It was so good to finally have a full week of school! It is amazing what can get accomplished in 5 straight days – providing children, parents and staff the opportunity to taste the rhythm of a routine. We are definitely off to a great start!
Wednesday night I returned home from a late meeting to find my 14-year daughter sobbing at her desk. She had her math binder open in front of her, with her neatly written homework below. On the page I saw fractions, multiplication, integers – it all looked vaguely familiar from my days when I once had to convert algebraic fractions into like terms but definitely nothing that I could do today. When I asked her why she was crying she said, “I can’t do this assignment. I don’t understand it and I have already hit my wall in high school and we have only had 7 weeks of school!” Gabriella is a conscientious and very strong student – she is used to working hard and achieving immediate results – the discussion is usually whether she got a 98 or a 96 on a test. But this homework made her feel different, the work seemed beyond her, and experiencing the unfamiliar feeling of not being competent and confident really spooked Gabriella. She projected from this one night of difficult homework a lifetime ahead of academic failure!
My husband and I looked at Gabriella with a great deal of empathy – she comes by this neurosis honestly – with each of us having had a lifetime of experience of perfectionism, feeling overly driven to succeed, agonizing about tests, quizzes and papers, only to find that there is always another hurdle ahead. But we also have a deep commitment to helping Gabriella through this sort of moment, as we want our children to be able to weather these moments of challenge, insecurity, self-doubt and adversity with well-developed shock absorbers. We first expressed our unconditional love for our daughter – which has nothing to do with of whether she got a 97 or a 67 in school. We also tried to contextualize this experience – reminding her that this was only one day, and one homework assignment, and that she was likely to successfully solve these sorts of math problems after they were reviewed the following day in class. We encouraged her to close her books, wipe her tears and come for a bowl of ice cream. She smiled, knowing that she was likely to be less confused after another day or two in class with teacher support. But she remained upset.
My husband, who has a strong mathematical mind and is a patient teacher, offered to work with Gabriella to see if he could help her understand her homework. Indeed after about 30 minutes they were happily working at the desk, with Gabriella feeling a sense of renewed confidence and competence. But to me, this moment posed a deep parenting challenge: Was my husband offering helpful support or was this a moment of over-parenting? I questioned him, “doesn’t Gabriella need more experience and growing to better weather the moments when she feels flummoxed or confused?” As we explained to her, many students feel that way ALL the time in class! Gabriella has been blessed with an agile mind that easily succeeds in school and this will no doubt continue to be an asset for her. But don’t we want her to also be able to better tolerate the moments when she feels confused or is not immediately successful? Was the best thing we could offer as parents the help in understanding this mathematical question or the help of tolerating a slightly uncomfortable moment, and then feel the satisfaction the following day when she would either learn to solve the homework when it was reviewed, or go to the teacher for a bit of support?
I had just finished reading Madeline Levine’s book The Price of Privilege. She speaks of how children have not had enough opportunity to experience discomfort, self-management, and other important life skills because “parents are quick to limit their child’s frustration and distress… Our primary responsibility is not to gratify our children (which of course we do often, and happily) but to make certain that they develop a repertoire of skills that will help them meet life’s inevitable challenges and disappointments.” Now to be fair, my husband and I haven’t helped Gabriella with a homework assignment in probably a year, and I am sure that this one instance will not make or break my daughter! However, I am struck by Dr. David Fassler, a child and adolescent psychiatrist’s words, “in order to cope with normal frustrations, with ups and downs, we have to first experience them.”
Watching our children experience pain is not easy – especially when we are in the privileged position to swoop them out from these uncomfortable moments. And I do not believe that there is always one right answer to how we respond in these moments. However, I think that we need to balance our natural inclination to solve the short term difficulty (and convey our love, support and care) with our desire to communicate our confidence in our children’s ability to survive challenging moments and use the abundant resources available to them.
As I was finishing this newsletter, I showed it to Gabriella and asked her what she thought about the way we handled the situation. She said, “I did feel discomfort – I felt discomfort for about an hour while I struggled with the homework and had a lot of struggling feelings and tears!” So… perhaps we are on our way but she definitely has had a good life if she thinks one hour is enough suffering for now! She expressed that she didn’t feel over-parented or rescued, she felt like we were working on it together. Like everything in parenting, Gabriella reminds me that it is all about balance!
Ilana received her B.A. from Harvard College and a Master's Degree in Education from Bank Street College. She was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and now lives there with her husband and three children.
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