On a given day, a parent might come across lists of ways they should be nurturing their children’s…
…creativity
…resilience
…confidence
…problem solving
…empathy
…assertiveness
…fine & gross motor skills
…communication skills
The list goes on. And meanwhile, we have days where just getting dinner on the table feels like someone should be giving us a medal.
While it is true that all of these require individual, concerted effort from time to time, the truth is that trying to tend to all this nurturing on an individual basis each day would be like drinking from a fire hose! When we try, we’ll quickly find ourselves under a crushing weight of what I’m going to call “nurture-overload.”
Instead, here are ways we might avoid that overload and feeling of hustle:
- Follow the child’s lead. Allow their questions or daily tasks to drive the discussions and inform how you help them connect to various skills and traits.
- Read together regularly. If it is a regular part of your time together, you can depend on a healthy exposure to many different concepts.
- Trust your child’s independence. As we allow kids to have responsibilities as they grow (and not allow media hysteria to color what we view as age-appropriate), many of these skills will strengthen naturally. See if you can count how many skills and qualities might be cultivated in this Sesame Street example below (from one of my favorite websites, LetGrow.org)
We want our children to grow up to have all the skills and traits they’ll need to be caring, capable adults. If we step away from worry about getting it right and step toward more trust, we may find that these things come more naturally than we might anticipate!
featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto