How to balance parenting?

There is this debate about the approach towards parenting your kids. For example when your child is crying for whatever reason, you as a parent, how could you balance between soothing the child and allowing the child to experience the pain at the same time. If you focus more on one side only (let us say soothing and comforting only) , that could lead to possible side effects towards the child. But if we balance it out, we could maximize the benefits the child gets.

I personally struggle with this dilemma. I find myself unknowingly focusing on comforting the child and I forget the part where the child needs to gain strength from the situation and I needn’t be 100% available. Probably this is because of the emotions we are driven by especially when we focus on the wellbeing and safety of our kids.

So the interesting question to ask here is: How to balance our parenting in such situations? It is not the short term results we seek. Actually it is the long term impact. What we want the child to take with into his future? When we do everything and solve all the problems for the child, what is remaining for the child? What are we effecting there? It is not strange when you find many in the new generation not capable to take full responsibility of their personal decisions. It is because the support and back up received from the parents was more than the required level and now the child is too weak and vulnerable to take care of himself and take important decisions.

In such a context, there is lots of patience and reflection required before you jump as a hero to save the day for your child. So let us say your child faced a situation with a teacher in school. The child complains about the teacher shouting. Now you got upset and you want your child to be fine and not face the pain of this situation. But at the same time remember life is a mixture of events. With parenting and protecting our kids, it is also allowing the child to a certain level understand the situation in his mind and learn the skills to cope with the situation too.

So I remind my child: You can’t make all the people you interact with meet 100% of your expectations. So you say the teacher shouts a lot. Ok. What is the context behind it? What is happening in class? How do you take this internally? Are you really the reason? Do you really beleive this is personal to you or there is something else going on here? How many students in your class? Have an understanding of the context in your class. So then you could develop empathy and understanding towards your teacher’s behavior.

This is just one example. You can think of many scenarios as well. Many times we confuse the love we have for our kids with parenting. We think we love our kids and need to protect them and be there for them. But remember, the child eventually needs to fly and get away from you. The child will face it alone without your help all the time. So allow your child to experience it in their own way and don’t step in with your support every time.