Let’s face it. Children do not come with an instruction manual. I have two highly sensitive children and I freely admit that there are some aspects of my parenting which I would approach differently, given my time again.
But we can only do our best with the knowledge and resources we have at the time.
The thing is that we often follow the lead given to us by society, rather than following our gut instinct and this can sometimes be less than helpful.
I have certainly found this to be the case when parenting my sensitive children. Often the advice I had access to when they were small involved “pushing through” their shyness/sensitivity/discomfort so that they would “learn to cope” with the harsh realities of life (be that school, friendships or extra-curricular clubs).
They need to learn to get over it, they said. They need to do it to fit in, they said. I don’t usually swear in my blogs, but I feel so passionately about this that I’ll make an exception: I have found this to be utter BS.
In actual fact, I have found the opposite to be the case. When I realised that what I was doing was not working and I removed all the pressure and expectation from them, they felt seen and heard and that’s when they developed their resilience.
I find it sad that in a world where we generally strive to be so much more accepting of individuality, there is still so much pressure on boys (in particular) to conform to a traditional stereotype of masculinity.
The following 5 pieces of advice (which I gleaned through trial and error over the last 5 years) have proved to be far more useful.