As parents, many of us want the best outcomes for our children in their lives. The outcomes could be their well-being, happiness, success, a life skill, or a combination of these and several other things. The love that we have for our child is what makes us want these outcomes for them. However, is love alone enough to ensure that our children get the best outcomes? Perhaps not. The other factor that is equally important is connection.
Let’s understand this through an example. Consider three five-year-old children – Child A, Child B and Child C, who are growing up in three different environments. Now these three children are standing at the edge of a swimming pool, afraid to dive in. As the children stand there, their parents, Parent A, Parent B and Parent C, gently push their respective children into the pool. Let us assume that the intention of all the three parents is well-meaning and the same, which is, they hope that their push would encourage their children to overcome the fear of water, swim and come out successfully on the other side, learning from the experience.
Now, let’s move forward in time by fifteen years from when the incident happened and imagine that we are interviewing the three children, who are now grown up. It is possible that the three of them will have different stories to share based on the swimming pool incident from years ago.
Child A may say that they have become a swimming champion and add, “When I was five years old, I was afraid to get into the pool. But when my parent pushed me gently into the pool, I began swimming and realised that I had the potential to become a great swimmer.” They might even share that the push that their parent gave turned out to be a big encouragement, giving them courage to eventually become a champion swimmer.
Child B may give a different perspective stating that they are now extremely afraid of water and say, “As a child, once when I stood in front of a pool unsure of what to do, my parent pushed me into it. The unexpected action resulted in a very traumatic experience for me, even though my parent pulled me out almost immediately.”
As for Child C, they may be going on with life with a neutral view about the incident, or may not even recall such a happening in their life. They probably ended up as a moderate swimmer.
As we can see, even though all the three parents had the same intention (well-meaning and born out of love for their child) and performed the same action (of gently pushing their child into the pool), it can result in different reactions from the children.
In other words, although the intention and action of the parents were the same, it could impact the children in entirely different ways. We discussed three possibilities, but, it is quite likely that children could react in many different ways to the same parental action. And that is because, the impact that an incident can have on a child is not just shaped by that momentary parental action and intention but also by a host of other factors like – the child’s temperament, how a child perceives a given situation, the connection and stability in the child’s home, their physical and emotional health, the environment the child grows up as well as learns in, the people who surround the child including their friends, the resources that are available to the child, the economic status that the child grows up with and so on.
So, the parents’ action, which in the above example, did come from a place of love and was done hoping for a rewarding outcome for the child, may or may not lead to the desired result years later. And this is why the parent’s connection with their child is crucial. When you connect deeply with your child, it helps you support your child to achieve their outcomes in the most thriving way. If we consider the swimming pool example, if the parents had a strong connection with their respective children, this connection would have guided them on when to gently nudge the child into the pool and when not to.
Practising connection with your child every day can help you hone your parental wisdom, which in turn can assist you in fine-tuning your parental intuition on what’s right for your child and what works for them. When you gain this wisdom, you can consistently take actions that help your child thrive rather than just survive.
So how does one regularly connect with their child? Connection can be achieved through small and simple acts like smiling at your child when they walk into your room, reading a book with them, playing with them, or simply saying that you love them. It is possible to have hundreds of moments of connection with your child in a week through which you can intentionally connect with them.
Connection gives you the ability to work with your child in a way that works for them, thereby helping them thrive in the long run. Going back to the swimming pool example, all three parents believed that it is best for their child to learn swimming. Their love for their children made them arrive at the decision that swimming is an important life skill to have. However, through connection they would learn when to gently push the child, how to prepare the child to face swimming lessons, and then take steps that would work best for their child in acquiring and developing this new skill.
To put it in a nutshell, when it comes to taking decisions that impact a child’s life, merely love is not enough. The deep connection that you establish with your child is equally important.
(Edited by Anupama Krishnakumar)
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