Monthly Archives: April 2023

Involvement

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Involvement with your child

To enjoy your family tomorrow, you have to be in your child’s life today.

Being involved with your child means different things to each of us. Possibly your parent wasn’t very involved with you growing up so you’ve made it your goal to be fully involved in your child’s life. Or maybe you work two jobs and being involved with your child can only happen late evening and on weekends. Regardless, I hope we can all agree that being involved, genuinely and consistently, in your child’s life is important.

What does appropriate involvement look like?

When you spend time with your child, you are letting them know you care. Undivided attention sends the best message but sometimes just being in the same room, doing different things, can be considered involvement. Appropriate involvement includes:

  • finding regular time to spend one-on-one with your child. If you have more than one child, involvement together is great but the individual time is important.
  • making sure the time you spend with your child does not depend on their gender. It’s not surprising you may enjoy certain activities with your daughter and not your son, or vice versa. Just make sure you are spreading your time equally as best you can. Children quickly pick up on subtle cues such as the amount of time you spend with them versus their sibling. And favoritism can wreak havoc on sibling relationships.
  • mother AND father involvement. In other words, gone are the days when it was only the mom’s responsibility to tuck little ones in at night, for example. Quality time with dad is not the same as quality time with mom. Your child learns different things from each of you. The same applies to same-sex parents, grandparents raising grandchildren, kinship care, etc.
  • a democratic style of parenting. In other words, your involvement is most beneficial when you are firm, but flexible. If you are a dictator-style parent, your involvement may cause stress or defiance, or both. There is a higher likelihood of having a solid, comfortable bond with your child they feel your support through your involvement.

Being involved in a child’s life means meeting their needs, listening to them, caring for them, responding to them with respect, modeling the behavior you would like to see in them, and just plain ol’ spending time with them! If you take a moment to think about what you like about your best friend, you’d probably give reasons like “they listen to me, they always have my back, I can trust them, I enjoy spending time with them.” Can your child say that about you? I’m not saying you need to be your child’s best friend. In fact, trying to be their friend can put you (and them) in a really tough position – someone needs to be the adult and your child counts on you to be that adult, giving them parameters and a warm hug when things don’t go right. But many characteristics of your relationship with your best friend can certainly carry over to the kind of relationship you can have with your child: strong communication, love, concern, and just being present. That’s involvement. That’s necessary. That’s crucial to a strong, healthy, enriched relationship with your child. (p. 127-128)

E.N.R.I.C.H. Your Relationship With Your Child (2021) – D. Kruenegel-Farr

Over-involvement

Being overly-involved creates issues. Over-involvement demonstrates to your child, adolescent, or teen that you do not have confidence or trust in them. This can create a child who is afraid to try something new or a teen who rebels against house rules. Although over-involvement often comes from a place of love, it often translates as a level of fear, potentially causing anxiety or fear in your child.

Certainly, there are times when you need to be fully involved – are they driving for the first time and you want them to text when they get there? Totally reasonable. Are they staying overnight at a friend’s house for the first time and you’re hanging out with their child’s parent for a little while to make sure your child feels comfortable? Yup – totally reasonable too – especially for younger children. Is your child on the school basketball team and you’re on the sidelines shouting directions? Well – that’s probably over-involvement. Again – over-involvement actually creates an anxious child with lower self-esteem and a lower sense of self-worth because they feel there must be something wrong with them since you are always so involved.

Under-involvement

Under-involvement probably doesn’t apply to you if you’re reading this post. 🙂 And, I’m sure you can guess what it is. However, let me just say that not being involved the way you would like on a particular day is not the same as being an under-involved parent. That’s just the way life goes sometimes. But if you are rarely involved in your child’s life, you are giving them a direct signal that they are not important to you. If your job requires consistent travel, try to find a way to stay connected, even if it’s over FaceTime, Zoom, or a simple phone call or text. If you do not live with your child(ren), stay connected in whatever way you can, as often as possible.

The influence of epigenetics

Epigenetics is essentially the interaction of your genes and your environment. Who you are mixes with where you are and what experiences you have. The same is, of course, true for your child. Your child may be at a difficult age where it feels like they are pushing you away. Or they may have a personality that tends to clash with yours. Find something you can agree on or enjoy together because it matters. “Positive interactions enable various parts of their genetic makeup to ‘turn on’ leading to positive growth and development, not only emotionally, but physically too.” (E.N.R.I.C.H. Your Relationship With Your Child, p. 133).

