Make your child fell better.

It’s something all of us try to do every day..

Being a parent can be challenging and rewarding at the same time, but seeing your child sad or hurt is heartbreaking.  Our parental instinct is to fix it all and make it better.  We tend to distract the problem with lollies, toys, junk food, a quick fix, but does it fix the true issue or cause your child bigger issues later on?

Simple answer, yes, this will cause issues down the track.  Comfort eating, binge drinking, gambling, drugs and solitude all come to mind..how many of you and people you know do these things for comfort?

As parents, should we be incouraging this behaviour or helping our children work through their feeling from talking about it and pysical comfort.

What are your ways on dealing with these issues?

I have 5 children of my own and for me, giving my child a sweet treat to help wipe away their tears always comes to mind first, and then i remind myself that this has not proven helpful to me and i don’t want that for my children.

The other week, after basketball, my eldest son Malic, who is 11yrs was so upset.  As we left the stadium and headed to the car, i could see he was sad about something, i asked him if he was okay, and he cried, telling me that he was hurt from not feeling included in the team.  I should let you know that he subs for this team.  Driving home, all i wanted to do was drive thru McDonalds and make him feel better, but i didn’t.  Instead, we talked about it and i reinforced how great of an opputunity being a sub for the team was and it was ok to feel this way.  I thanked him for sharing his feelings with me and hugged him many times.

I let him then be alone with his thoughts, whilst checking in on him every hour to make sure he was ok.  We also spoke to the coach, so he could confront the issue and really work through it.

I believe that this will help my children really grow as a person and learn about who they are.  He still wants to sub for this team and continues to be the best that he can be, and i believe it’s because he spoke about what was bothering him..

If we as parents can all encourage this behaviour with our childdren, then maybe depression will be a thing of the past.  Listen to your children, they are amazing little people with amazingly intelligent minds.