Are you unknowingly and unintentionally holding your kids back? Are you encouraging fear, close-mindedness, co-dependence, and inadequacy? Are you fostering a clique-based mindset?
If you have ever held your child back from new activities and experiences because you assume they won’t be good at it, or won’t like it, or YOU weren’t good at it—you are fostering a fixed-mindset and a fear of new experiences. Their internal dialog can take the trajectory of, “It’s not worth trying. I probably won’t be good at it anyways. I’ll stick with what I know.”
If you know your child loves an activity and you hold them back because their BFFs can’t participate at the same time, you are fostering a clique-based mindset and feelings of co-dependency and inadequacy. Their internal dialog starts telling them things like, “I can’t find fulfillment through enjoying experiences on my own. I am not able to make new friends and expand my circle. I have to travel in my established pack and if they can’t be with me, I’d rather not participate.”
If you consider yourself a certain type of family—let’s say a sports family—and the only knob on the dial is all sports all the time and you don’t encourage any other type of activities and experiences, you are fostering a sense of close-mindedness and co-dependence. Your child’s internal dialog becomes one of, “I am an athlete (or a musician, or an artist) and all other activities are worthless and stupid.” But what happens when their identity can no longer be tied to their activity? They have no skills or muscle memory for learning how to broaden their horizons, so they become lost.
I see this frequently in my line of work. Parents who have the best of intentions, but don’t understand the full impact of subliminal messages and family programming. Parents whose own fear and anxiety is projected onto their children. Parents who think they are protecting their kids by encouraging them to travel in a pack of established friends, but they are really preventing them from fostering new relationships and expanding their circles (expansion is critically important because adolescent friendships can be incredibly fickle). Parents who label their children because they think those labels will lead them to greater popularity or social status—or keep them safe and unscathed.
We, as parents, have to think bigger picture. We have to think in terms of life skills and social/emotional development and self-awareness. We have to think in terms of establishing independence and INTERdependence, not co-dependence. We have to encourage our kids to seek out AND be hungry for new experiences and new people—not keep them confined to a bubble of our choosing.
Ultimately, our goal as parents should be to raise kids who can walk into ANY room for ANY reason—confidently, open-mindedly, and willingly. Whether or not a familiar face is flanking them. Whether or not something is in their comfort zone. Because these are the kids that will ace the interview. Land the job. Make their mark. Have vast networks of people in their lives. They will be the creators and the makers and the dreamers and the doers and the unifiers and the welcomers.
And, the world DEFINITELY needs more of that…