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In this raw, unfiltered episode, Jess and Scott dive into the complex topic of pushing kids to do hard things. They explore the fine line between encouraging children to reach their potential vs. pushing them past their limits. Jess vulnerably shares how her own painful childhood experiences make it challenging for her to watch her daughter being pushed.
Together, they unpack the key ingredients kids need to build true resilience. This honest, nuanced conversation will make you reflect deeply on how your own past shapes your parenting and what really matters when helping kids tolerate frustration. If you've ever struggled to find the right balance with your child, this episode is for you.
Get 10% OFF parenting courses and kids' printable activities at Nurtured First using the code ROBOTUNICORN. [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/]
Learn more about the Solving Bedtime Battles course here [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/solving-bedtime-battles/].
Credits:
Editing by The Pod Cabin [https://thepodcabin.com/]
Artwork by Wallflower Studio [https://www.wallflowerstudio.co/]
Production by Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/]
Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn.
We are so glad that you are here.
As always, let's start the show with a question from Scott.
Alright Jesse excited?
It's just the two of us today.
I know.
Can you handle it?
I can handle it.
We have some stuff to unpack.
I'm kind of excited to have this conversation because I think we've been wanting to talk about this for a little bit, but we keep saying, let's save it.
We'll do a podcast on it.
Let's hold off.
So there's actually a lot for us to kind of unpack
today on the topic of helping our children do hard things or pushing them to do hard things.
Oh yeah, okay.
You're changing the format all of a sudden.
What's going on here?
Okay, ask your question.
Ask your question.
Okay.
When is it acceptable and to what degree can you
Push your children to do things that are hard or that they don't really want to do because oftentimes I feel like
With school, sports, art, whatever, they will refuse to do something they can't do, or they don't think that they can do well
An example of that is our oldest daughter has started karate and it was kind of a struggle for her at the beginning to like really get into it and understand how things worked.
And
Historic like in the past I have actually taken karate so it was like muscle memory to me.
All of a sudden everything was being brought back and I was trying to teach her
And some of the things, like she was getting quite frustrated because she just couldn't do certain moves and I just pushed her and pushed her and said, No, that's not the right thing.
Try it again.
Okay, that didn't work.
Try it again.
And honestly, for the one move, we probably did that 30 times, and she was very frustrated.
So I guess my question for you is, to what degree is this acceptable?
Did I do the right thing?
Did I not do the right thing?
This is such a good discussion because when I was watching you, I was watching Scott push our daughter and I felt so triggered myself from watching you push her
because I could see her trying so hard to do the right move and she was just really struggling.
And I felt like when you were trying to push her to like do it again, do it again, do it again
I could see that she was actually like in her fight or flight response.
Like I felt like she wasn't fully present anymore.
Like she was just trying to do it because she didn't want you to be frustrated with her.
And but she did end up doing it
And then she ended up being super proud of herself after.
Like I will say, she has progressed in like the month and a half since she started very quickly.
But I don't think she would have progressed as quickly if it wasn't for me pushing her to try it again when it wasn't quite right
Yeah.
And I think a lot of parents, I mean specifically in my group of friends, like the dads, are typically the ones that are
more often pushing their kids to just try it again.
That wasn't the right way.
We have to try and figure this out.
You have to get the foundations right.
And like really pushing their kids to keep trying, even when it is very frustrating for them.
Yeah, I I struggle.
And this is this is an open conversation between Scott and I.
Like we actually haven't figured out where we both kind of stand and on this topic.
'Cause I I actually was thinking about this summer.
So this last summer our oldest daughter also was in swimming lessons and she really didn't want to go.
She kept saying for months leading up to swimming lessons, like I'm afraid, what if I drown?
Like what if I can't swim?
I don't know if I'm gonna want to get in the water and that was really hard for her.
And I felt like my approach because I was the one kind of dealing with the swimming lesson thing
was validating those feelings, drawing out how she felt about it, really processing her fears.
