference between the way that we were parented and how we might be parenting our children. So let's start. Let's start with a sweeping generalization. For most of us, our parents parented traditionally. And what I mean by that was adults decide. They are the authority figures. Decisions are made top down. In other words, with the adults as the priority. So for example, if a promotion for the parents meant moving city, the considerations were based more on logistics and practicality. The adults on the assumption that the children would just fit in around that. It wasn't as we probably do much more now. What might be the impact to little Sophie? What might be the little impact, the impact to Jack of us moving? When we were parented, it was very much this traditional top down and this assumptions that we would just fit in. Schools were typically decided the schools that we went to, unless you went to a private school, which by nature, numbers were significantly lower than they are now. So a greater proportion went to schools that were typically decided based on where you live, the catchment of the locality rather than the Ofsted or how that school performed. And if we wanted something, our parents deemed frivolous, expensive or unbecoming of our family values, you just didn't get it. And your parents didn't lose sleep over it. Now that's not to say I'm not painting a picture of unkind, uncaring, unfeeling. This is just the generalizations of how it was. The world that we lived in when we were being parented had a sense of predictability about it. School led to a job for some, university for others. Your childhood world was very much, limited by where you lived geographically, where your extended family lived, or where you traveled to in your school holidays. Yeah. We didn't talk about wellbeing or mental health because we were simply expected the mindset, the values, the traditions with which we were raised. We were simply expected to get on with it. We didn't really talk about emotions back then. Parenting, it just wasn't discussed as a meaningful topic where parents would approach it maybe from different perspectives. Our parents were raised by parents or grandparents who lived through real hardship, world wars. And so the way that they approached parenting very much came from that traditional top down. And how happy our childhood was, was pretty much dependent on the friendships we had, our experiences in school, and how loved we felt for who we were. If your family had very little, there may have additionally been some sadness over maybe missed opportunities, which you might otherwise have had, maybe opportunities to do things that were maybe too expensive for your family to do, whether that's travel, whether that's hobbies, whether maybe you didn't go to university because your parents were not in a family, position to afford it. But that is very much this whole sort of, I think if we take this sort of generalisation, this is my theory anyway. So what then happens is we become adults, we grow up. And as we then make those decisions to have children, we reflect back on our childhood and we have fond memories or we don't have fond memories. But we then approach parenting and I think this is where it shifted. If you just ignore all of the other factors, and I'm not saying that our parents had it right, and I'm not saying that we've got it wrong. I think very much in the same way as a pendulum swings. I feel that our parents parented on an assumption that we just need to just crack on and get on with it. The pendulum was swung too far one way. I believe that the pendulum may have swung too far the other way in that instead of this notion of our children having inbuilt capabilities within themselves to deal with challenges, what we have done is we've moved much more to a happiness model, a model where we raise our children and we talk a lot about being happy. And I think happiness is a bit of a myth. I don't believe that no one can be happy, but I think when we focus our parenting on this assumption of happiness, I think there's a bit of an illusion because what is happiness really and so what I'm going to present to you today are five broad perspectives that I want you to consider that I believe may help us raise resilient adults as we shift away from a focus that I think means that we as parents then don't always make the best decisions for our children in terms of their building their resilience. And I think it really sets up children with the wrong narrative on what life is. Now, I often quote, and if you've been in my world long enough, you'll have had this quote in the newsletter, or I would have mentioned the quote more than once. And it's Scott Peck's quote at the beginning of the book, The Road Less Travelled. And it is simply, life is hard. That's the greatest truth. And once we accept that truth, we transcend it. There's some other words I may well have missed out. But the crucial thing about the quote that I find, I remember reading it probably in my early twenties, and it was so profound because it was this light bulb moment and realising that actually, life isn't meant to be easy. Life isn't meant to be full of this smooth tarmac road with no bumps. And then once you accept that, in lots of ways, a lot of the challenges and the setbacks and the failures and the things that don't go our way, we can view them in a different way. Because that's the way we've expected life to be. And I think this, for me, is one of the big differences, I believe, in terms of parenting, is that our parents didn't tell us that life was going to be easy. They didn't parent in such a way, not saying that their parenting was perfect, 100% not. There was so much that we've learnt that had such a significant impact, negative impact on so many. But it was this notion, this was the way, that the parenting occurred was that it was going to be difficult and you just had to kind of suck it up. I don't believe that that's the right approach, which is why I'm going to present you these sort of five ways of approaching it. But I equally don't believe when we try and smooth the road for our children, when we try and focus very much on making our children happy and not sort of ruffle any feathers and not, you know, upset them or, you know, trade their emotions because it's difficult. We don't want them to experience pain and anguish. Then we do them a disservice there too. So this is my current running theory, and I would welcome, genuinely would welcome some feedback or your comments on this. So I'm going to present five principles, five broad brush approaches, which I'm going to just offer them to you for your consideration. The first one is, it always starts with me with having an honest