Do you sometimes feel that this world is too harsh for your children? That you need to stand between them and reality – so that it won’t hurt them? You are definitely not alone.
We all want to protect our children. It’s almost instinctive. The world outside feels big, loud, unpredictable – and in recent years also frightening and threatening. So we hold tightly, mediate, soften, arrange, and prevent harm.
Sometimes we do it so well that we don’t even notice something else is happening: Instead of feeling safer, our children actually begin to believe that they can’t manage on their own. That they must have us there to fix things, because they themselves can’t succeed.
Resilience in children and teens doesn’t grow from clearing every obstacle out of their way. It is built when a child encounters difficulty, and we are there beside them – without rescuing and without panicking. Not letting go completely, but also not holding on too tightly.
How do we do that? We start by understanding why it’s so hard, and what price our children pay for our tendency to overprotect them.
Why Do We Protect So Much?
It’s clear to all of us that our world is not simple, sometimes scary. And so it is very natural that many parents walk around with a weight in their stomach from the sense that their children have to deal with a harsh, unpredictable, and sometimes dangerous reality.
And I’m not talking only about sirens and rockets. It’s also frightening to think that our child might be a victim of bullying in kindergarten or school, frightening to think of them crossing the street in a world where everyone drives however they want, frightening to think what they might encounter online, and frightening to think that someone might harm them – and we won’t be there to protect them. This world truly is tough.
Moreover, when our children are just born, they depend on us for survival, and our main goal is to keep them safe, at any cost. And then, when they grow and we are asked to update the version and let them go a little – it feels almost unnatural. It goes against the original contract we signed. And it’s hard.
But even though the world really isn’t simple, and even though it really is hard to let go of control, this is one of our responsibilities as parents. When we live with the feeling that our world is dangerous and that we must protect our children from it – we might transfer to the child the message that the world is “too much” for them, that they are weak and need protection.
A child who grows up this way, with such prolonged overprotection, may internalize the message that they are weak and need protection. They may stop believing in their abilities and feel they don’t know how to manage on their own. Such a child may conclude that this world is divided into strong and capable people versus weak and incapable people – and that they belong to the second group. That the world’s demands are beyond their abilities.
Such overprotection causes the child to doubt their abilities and therefore weakens them, and that is not what we want. We want to raise children who believe in their strengths, who may fall sometimes – but also know how to get up.
So What Should We Do Instead?
Our role is to accompany our children in their encounters with difficulties, with listening and empathy, not to remove the difficulties from their path. It’s not always easy, but it’s certainly possible.
How do we do that? For example, if the child wants to swing but the swing isn’t available, or they were not chosen for the student council – instead of solving the problem for them, we give space to their disappointment and believe in their ability to wait their turn or try again. We don’t have to rush to take away their pain, only to be with them when it appears.
If a girl comes home sad from school because the teacher didn’t choose her in class – instead of calling the teacher, we can simply listen to the girl and validate her feelings (it really is disappointing; it also bothers me when I can’t speak during a meeting at work). We don’t fix; we simply stay with her in that moment.
When we allow a child to meet difficulty, we are not “throwing them into the water” and certainly not neglecting them – quite the opposite. We create a space where they feel they are not alone. They learn about themselves through our gaze: If our eyes say “I believe you can,” they begin to believe it themselves.
Don’t Pity Your Children
If you feel that you constantly worry about your children, are upset by what happens to them, or pity them – it’s important to pause and do some deep inner work.
When we are overwhelmed with worry or pity, we are not truly seeing our child or their needs – we are seeing ourselves and our own anxiety. We load onto the child’s story our own story, and then they don’t get the response they actually need.
In many cases, we tend to feel pity exactly in the places that are sensitive for us. If I struggled socially as a child, anything related to the social arena will trigger me and I’ll pity my child terribly. If I struggled academically, I’ll pity my son every time I see him dealing with schoolwork. If one of the parents has issues with body image – they might pity the child in those areas.
But we want to develop awareness of our pity, and remind ourselves that our children are not us; they are separate beings with strengths, and they have our support.
So next time your child faces a difficulty, try to see it differently. You don’t need to save them from the difficulty, only to be by their side while they deal with it. Try to retune the internal string, the lens through which you view your children – they are capable, they are not weak, they have strengths and abilities.
Remember that it’s not the child alone facing the difficulty; it’s the child with us facing the difficulty. We don’t leave them there alone and we don’t solve it for them. We simply stay with them: Seeing, listening, holding the complexity with them.
When a child encounters difficulty, they learn something about the world. When they encounter difficulty while we are beside them, they learn something about themselves. And that is the true resilience.
Yifat Sani is an Adler Institute certified parenting coach.