And then when the day the swimming lesson came, like telling her stories of like so this is a little different 'cause it's more of a worry, but like telling her the stories of
times she's done something that's made her worried before and how she was able to do it.
And then when we got there, I was like, okay, we're gonna try it and it's gonna be tricky.
But I just want you to try just putting your body in the pool.
So still I was still pushing her to do something hard, but I felt like my approach was like oozing with connection the whole time.
Please don't use that word again.
It was though.
I feel like my approach was so like nurtured.
And so by the time she finally stepped foot in the pool and was floating there with the lifeguard
She was so proud of herself for working up that courage.
And then she did the entire week of swimming lessons, loved it.
And at the end of the summer, she told me that was her favorite week of the entire summer was doing swimming lessons
So I believe that there is a way to push them and encourage your kids to do something that's really tricky for them and make them proud of themselves without making it about pleasing you and making it more about
Do you think that is what she has been doing with karate?
She's trying to please me.
I feel like there are times when you are pushing her, like do it again, do it again, do it again.
Where she's looking at you and I can see tears in her eyes a little bit and like I don't want dad to be upset with me
for stopping or not going anymore.
I feel like there are times that that happens and I don't think you're trying to make that happen because I I know
you are trying to do it with such like you know she's capable.
Yeah, that's the biggest thing for me is I can see that she is capable and
I mean, honestly, last Thursday when I was pushing her, over the course of that one evening that we spent working on it together, and then like when you came back from your trip
Honestly, she was doing everything amazingly and she was so proud of herself.
Yeah.
I didn't feel like she was looking to me to like validate and say, like, wow, you did a really good job.
She was more just proud of herself and even in the class that she had this past week
She told her teacher, I want to do it myself.
I want to show you.
So I mean, I guess all of this is kind of anecdotal.
Like I see that it's not necessarily her trying to please me, but maybe in the moment she is.
I don't know.
Yeah, that that's what I don't know either and I just wonder what the balance is between trying to push them to do something hard because we know
They're capable of doing hard things, I actually think it's really important.
And I feel like if we don't, then they won't actually know what they're truly capable of.
Right
They say I do think it's important to push them.
But I wonder do you know where that limit is for you when you're pushing her and she is shutting down
And I only saw that one time.
So it's possible that the other times you were doing it it wasn't the same.
But I d w the one time I saw I could just see that she seemed kind of frantic.
Just because her movements were clumsy.
I could see she was a little bit teary.
She even told you after she was mad at you.
This is not a bash, Scott.
I know you're open to me kind of sharing this because this is parenting, right?
Parenting is sometimes having these rough conversations where you're trying to figure out where the balance is.
Yeah.
In no way am I claiming that I do things perfectly
Like it maybe I did it all wrong and that's fine.
I can change for the next time.
Yeah, well it honestly just made me think of that's one approach and it ended up working that she she did figure out the moves.
But I wonder how we could like partner our two approaches together because my approach sometimes might be too soft.
Yeah.
Where it it takes.
I would say that for you, you would probably end up being too far in the other direction where you kind of let her stop
Yeah.
Because she's starting to get frustrated and not let her tolerate that frustration that she has because she's not doing it well.
And she never actually sees the potential, like the possibility for what she can accomplish.
And maybe I go too far the other direction and I'm pushing her to that level of frustration so that she's frustrated more often
Again, this is all like for me it's all anecdotal like I see from her I pushed her really hard she was really frustrated a couple of times
Not every time, but a couple of times.
And then now she's like desperate to go back to her classes.
She's like asking, when is the next time I get to go to class?
Is it Thursday yet?
Is it Monday yet?
Like I wanna go to karate
She seems to be loving it, not because she's trying to appeal to or appease me and wants me to be happy with her, but because she genuinely seems to enjoy it.
And this is where I think you actually are doing a really good job with her with karate is you are naming the process for her.
So I think after you've pushed her a little bit and she does figure it out, you're not just saying, Yay, now you're good because you got the move.
you're actually saying, wow, that was a really tricky process.
