The expectation of having the “Perfect Child”

“…but most of it had to do with me and the vision I had for my children, the kind of children I wanted them to be and how I envision them in this world.“

In many of my lectures and mentoring sessions I referred to the risks and the challenges of the relationship between the size of expectation and the degree of risk. This analogy, the higher the expectations the greater the risk of mismatch, applies regardless of whether our expectation is about what I expect from:

• myself,
• someone else,
• my child.

In today’s third communication on “Emotionally Intelligent Parenting”, I will share with you the common practice of parents to expect our children to be “perfect“.

“You expect of me to be perfect“, my daughter told me as she prepared for her German exams.
“I just want you to do your best“, I told her.

But she was right, although I did not like it…

If we ask the question in N number of parents “Which child do you think you would say is perfect?” I estimate that we would have N answers with small and large deviations. These can come from X different factors like culture, religion, family, school, beliefs, experiences, brain chemistry, etc. Whatever the answers and the reasons for these answers to the question, our common practice of expecting our children to be perfect exists to a greater or lesser extent everywhere and always, regardless of geography, age, culture and generation.

• Is it natural to want our children to aim for big goals and be first in everything?
• Is this the best for our children?
• Do we help them in this way to become emotionally and spiritually resilient?
• Would it be good to really get to know our children first, in proportion to the older ones – Look at the horse in the mouth to see how many teeth it is missing, before loading it?
• Would it be good to take into account the world in which our children live, distanced from the safety of the one we lived in?

“…I was trying desperately to encourage them to be the children I always thought they would be…”

Setting the bar too high or too higher can lead to low self-esteem later in life. On the contrary, realistic expectations about his abilities, which usually reduce the risk of failure, help boost our children’s self-confidence and self-esteem, and ultimately their emotional and spiritual strength. Even if our children do not fully live up to their expectations, any small failures will teach them valuable life lessons and how to succeed next time.

“You have to bang your head on the wall to find out“, as we discussed last week, and I would add for our conversation today “as long as you do not break it“.

It was so easy for me to “see” everything that my children are capable of and so difficult to see that the potential they have and is not used in different phases in their lives.

I have to give them space, to trust them more. I have to let them make mistakes and learn things the hard way.
Because it’s their life. To experience it the way they want in a safe, healthy and happy environment.
Is that our role? THE FRAMEWORK