conversation. And it might go along the lines of something like this. As your parents, maybe we believe we've done you a bit of a disservice by focusing in on maybe the wrong thing. We focus so much on making sure that you are happy. What we maybe ought to have done a bit more on is actually focused on you being proud of your accomplishments, you sort of acknowledging who you are, finding out your strengths. Maybe we should have focused much more on you feeling more independent or feeling more capable. Capable of being able to resolve issues yourself, depending on how you feel about the next four that I'm going to kind of cover with you, and whether you want to then go off and use those with your family and change the approach. To me, it would then, what seems kind of important is that you start with an honest conversation. And when we look at this notion of growth mindset, Carol Dweck's growth and fixed mindset, growth mindset is about being able to acknowledge that there may be a different or a better way of approaching something as new evidence comes in. And surely that's what we want from our children. So when we evidence to our children that we may have said that this was really important in our family, maybe it's the grades that you get, maybe it's that you have to do musical instrument and a sport, maybe it's whatever it might be that you've focused in on, on results, that actually, being able to say to your children, new evidence has come in. And actually we think we might have actually been approaching things or monitoring things or setting goals around areas and skills that are really not going to set you up for life beyond home. And we kind of want to reset that. We want to have a conversation as a family about how we might refocus. And as you know, children are much more likely to do what they see than what we say. And by showing them, demonstrating in the communication that you had and the focus that you then shift to as a family, how actually this isn't going to get us where we want to, but this is, I think it's a really powerful demonstration to them of how they can equally on their journey, take on board new evidence and information and refocus, change direction, change their emphasis in the different areas. So that's the number one. It always starts with an honest conversation. Number two is a, this is a big one. This is a hard one, but it's about us stopping ourselves from focusing on making life easy for our children. So it's not about making it hard. It's just about acknowledging that adult life in itself is full of setbacks, disappointments, challenges. And so we'll be doing our children a disservice if we don't prepare them for that. We don't use language around that because what then happens is we've made, we spent all of our children's childhood trying to make life really easy for them, smoothing things out, picking them up, dropping them off, bringing things to them, organising things. All of the things that we do, tidying up their bedrooms, cleaning up after them, making their meals, putting things away, doing their laundry, giving them a revision, whatever that might be, however easy we make our children's lives. We do all of that. And then at 18, 19, 20, 22, they leave home, whether that's to study, whether that's for a job. And suddenly there's this realisation that actually that's not how life really is. And so we've not really prepared them. So this, by stopping focusing in on that, and that, I think, is the key to success. I think is a piece, this number two about, you know, stop focusing on making life easy for our children is really doing a bit of an audit. What are the things that I'm currently doing for my child that is all about my intention and my focus for them to be happy, for them not to have to stress or worry about X, Y, or Z. When actually, when I really think about it, those are going to be really important for them to be able to manage, navigate. Work with. So I think number two is something that you can't just action. I think you have to really reflect on what are the things that you're currently doing and which are the things that you could begin to then sort of facilitate, help your child take over, then be able to be responsible for those things. Because pride in your capabilities, resilience, confidence, these all come from doing. They're not things that you can learn in theory. They come from practicing real life, real world practicing. And if we're taking things away to make it easier, then they don't learn. And so I think that that's a really helpful way to start is this audit. What are the things that I'm currently doing that maybe I can start having an impact on my child? You might not do all of them because if you've got a child where you, as you reflect on it and you do your audit, you realize, crumbs, I'm doing an awful lot here and I really am not empowering them in any way, then it would be too much to then simply say, right, washing my hands, I've been doing too much. You guys are going to do all of this. I think it's much more thinking about which things are really easy for me, to then let go of, that my children can take over, my child can take over and be responsible for and begin to build that, you know, that pride and that sense of capability within them. And which ones am I just going to need? We're going to take a little bit of time because actually maybe they haven't got the skills yet to be able to take over that. So it starts with this honest conversation and then it becomes this audit, looking at the things that we're doing to make their life easy. And then the third one is around ditching this notion of happiness. So rather than focusing on what made them happy or how happy they are, instead shift our focus to accomplishment. So rather than, did you have a happy day? The question is, what did you accomplish today? And the accomplishment, the accomplish word is not about a success. It's about something they feel that they have been able to complete, to be able to do, be able to try. An accomplishment is not an A grade or 18 out of 20. An accomplishment is something that has some significance to them and their lives that they feel at the end of the day is something above what they started their day with. this. You'll see that this notion of accomplishment sits hand in hand with number four, which is not letting failures or hurdles go to waste. So instead, when things have not gone to plan, maybe the test didn't go particularly well, there was a falling out with a friendship, maybe they tried something and it didn't work out, is instead of seeing failure, I still am desperate to try and come up with a reframing of the word failure because I think the word is so ingrained in our psyche societally. As