Like wow, like you had to try again and again and again.
And the more you tried, the better you got, and now you're doing the move
you were the one who kept putting in the effort to do that.
So I feel like she's actually really proud of the progress that she's made because you're able to tell her that story of the process.
versus only focusing on the outcome with her, which is you did your kata really well.
So I think that that's an important piece that is actually the s
similar to what I did with swimming lessons to what you did with karate.
The difference is just the way that we approach it within our different personalities, right?
My personality is more like let's color about it, let's draw about it, let's cuddle and talk about it
and then let's try something hard.
Honestly, I feel like oftentimes I'm much more of the stereotypical dad in a situation where I'm just trying to push.
When we're trying to learn something new, I'm not so cuddly about it.
Yeah
But I'm trying to, yeah, like you said, explain the process at least and why that's important.
Because I do often feel like, in my own opinion, sometimes we're limiting a child's potential by not allowing them to experience frustration.
I would agree with that.
Or we're limiting a child's potential if we don't give them the opportunity to try something that might be tricky for them.
Mm-hmm.
Like our oldest was talking about a painting that our middle daughter was given for her birthday.
Mm-hmm.
And she said, I don't think I could ever paint like that.
I said, Well, it's not like you go from what you're doing now to
Painting like this beautiful painting like that, it takes a lot of practice you have to spend time learning how to do it.
I explained, it's kind of like how
with karate, you didn't really know how to do the stances, you didn't know how to do the punches.
And you're slowly learning and becoming better at those things.
And then eventually you can do more complex things.
You can actually use it to protect yourself if required.
You can do a
very complicated kata.
It's the same thing with painting.
Yeah, and I think that's beautiful.
You're telling her the story of building resilience and doing something hard.
That's what our kids really need to hear from us, I think
to help them want to try to continue to do the hard things.
We talked a lot about my experiences and how I feel like watching you push her
triggers a wound in me and I think it's good we're having this conversation, but there's a piece of me I think that hurts.
I I don't know how to explain it when I see
You pushing her and actually she does really, really well.
And I think it's actually this story that I've told myself most of my life that
you're not actually capable of doing most of these things.
And I don't think that that came from my parents.
But for example, when I was in grade school, we had not too many kids in our class.
So there was a few different teams that you could try out for, but
it's not like there was a ton of people trying out for the team.
So I tried out for the volleyball team and I actually enjoyed it.
Like it was fun to do volleyball, but I just not very good.
So I did volleyball, I enjoyed it
I was actually really excited about making the team and then the list came out and I remember scanning my name for the list, seeing the name of every single other girl in my class.
Except for me.
And every girl in my class that tried out for it made the team.
Except for me.
I was the only one who didn't make it
And the story started in my own head of like the opposite of what we're trying to give to the kids, right?
Which is, you are not capable of doing
these hard things for you.
You'll never be good at sports.
If you're the only kid, like you can't even be on the bench, then yeah, like you're just not good at it.
And I never tried out for a sports team again.
Like even now.
I can't believe that happened that's It's so awful.
Like A, like don't cut one kid from the team.
Right?
'Cause then you're all that doesn't make any sense
I also would just like walk around by myself outside at recess because all my friends would be inside practicing volleyball.
So then I was also very lonely.
And then the same thing happened.
There was like a singing team at my school
and every other girl in my class tried out for it.
It was like multiple practices at recess.
I remember clearly my teacher reading off.
The names of the girls in the class, like this person, this person, this person.
And I'm sitting there like waiting to hear my name because I was like, if I'm not good at sports
I'll at least be good at singing.
And my name was never Rhett.
And I like actually remember like raising my hand and saying to the teacher, Hi, Mrs.
So and so, like
You forgot to read my name.
Everybody else's name was on that list.
And she looked at me and said, No, I didn't forget your name.
Like you're not on the list.
You didn't make the team.
That's so cold.
It was so cold.
And I remember I then I asked if I could go to the bathroom.
I went to the bathroom.
