How To Help My Child?

Presentation Lee McKing parenting

This is a huge question on most parents’ mind

I mean, which parent will want to see their child suffer right?

Most parents probably want to give their child or children the best life they can give

The best help they can give

The best support they can give

Ironically, that’s where some of the problem lie

Wait, what??

What do you mean the problem lies with helping my child?

Hold your horses and let me explain

You see, I get quite a few parents coming to me with problems relating to their child or children

Mostly communication related but some do include temper issues, arguments, behaviour etc

Anyway, the classic scenario is this

A parent comes to me and cries, saying he/she has been trying to help his/her child for the longest time

Taking care of the child, providing for him or her, making ends meet etc

Ensuring money is always there, sacrificing themselves to ensure the child gets the best quality of food, medicine, education

A big question is why does the child don’t understand the parent’s love?

And instead pick fights with the parent or parents

Treat the house like a hotel

Throw temper and destroy items (sometimes)

That’s the classic scenario

And of course, every family have their unique situation and their unique issues

So there are variations to the above scenario

What the parents do not yet realize, is that them wanting the best for the child might not be the best

Yes yes the explanation is incoming hahaha

You see, imagine you are a parent and have ensured that whatever your son or daughter wants, he or she gets it

Maybe because you have been deprived of such wants when you were a child

Now what you didn’t know

Is that your child might grow up thinking he or she can and will get whatever he or she wants (key here, with little effort), hence expects things to be given or done with no effort

A variation, is the parent starts refusing, the child might throw a temper tantrum, and eventually one of the parents give in so as to stop the child from crying or yelling

Another variation, the child will grow up with the pattern to throw a temper tantrum when he or she does not get what he or she wants

Think of someone who yells or cries at their partner when their partner did not do something they want (ok extreme but follow me for a minute)

What about other situations?

Let’s talk about this one

Sometimes, when a child is unable to finish their homework, the parent will assist, isn’t it?

Lee McKing parent child

You know it *wink wink*

Now if you are such a parent, do note that there is this variation

Especially when you seem to always assist in art or math calculations or English spelling

The child might grow up becoming too dependent on the parents assistance

A possible mindset is, “daddy or mummy will always help me”

And this can be a potential problem because the child (growing up to an adult) may not learn how to handle problems on his or her own

Now you might be thinking that the child can learn that when he or she is an adult

Perhaps, or perhaps not

I know of an entrepreneur who starts his own business but borrows money from his parent in order to pay the rent, and he doesn’t do much to get clients

Imagine this person has borrowed $10,000 $20,000 $30,000 from his parent and didn’t do much to earn back the money to return

That is one example of how a parent taking care, helping and looking after became too much, to the point where it became a problem

Obviously the parent got really angry about it

Let’s pause here for a moment

Cause I want to share the story of the butterfly

You may or may not know it

Do you know why the butterfly forms a chrysalis?

And needs to come out of it?

Well yea, the caterpillar turns into a chrysalis and some time later, comes out of it

The chrysalis is for protection of course

However, it does one more thing for survival

You see, when the newly formed butterfly is coming out of the chrysalis

Its wings do not have blood

So when it forces it’s body through the chrysalis

It’s actually forcing the blood and fluids from its body into other parts of the body

Namely, its wings!

Then after some time of drying its body and wings, it can fly

However, if you were to help the butterfly to open its chrysalis

The blood and fluids will not go into the wings

And thus, the wings do not straighten and expand

And the butterfly cannot fly

Hence it will die of starvation or gets eaten by a bird

That’s harsh

And yet, at the same time, relates to you as a parent, taking care of your child

You see, if you protect your child from all dangers, sickness and etc

You risk your child developing negative behaviours, or becoming weak (in whatever sense of physical or emotional or mental)

Why do they show in movies, rich parents who come from poor backgrounds, giving lots of money to their children, thinking their children will be happy, and yet their children end up either selfish, disrespectful or fall into some sort of depression?

Because there is some truth to it

Lee McKing and a car

Thankfully not all rich families are like that (I hope)

However, having said that, parents also cannot do not help at all

Complete neglect of the child will definitely be more detrimental to the child’s upbringing

So how?

Cannot help too much and yet cannot don’t help at all

The key, my friend, is balance

To support emotionally and yet allow the child to experience some hardships of life

And when it gets too tough, yes, the child can come back, but only after learning some good lessons

When I was young, I didn’t know how to treasure money (my money got stolen almost every day back in Primary school)

So my parents decided to not give me any pocket money (except a couple of dollars to buy pens and paper)

And back then the trend was Pokemon cards, and I really wanted to buy and play

So what did I do?

Well, I realize that some of my classmates were too lazy to buy their own paper

And they took paper from other classmates (they “borrowed” but never returned so yea)

And I had this idea to sell paper to them at 10 cents a piece

Strangely, they were willing to pay for the paper (not sure if they felt bad about taking others’ paper and not returning or the others decided not to give free paper anymore)

And I had to buy spare paper in case it ran out

Long story short, I earn my own money through selling paper so I can buy my Pokemon cards

Notice how my situation (money getting stolen), created an instance where I do not have enough money, yet instead of asking for money from my parents (receiving too much help), I found an alternative to make money (in this case, a business or entrepreneurial idea)

And now as an adult, I believe, even if i ran out of cash for whatever reason, I know how to survive in this world

So to sum up, after all is said and done

This sharing is to help you open your eyes and be aware of what you are doing when you help your child

So to conclude

Remember the butterfly

Help in moderation

And love your kids <3

PS Love your parents too πŸ˜€

Have an awesome Lunar New Year and here’s wishing you and your family a good deal of happiness, health and growth! πŸ˜€

Share if this inspires you or if you think it might help someone handle their children better πŸ™‚

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