parents and as children, the word failure has such strong connotations of shame, and sort of poor well-being and negative thoughts. And I think there's ways of reframing it. I just don't want to do it in a cheesy way, where you kind of, you know, there's lots of notions around using each letter of the word fail, and it's a first attempt in learning, which it is, 100% is, but it's trying to position it in such a way that doesn't sound cliched or cheesy, because that doesn't help either. So instead, it's about viewing failures or hurdles as opportunities to learn, so not letting them go to waste. So we shift that emphasis and discussion around, okay, this didn't go to plan, this got in the way, this didn't go as I wanted it to, I didn't accomplish what I wanted to. So then it becomes about reflect. It's a daily practice. What's the lesson? What have you learned from that particular, that setback or that failure? And it's not just what's the lesson, but it's making a plan for how they can then show up 1% better the next day. What's that? What can I take from this setback, from this failure, from this situation that didn't go the way that I wanted to, and how can I take that into something that will allow me to be that 1% better version of myself the next day? And it doesn't necessarily, it doesn't necessarily mean that that thing that they take is specifically related. Let's say they don't do particularly well in a test and they do that reflective piece. Maybe they're reflective. What's the lesson that I've learned? Well, if I leave it to the last minute, it's really difficult for me to retain all of the information. And so my plan is next time I get the test, I'm going to start two days earlier. Now that one, how can I show up 1% better the next day may be related to the test. It may not be. It may just, simply be that what they've learned from that is actually about being prepared, thinking, planning, putting things in place, making notes. So it can be so much wider than just simply I've had a failure in a test and therefore my learning must be attached to a test. But a failure in a test, which has told me something about my character, about the behavioral choices I made in that moment. How can I show up as a better version of me, that 1% better version of me, which may be related to friendships, maybe related to organization, maybe related to communication. So it's trying to get that breadth. Because I think often that's where we have the challenges with children is that we get so focused on a, you didn't do particularly well, how can you make sure that you do better in the test next time? Rather than helping them see that actually it's about the broader picture. What have you learned about the choices that you make and how you make choices? How can you make choices that you make better? How can we then use that so that that doesn't go to waste so you show up that 1% better as you in all aspects of the way that you show up with the people around you? So it's start with that honest conversation. Stop focusing on making our children's lives easy. Ditch this notion of happiness and instead focus on accomplishments. Don't let failures or hurdles go to waste. Learn from them. Show up. Make that 1% better. And the fifth one is about have faith in the process. Accept your child is in a process. The process won't yield the results you want in the timescale you want or even quickly. It will yield it in time. If you focus on the steps that I've outlined, it has to come good. It always does. The question then shifts away from if I succeed to when I do enough, I will succeed. Because you have to. If you're constantly taking action, reviewing the outcome, making a plan and showing up 1% better the next day than you did today, it has to get there. But what we have to lose as parents is our attachment to the fact that the results happening within the time frame we want them to. It's about accepting that children develop, grow and step into their best selves at different ages and stages. Now, it's a whole separate conversation around how that sits around the education system and results and exams and all of these other things. But if we raise children and those of you who are listening with really young children, you're in this ideal position. Those of you with older children, it is never too late. But when we ditch this notion of happiness, when we ditch this notion of life is meant to be easy, well, I don't think we ever say that. But we act in a way that suggests that. And then what happens is when our children find life is difficult, of course they're going to struggle with their well-being and their emotional health. Because we, we have been responding, society has been responding and sort of injecting through osmosis this belief that life is meant to be easy. And when things are difficult, there must be something wrong with them because everyone else seems to be having a really easy time. So when we cultivate and we create a culture at home that is really driven on the process where rewards and praise is all about that process of not letting a failure or a setback go to waste, reflecting on what the lesson is, making a plan for how to show up 1% better the next day and then having unwavering faith in that process and accepting that our child is in the process, the outcome will always come good. It just might not come good at 16 or 18 years old. It might come good at 20, 25, 30. It will come good. And as part of that process, we're raising resilient adults who will always be able to manage setbacks, pick themselves up, try again and not have it feel internally that they've somehow failed. I hope that this was really helpful. You can probably tell how passionate I feel about this. And it's a work in progress. I would genuinely love to know your thoughts around my theory, my working theory and obviously I shall continue to refine that. My give this week are going to be those five suggestions, broad brush approaches that I just want you to consider and then let me know how you get on with them. Now, as usual, to grab your free copy of the free resource, all you need to do is pop over to my resource list, which is where you'll find the link to download the resource. All you need to do is pop in your email address and you'll get instant access not only to this week's resource but all the other free resources across all my podcast episodes. As ever, if you have enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you could follow, rate and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So until next time.
Speaker 1orientation. To learn more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org. That's redcrossblood.org.
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