I was in grade seven or eight at the time.
bald my eyes out and told myself, okay, you also can't sing and I never sang again.
And those were wounds that stayed with me for a really long time.
You know.
Well I feel like even to this day.
To this day it's still raw.
It's still raw.
I never did sports again.
Like to have to walk around being the only girl in the class that's not on this team.
Like I remember just walking around being so ashamed.
and I never sang again and I still believe I'm a terrible singer and I probably am, but I never had the chance to try and strengthen that muscle.
And then there was another thing that happened too, which was just ridiculous, but I don't know
We want to get into that now.
I don't know what you're talking about.
You don't know what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about how then I thought to myself, I can't sing, I can't do sports, but at least I'm a kind person
And then, you know, the story.
But long story short, I thought at least I would be the nicest person in the class.
And then when it came out, there was actually an award for their grade eight class for the primary school.
Yeah, there was an award for the kindest person.
Yes, so then
Of course in this school, small school, there's an award for like whoever is the kindest person in the grade eight class at the graduation gets this award.
And I was like, okay, I know I also wasn't good at school.
Like so I also really struggled in school
So I'm telling myself the message, you're not smart, you're not good at sports, you're not good at singing, but at least you're nice.
And then the teachers at this grade at graduation decided to give the one award that maybe I could have got, like the nicest person in the class or something
to a person that wasn't even in grade eight.
They called like a grade seven student up on stage to say, oh, we wanted to surprise this grade seven student and give them this award.
Like just messed up.
So then I tell myself, Well, I guess you're also not even nice enough to get this award.
So going into high school and going into teenager, I remember crying.
And honestly this these messages didn't come from my parents.
It came from the school
I remember bawling to my parents being like, I have no talents.
I'm not good at anything.
And I believed that about myself for a very long time.
Like that impacted me super deep.
So I feel like I see our kids and I want to push them, but I also struggle to know how to push them the right amount.
Right.
So what about me pushing them?
What is it that I'm doing that's triggering those feelings for you?
I feel like it's actually not even what you're doing, it's her face when she's being pushed.
So I see myself and the another thing to just note is that our oldest daughter and I have the same personality.
Yeah, it's very similar.
And you know you don't want to say you're the same as your kid, but like of any of our children
her and I have the most similar personality.
And so I feel like when you're pushing her, I see this same fear in her eyes of like
what if I'm not good enough that I felt when I was a kid, but I didn't have the pushing.
I just only had the fear.
And when I see her eyes look up at you and she's feeling like I'm I can't
get it, I can't get it right.
It triggers that feeling in me of like being a small child, being like, I can't get this right.
But then the message I end up giving myself is, well you have no talents, you're not very good at anything.
Like you just basically suck at everything.
Right.
So it's through the bias of your own childhood experiences that you are.
Yeah, and this is the work.
This is the work.
Like we talked about doing the work and this is it, right?
I view her
through the lens of my childhood experiences.
And when I see her tear up when you're pushing her and that she can't quite get it right
I just think to myself, oh my goodness, what if she believes that she can't do it?
Right.
And she becomes me and doesn't ever want to try something new again.
Yeah, okay.
I think the way that I'm handling it is maybe not totally right, but it's not the worst.
If that makes sense.
Like I'm just I'm just thinking about how I
talk to her about it and my own mindset on things.
Like essentially I believe that our kids and myself and you
can essentially learn to do whatever we want to do.
And I feel like that's how I've always been with most things in life.
Like I tried to leave
home as early as possible.
I paid my way through university on my own by taking three jobs in high school starting young and I feel like my mindset has always been I can essentially learn to do whatever I want to do
Or essentially I can learn whatever I need.
To survive.
Yeah, in order to survive.
Yeah, your survival instinct has made you very good at learning, because you needed to get out.
Yeah.
And now I'm trying to instill, let's say, the positive aspects of that.
So I'm not trying to teach them to do this because that's how they have to survive in life.
Mm-hmm.
