Are we Bubble Wrapping our children?

An overview of focus points was emailed to parents around next week’s parent connect – Furthermore, we will continue to communicate with parents around developing Grit in our boys and enabling our boys to learn to help themselves. In light of this, the article published by the Guardian (The Guardian is the only Specialist Child Abuse Investigation Company in South Africa), makes for interesting reading. An excerpt of the article “Are we bubble wrapping our children” follows and has some bearing on growing grit.

Many of our child raising techniques set our children up for potential failure. Unless we allow our children to experience life, and make mistakes, and allow the “University of Life” to teach them through consequence, our children fail to learn basic problem solving lessons. I’m not saying don’t set boundaries and I’m certainly not saying that we should not do what we can to protect our children, but I am saying that controlled age appropriate stress is definitely a positive as it teaches problem solving techniques to deal with that stress.

Problem solving ability is huge challenge for of many youths, at school and even those leaving school today, very simply because parents and teachers all too often jump in and fix problems without giving the child the opportunity to try fix it themselves. The lack of problem solving is in my opinion exacerbated by the inability to communicate on a human to human level thanks to the invention of digital communication (A conversation for another day), but this inability to communicate on a person to person level significantly stunts the development of emotional intelligence. The lack of emotional intelligence is quite possibly the biggest contributor to the lack of problem solving skills.

As parents and teachers, it's our job to help the children we are blessed to have in our lives learn the lessons, that will ultimately see them one day grow into functional well rounded adults, even the slightly painful lessons that will give them the skills, defences, self-knowledge, and sense of humour to cope with a world that contains risk and is not under parental control. Immunization is a good metaphor: Some of the small, non-serious lumps and bumps in life, (spiritual, emotional, and even physical) help inoculate them and build their defences so they can handle the bigger problems that, despite our best parenting and teaching intentions, may someday come their way.

Extract taken from The Guardian newsletter@theguardian.co.za