Oops. Trying to "toughen
up" children usually backfires.
Parents who want their children to have what it takes to deal with
tough times need to help their kids build enough inner resources to handle what life serves up.
We don't do
this by being tough on our children, asking them to "buck up" and behave like adults, insisting that they take on
the responsibility of an 18-year-old when they're five, or refusing to hold them when they have nightmares.
We give our kids the resources to survive in a tough world by loving them well, showing them their strengths, and being
gentle with them when they're hurt. Later on, when the going gets tough, they will love themselves enough not to give
up; they will draw on the strengths they know they have; and they will be gentle with themselves when they fail. They
will be "tough" enough to learn from their mistakes instead of using failure as an excuse to give
up, or to self-destruct.
Kids grow strong from being "loved up," not toughened up. Many adults who suffered
toughening up as kids, ironically, end up much more fragile than their peers who were treated with tenderness, since
they never developed the inner resources required to see them through truly hard times.
Being tough on
children, then, doesn't work as intended. But what about those hard knocks that happen on the playground? We don't
want to be so overprotective that our children get a message that goes, "Johnny, if anything unpleasant happens to you,
you'll break into a million pieces."
Being protective is good; being OVERprotective can be damaging to
the child. The anxiety of an overprotective parent gets funnelled directly into that little mind and stays there
until possibly years later, when the child-turned-adult seeks therapy for low self-esteem, generalized fear, and lack
of self-confidence.
