Parenting Through Mental Blocks: Patience, Progress, and Building Confidence

So Jennifer, our parent coach, so kindly reached out and said, "Hey, we've got a theme that's happening, so could you tackle this topic?" So here's our topic for the day: what to do when you are feeling like you are in limbo as a parent, watching your child attempt to work through a mental block and either stay stagnant and not show a lot of progress or actually regress, and you're starting to lose patience.

So we see this all the time.

This is literally why we have our community group, because this is part of the process.

And so I'll, I'll give you some insight into what's happening and why this is so normal and so, you know, not something to worry about.

But the first advice I will give, if you are feeling frustrated or you're watching your kid not get better at something, you have to start with you.

And there's a reason why we have an entire parent component in Perform Happy.

We started out working with just kids, but we realized that if the parents don't change their mindset, we can't thoroughly do our job, and we can't ensure lasting confidence.

So if you're frustrated right now, you are not a bad sport parent.

You are a parent who loves their kid and is scared, likely, because usually impatience or frustration has fear underneath it.

It might be a worry that she's gonna quit, that she's so talented, and what if she gives up on it? Or if it was all for nothing, or you've made all these sacrifices just for her to feel bad, or she's falling behind her teammates.

I mean, you see this adolescent who is falling apart, who is not having fun, who's not believing in herself, and yeah, there's fear as a parent that we wanna make sure that we're setting her up for confidence, for joy.

So if you can name that first, find the fear and name it.

You know, if I get frustrated because my eight-year-old doesn't wanna try new things because she has anxiety, I tend to get mad, like, "Come on, Violet, just try something.

Just please, will you just go to one class?" And she's like, "No." And so my fear is, oh my gosh, this kid can't do hard things, or she's not gonna have skills, or she's not gonna feel confident.

I mean, I have this sort of zoomed-out lens of, what if she's weird? You know? But that's just my fear, because really, she's a super cool kid, and anyone who knows her is like, "That kid is gonna be fine." So you name your fear, because otherwise it's gonna leak out into those car rides or those, like, getting stressed and, you know, that frantic problem-solving that just makes our kids roll their eyes at us.