But I think it was a valuable lesson that I essentially learned a lot of things kind of on my own in order to leave home right after high school.
So I think that's what I'm trying to instill in in our girls is that they actually have the capabilities to do whatever they want to do.
And that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be easy.
And that's why I don't know how much frustration should be allowed, but I do think it is important that they do experience some frustration because nothing will come easy
Maybe some things will.
Maybe they're just inherently good at certain things.
Like our oldest daughter, she's just inherently good at reading.
And that's very easy for her to do
But I think there are other things that it takes a little bit more practice.
But you can see, like, even though she is your daughter, and we've always kind of thought, oh, maybe she will be the same as you for with respect to sports.
Honestly, over the course of five days last week, I saw the potential.
I don't know.
I feel as though we were kind of biased based on
your childhood experiences to think she wouldn't be as good at them.
But I'm seeing like even with baseball, I spend ten minutes with her
breaking it down and all of a sudden she's able to hit the ball.
And then she practiced and she was so proud of herself that over the weekend she kept asking, can we play baseball?
And all she wanted to do was hit the ball because she figured out how to do it.
Hey friends, so at pickup last week, our daughter asked Scott a truly
kind of tricky question in front of her younger siblings.
Scott was telling me that when he heard a question like this, he used to panic, but this time he had a plan.
And he said to our daughter, thank you for asking.
Let's talk tonight when we've got privacy.
And that's a line that he learned straight from
our new body safety and consent course at Nurture First.
So this new body safety and consent course is taught by me, so Jess.
If you listen to this podcast, you know me.
I'm a child therapist and a mom of three and I have taught body safety and consent education for years.
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There's guidance inside this course for the real life stuff like tickling that goes too far and even the difference between a secret and a surprise.
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And just full disclosure here, we are the creators of this course and we're so proud of it.
I feel like what we're learning even about me is that the roots of
potential, I feel like we're maybe there, but without that right person, and this is nothing against my parents.
What I was blessed with was an incredibly loving and safe childhood.
Yeah.
I had that and that's the most important thing that I could have ever had.
But what they maybe had for themselves, and I think if you talk
To them, they probably say this they've had the same story that was passed down to them.
Then they just pass that story down to me, you know.
In our family, we're just not good at sports.
We don't know sports, we're not good at it.
So that's just not something that's of value for us.
So I just took that on as my story.
And then when I tried and I didn't succeed, like I believed this for myself that my worth was based on like the fact that I couldn't do it.
So then if I can't do it, there was no praising the process or like, you know, good for you for even trying out.
Or, you know, you didn't make it this time, but let's practice, practice, so you make it next time, that kind of thing.
So then it was just like, well, it's just done 'cause I can't do it and the story's already there that I can't do it.
I won't just never try again.
I think it was a protective factor for me too.
It's like I don't wanna
ever feel like that little girl walking around, only little girl in the playground from her class.
I never want to feel that way again.
So I'll never put myself in a situation.
where I'm gonna feel like I failed like that again, which makes sense, right?
So then I see our own daughter and I have that lens on, I'm like, oh I just never want her to feel like a failure.
But what I
need to see, and if I remove that lens, I can see it as a bigger picture of like she won't feel that way because we're noticing the process.
We're helping her learn a new skill.
And I think to what you said, you are pushing her, but you're still beside her as that loving caregiver through every step of the way.
So you're not pushing her and say, practice this 30 times on your own and when you're done, come back to me and tell me how it went
you're right there practicing with her.
So she's practicing and she's building resilience and she's building these skills in relationship with the safe and loving caregiver.
Like that's actually really beautiful now that I can think about it
Not just through my own wound.
This is the process that you have to go through sometimes to get to that other side, right?
Is really like reflecting on, well, why was I so triggered by this?
And but it is beautiful actually that you are beside her the whole time, encouraging her and letting her know she's capable.
I didn't really mean
For this whole episode to be about my experiences, but this is actually really interesting and I feel like I'm opening up.
But like how I saw maybe there was that potential in you.
Yeah.
