Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Emily Geizer of Child Perspective.
Parenting is a lot like tightrope walking.
Tightrope walkers must feel precisely when to soften and when to become strong and firm. They must understand how to shift their weight, speed up, slow down, and when to stop. They must also know when they need more support (a thicker rope) and more training.
Parents must also understand when and how to do these things to be successful. With parenting, structure is good. Too much structure is detrimental. Consistency is good. Too much control and rigidity is counterproductive. Limits are good, but again too many are disadvantageous.
Many parenting books have tried to provide formulas for effective parenting. In practice, these help as much as a formula for successful tightrope walking. There are just too many unique and ever-changing circumstances to create a uniform approach to parenting.
The very best thing that a parent can do to successfully walk the parenting tightrope is to understand her child. In fact, study after study has shown that understanding your child’s perspective has a bigger positive impact on your child than most other things you do. If that wasn’t clear, read it again!
How to Understand Your Child’s Perspective
To understand your child’s perspective, spend more time seeing the world through her eyes. It takes practice, but you will come to deeply understand your child. You can cultivate this understanding through practice every evening after your child is asleep. Reflect on the day from her perspective. Reflection is the key. The essence of it. Below are some sample questions to help guide you:
- Does she have a sense of belonging and worth? Were there ways that she felt like she contributed meaningfully to the family’s experience?
- Does she feel understood? Did she feel listened to attentively?
- Does she feel successful? What difficulties did she encounter? Were they avoidable?
- Does she feel connected to family and friends? How did she respond when you lost your temper? What was she feeling? How is she reacting to the limits you set?
- Can I help her to have a more positive experience? When are the challenging parts of the day? Why?
With practice and commitment, understanding your child’s perspective will become second nature and hopefully encompass all parts of the day, guiding each parenting moment. Through mastery of this one skill, your job as a parent suddenly gets a lot easier! And it’s a skill that will enhance all of your relationships in life.
Read more from Emily at her blog, Child Perspective, and join the free parenting course, A Crash Course in Mindful Parenting.
I love this analogy – and agree that despite our desperate wish for something as concrete and clear as a formula, no such thing exists. And I think it comes down to trusting our instincts and our intuition, and to investing the time with our children to really, as you say, understand their perspective.
Thank you for this thoughtful essay.
Understanding your child’s perspective, is something I wish my parents focused on. Thanks for reminding me to understand my son, this is a very good point. Understanding and communication are key.
Hi Emily!
Thank you for this great post!
From my experience with my brood of four, you are right on. The one thing that has solidified trust, understanding, and peace in my home is when we, as parents, make a real effort to understand the child’s perspective.
This is not done by theoretically imagining what it would be like to be your kids, either. You just have to get down to their level, slow down your racing mind, relax, and enter their space (with permission). The simple act of honoring them with your focused attention seems to smooth over just about every friction. It tells your kids that they are recognized. That they are respected as human beings. And that you really do care about what they think.
I can remember as a kid wondering if my parents would really notice if I was suddenly replaced with another well-behaved kid. Because it was what I did that seemed to matter, and the fact that they had a son. I don’t really remember much effort on their part to understand me. So I began to hide the real me and tried to be what I thought they wanted.
This is how kids think. I am sure that my parents would have been deeply hurt to lose me, but, as a child, I didn’t know that.
I love to say that the greatest gift that you can give to another is your full and undivided attention. That applies especially to children.
Again, thanks for passing this message. Everyone, and particularly parents, need to hear it.
All the best,
Hugh
Great post and excellent perspective. I can recommend a book that expands on this, and it really helped me when my son was two and starting to test all the boundaries. It’s called “Put Yourself in Their Shoes,” by Barbara F. Meltz. She teaches that instead of just reacting to childrens’ behavior, to stop and try to see the situation from their perspective and understand it in terms of finding a win-win way to deal with it. Enormously helpful and I hope it is to others, too!
I agree with your Post Blog. Unfortunately, when parents are not in the state of mind seeing the Real Life, they can’t help themselves. They react very bad in front of their children that make the Children remember their bad reaction. Lucky those Children who never experienced the Bad Habits from their parents, but majority of the Children, their own parents were the first Bad Influenced to them. How many Children in the World experienced this?? My heart cries when I think about that most of us had this experienced. Because of those unexplainable Bad experienced, I searched deeply within my heart. I have reached the Connection Rev. 3: 7 to 13 to avoid the Abused in Life.
A very good post. Good parenting invariably emerges from bad parenting, provided one is willing to learn from mistakes made by oneself and by others. We have all hated our parents at some point of time, for doing or not doing something, and yet, when it comes to our children, we are often no better. If you parent your child from your heart, you will be a great parent and your child will flower beautifully. If you parent your child from the mind, rest assured that both you and your child will invariably become neurotic, to say the least.
I’m glad to know that the post resonated with you guys. I love reading about your experiences as parents and/or kids.
Thanks for the book recommendation, Amy. I know a little about Barbara Meltz, but haven’t read that book. It sounds like I should add it to my list.
Hugh, I love how you describe how to really tap into your child’s perspective. It definitely comes from that deep level of connection, as you described.
Thanks for your thoughtful feedback.
I really loved this post. Taking time to look at something from another’s perspective is a wonderful way of truly giving your love. Especially your beautiful and precious child!
Its really very true… Understanding the child’s perspective puts us in harmony with the child.. You and the child relate in such a way that the growth happens without any effort.. Many thanks..
A child’s perspective… I do not know any thing about that what my mom and dad went through, but sure do I know when I made mistakes one of them would take a aggressive stance against me , while the other cajoled me and explained my mistake … was it child’s perspective or no.
My little one just turned a year this week. Gone are the days when my worries included full bellies and clean diapers. He’s developing a personality all his own and I have to learn how to balance my idea of what is best with his own hopes and desires.
Let the fun begin!