My thoughts on some aspect of parenthood written for the magazine 'Parenting'.

One of the things I have found hardest as a parent is to be truly empathetic with my children in their struggles at school both socially and academically. I think there are two key reasons for this.

The first is that my children don’t experience the exact same struggles that I faced. They seem the same to me but their circumstances are unique. They may find the same areas of school difficult but the details are complex and often beyond their ability to express. I’ve often found myself trying to feed solutions to my daughter to general problems she is experiencing only to find that these turn out to be totally inadequate for her.

The second issue is the difference between my memory of school and her present experience. My memory is no longer real. The mind has an uncanny ability to vet the unpleasant experiences and feelings from our memory and highlight the good points. My tales of school don’t include the worried nights thinking about the class or teacher I was struggling with. What does remain clear are memories of the good friends I had, the sporting successes and the triumphs in general. How many times have we heard the phrase “Your school days are the best days of your life!” coming from someone who no longer needs to worry about it?

As an adult I have gained experiences that bring the trials of school days into perspective. The need to bring in an income,
or to balance the budget help me trivialize the unfinished homework or the friend who spoke harshly. Those days become almost salad days and a period of time I would gladly return to. I have gained perspective through experience yet in some ways I’ve lost it in relation to the size of the problems my children face.

My daughter had been training for the school cross-country with her classmates. In every practice run she had come in third. She was so proud of this she said she wanted me to get time off work and see the actual race.

On the day as I watched, filled with pride at her enthusiasm and ability, I raised my arms above my head and rushed to great her as she finished a creditable fifth out of twenty. To my surprise she was devastated. She hadn’t finished third. No amount of praise and back rubbing could alleviate her disappointment. It was then that I realized I had two jobs to do. The first was to put some perspective on her placing which I think I did. The other role was to accept how she was feeling and not dismiss it. I hope I did this well.

When she retold the event to her mother and sister I encouraged her to explain why she had felt the way she had. I told her of some of the failures I had in sport and then how they had helped make the successes feel even better.

I think it is important to take a breath and think before we offer our children the quick fix solutions to their problems. We need to take a moment to shed some of the experiences we have had so we can empathize properly and give them the chance to learn from their own experiences. A hard one for a caring parent but value added for our children in the long run.