And like even for school, going to university, you didn't really think you were capable.
And then it was
me and your friend Rebecca that really pushed you, like, no, you're very talented in these things.
I mean, look what you have now, so many years later, gotten to the point of, right?
there's that potential that you didn't really feel or see in yourself?
Someone saw in me, you and my friend Rebecca.
Yeah.
People don't really know that about me, but before I went to university to become a therapist and be trained in child and family therapy
I didn't think that that was a path for me.
I wanted it.
I loved it.
I loved the study of people always.
But I didn't think I've was capable.
So I remember being like to you and my friend, we were all friends at the time, being like, No, there's no point.
There's no point.
And looking back, that was my defense as being up.
Because if I apply for university and I get rejected, that would make me feel like that little girl walking around on the playground by myself, which is the worst possible
feeling and I refuse to feel that way ever again.
So I think that's why I didn't want to apply for university to begin with because I knew if I got rejected from university, I would feel that way and I didn't want to feel that way.
And I think that's so many of us working through life just with our defenses up and hindering our own potential because we don't want to be hurt.
But thankfully for me, you and
And Rebecca pushed me and you said, No, we actually think you can do it, Jess, and you kind of forced me to apply and thank goodness you did, because that was the best thing I could have ever done.
And now I get to teach what I love every single day.
And I will say you are very good at it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And even that's hard for me to still receive.
Yeah, I can tell you're very awkward when I say that to you.
Whenever anyone compliments me and even now, I still I can't really receive a compliment
about my intelligence.
That's something I still have to work on.
And I guess that just shows like those messages, whether or not they're from your caregivers or not, but from important people in your life at a young age, like they do stick with
And that that is something that I've had to really work on.
You know, I'm on this journey right now trying to learn how to trust myself and listen to myself.
And it's an ever-evolving process.
We all have to do it.
So I guess to wrap this up, to answer the question, should we push our kids?
Where do you think we've got on this conversation?
Well, I have always thought that we should.
I just I question if I ever push our girls too far into that level of frustration.
I think maybe just past the point like for me, maybe I push sometimes a little bit too far because I
can see their capabilities, but okay.
I want to do something very engineery with you first.
Sure.
Okay.
Okay.
Maybe this is the wrong use of the term.
Let's break it down to first principles.
I love that you're using this, yeah, okay.
Okay.
I'm taking off my mom triggered lens and I'm gonna put on my therapist hat.
Okay, so two different hats.
Let's break it down to first principles.
What's the most important thing our children always need from us?
Can you answer this?
Of course I can.
Okay, answer it.
Relationship.
To feel safe in relationship with us.
Our children need yeah.
That's what I meant
Right.
So I guess the question for you to ask yourself as you're pushing her is does she feel safe in relationship with me as I'm pushing her?
Because I feel like it can teeter on to you're pushing her so hard she's almost tearing up.
So maybe there's a way that you keep pushing her.
Try it again, try it again.
But you're also reminding her of why, like at the same time.
Like instead of just like do it again, do it again, do it again, you're saying, okay, I'm gonna get you to do it again because I know you're capable of doing this and I'm here beside you.
We're gonna try and do this together
Like maybe it's just a simple shift in your language just to let her know this is actually about a partnership and you helping her and showing her that she's capable rather than trying to please you.
That way you can just kind of have that off the table.
So if we break it down again, the first thing is
to be in solid relationship with you.
What's another important thing that a child needs?
This is actually a now a quiz for Scott.
I just want to see, you know, he said that's what I appreciate this.
You've said I ta I've taught you things, so now I'm like waiting to see what what you've learned
I don't know, now I'm on the hot seat.
Do you want me to answer for you?
No, no.
I'm not pushing you then.
No.
No, I need to push you.
I know.
You do.
I'm okay to be pushed.
I frustrate myself constantly.
Oh I know.
Maybe explain the process or why the process is important.
Well yeah, so I think that's that's a really important one.
what I was gonna say is like modeling.
Like they're gonna learn through what they see you do.