Summary

Positive involvement in your child’s life creates positive experiences that help them grow and develop into caring, capable adults. Being involved is a wonderful way to make sure your child can achieve their capabilities but also shows them your love, support, and care. When you are involved with your child, you are telling them they matter. That carries with them for a lifetime.

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I’ve gotta be me! Identity formation in children

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“I’ve gotta be me – what else can I be?!” That’s the line from a 1968 song by Sammy Davis Jr. The entire song fits very well with the “I” in E.N.R.I.C.H. – identity, which discusses identity formation in children.

Here’s the link if you’d like to listen – it’s full of great commentary on the importance of being who we really are. https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=iZeebIqwcC8.

You might wonder why I included a section on identity in my book, E.N.R.I.C.H. Your Relationship With Your Child (available on Amazon). Simply put . . . . it’s important! Helping our children understand who they are, what they are capable of, and how they tick is as important for their mental health as healthy food is for their physical health. As I write in my book, identity is not just biological identification but also includes “thoughts, feelings, habits, motivations, morals, goals, experiences, culture, careers, strengths, and so on. It’s the quintessential question, “who am I.” “

Stages of identity

As a child ages, there are different stages they will go through that help them identify who they are, known as identity formation. Toddlers learn about themselves as they gain independence, requiring your support to encourage them in their exploration. Three to 6 year-olds will continue that exploration, and begin to take initiative, doing things on their own. An inevitable over-stepping of boundaries will occur which will require your understanding, encouragement, and guidance (not punishment). Our 7-11 year olds start to realize what they can’t do as much as what they can do. Social comparisons also become painful or prideful. And, of course, preteens and teens can struggle almost daily with who they are, what they like, who they are friends with, and what is right or wrong. Again, this is totally normal development albeit sometimes difficult for us as parents when we don’t know exactly how to help. Trust, encouragement, support, and love are critically important.

Personality & temperament

Sometimes it’s tempting to assume our child is one way or another and will never change. And it’s true – our temperament directly influences who we are. Temperament is essentially one’s activity level, attention span, adaptability, and responsiveness. Temperament is considered to be innate and biologically-based. Personality, on the other hand, is related to how one thinks, acts, and interacts with others. Personality changes can occur as one matures and incorporates the various experiences in life.

Given this information, parents can have a better sense of how to react and interact with their child. If your child has a different temperament than you do (you tend to do things quickly, for example, while your child tends to be slower), you’ll want to make sure you still support them for who they are – don’t expect them to adjust to your temperament. And, if your child’s personality seems to have taken a turn for the worse – they’re stubborn, moody, or defiant, for example, just remember that experiences (& their developmental process) might be the issue. Continue to offer your support and encouragement but make sure you’re also encouraging communication.

Sexual identity

“A child is a person first,” as I say in my book. Political battles aside, research shows unequivocally that some adolescents/teens’ sexual identification may not match a binary choice of male or female. Or, they may feel their assigned gender does not match their mental self-identification. “As your child matures to the adolescent and teen years, respect, dignity, and support need to continue, regardless of their sexual or gender preferences and orientations. To remove support can drastically negatively affect one’s identity and feelings of self-worth.” Your child counts on your support to mature into who they are meant to become.

How do we help?

To assist in your child’s identity formation, make sure to:

  • keep lines of communication open
  • be aware of differences in temperament and work to allow them the space to function within their temperament
  • set appropriate boundaries for behavior, using positive discipline to help correct
  • remind yourself that, with each developmental stage, there will be changes in personality – in other words, when possible, go with the flow of what your child/adolescent/teen is experiencing
  • always be aware you are a role model – be genuine in who you are while accepting differences in others
  • encourage, encourage, encourage
  • support, support, support

Summary

As Sammy Davis Jr. sang, “I can’t be right for somebody else, If I’m not right for me.” Identity formation takes a life-time. I joke that I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up! Sometimes it’s definitely a struggle to deal with the physical, social, and emotional growth our children will go through but it’s oh-so rewarding when they become the person they were meant to be. And then we love them, no matter what . . . . so they can love themselves.

child's t-shirt stating "love who you are" relating to identity formation in children
Pic by Alexander Grey