Right.
So if she's able to see you A tolerate frustration in healthy ways.
So like actually showing her or telling her a time, maybe a story.
of when you have had to do something that was hard for you and tricky, but you kept going and and you actually came to the other side, like telling her your own story of success and modeling to her how you've tolerated frustration
I think it'd be really helpful.
And so I we're talking a lot about karate, but this goes to like any skill that our child is learning.
Reading, writing, swimming.
Yeah.
That's just This is just the example that we we have right now, right?
How are you modeling to her the way that you can cope with frustration and keep going?
So I think it would actually be really beautiful for you to tell her a story of a time.
Hey, you know what?
When I was a kid, I actually really struggled doing these katas too
Like this was actually really hard for me.
And I kept trying to do it.
And eventually I learned how and it felt so good
Like I don't know, does that sit for you or is that not feel like an authentic thing that you could do?
Well, I kind of sound like an asshole when I say this, but karate was kind of easy for me.
It was more remembering the moves than how to do them well.
And I don't really remember like when I really started because I was pretty young.
So I don't
Truly I can't say that I truly remember that part of it.
Okay, but I want you to think bank or picture.
This is actually this is not about karate.
This is about teaching your child to keep trying even when something is hard
So this isn't just about karate.
The lesson you're teaching her right now has to do with trying something even though it was hard.
So you don't have to think of a story right now, but that is something that I want the listener to consider.
is telling your child your own story of resilience, I think can really help your child know that they're not alone and actually that if they keep trying, like there is hope on the other end.
Another really important thing, I'll stop quizzing you now, is uh trust.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Trust.
This is one of our four pillars on Nurtured First, is trust.
I trust that you are capable of doing this.
And also for you, trusting her timeline.
Every child's timeline at how quick they're going to learn something is different.
Some kids might take a little bit longer and need more practice, right?
Like I even think about a shy child who you just need to step back and and give them time to practice being comfortable and it will take them some time.
Other children, they learn very quickly.
They pick things up very fast.
But I want her to know that you trust she's capable and giving her that message that I trust that you're gonna learn this and you're gonna learn it in your own time.
But I'm right here with you every step of the way
So I think that's a really important piece.
And I I wonder even for myself, like how beautiful would it have been if someone said, just like I trust that you are capable of learning this and I'm gonna help you learn it.
so that you don't feel like you're alone.
I think that would have changed my life.
Like I feel like that would have been really beautiful.
Yeah, I agree.
And the final thing is unconditional love.
Like does she know that you love her no matter what?
Like if she tried it 30 times, she still can't get it.
I want the message at the end of that to be, and I still love you.
Your abilities never change my love.
Yeah
I think that's that's key.
So this was a messy conversation.
There was a lot that happened here.
Yeah, I feel like we jumped back and forth on a lot of different things.
My real hope that for the folks listening to this conversation is that you see the messiness in these very real discussions that parents have.
Like just because I'm an expert in child development doesn't mean that I have it all figured out
It doesn't mean that I'm not triggered by these things that happen.
Yeah, there's a lot of nuance in life.
And I feel like on social media or I mean it's really easy to market and there's one quick fix, but that's not real life.
My favorite saying is the most black and white saying, but it's nothing is ever black and white.
And I feel like that's the reality even for our lives too.
Like nothing is ever truly one clear definitive answer
for how to resolve a situation.
In in every situation, the lens that you're viewing it is based off your own experiences.
Yeah.
I can easily give tips and tools for parents that come into my office that struggle with the same thing
But when I'm viewing it of my own daughter, of course I'm gonna have my own wounds that come up.
And that's the important work is to be able to say, Oh
Maybe this isn't about what Scott is doing with our daughter.
Maybe this has something to do with myself.
But after having this whole discussion, actually I think you're doing pretty good.
You're doing better than I was giving you credit for.
Oh, finally.
Anyway, I I hope you enjoyed our messy conversation and we'll talk again soon.
Yeah, thanks for joining us.
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