You’re already doing so much right: Ways parents help kids build skills through modeling
I find myself talking to the parents of both my therapy and testing clients a lot about skill building. So much about growing up is learning the skills necessary to navigate what life throws at us. Parents, teachers, and other helpers are responsible for both doing this themselves and teaching kids what they can about doing hard things or understanding the world better. I was talking to a friend and peer in the field recently about the conversations I keep having, and she said something that stood out. “Parents are already doing a lot,” she said. “And they might not realize the seeds they’re planting.”
So I’ll say this to you because I say it to parents and caregivers all the time: You are already doing so much right.
I wonder if you even realize the ways you are helping your kids build “person skills” (emotional, behavioral, executive functioning, and beyond) just by living. In this post, I’m laying out some of the skills I notice most, and a few ways you can keep doing what you’re already doing - with an added layer of intention and thoughtfulness - to continue building self-esteem, self-awareness, and ability in your amazing kids.
Modeling can be boiled down into something fairly simple: Be a person in front of your kids. Now, this doesn’t mean you pull your kids into every internal struggle you experience, confide in them when you should confide in friends or therapists, or make them witness to all hardships. It simply means showing them that you, a person they love, respect and trust, can do hard things, too. The goal is to normalize things like having big emotions, being disappointed, navigating change, tolerating frustration, or encountering tough topics with compassion.
Example 1: Emotion Regulation
Here in Atlanta, we spend a lot of time on the road and a lot of time in traffic. We’re unfortunately famous for it! I’m certain you've been stuck in traffic with your kid in the car, both of you hungry, tired, and frustrated. When this happens, tell your kid! Then, tell them what helps you. Maybe it’s playing your favorite song, telling a story, or having that snack you keep in your bag for these moments. Yes, this is simple. It’s supposed to be! You could even ask them for ideas on ways to make the trip a little less irritating. It can be really cool to have your kid guide you through a deep breathing exercise they learned in therapy, ask you to play their favorite podcast, or tell you jokes, which are all ways they can show you their understanding of strategies for keeping cool when frustrated. This can easily apply to things like navigating changes in plans, missing an opportunity, or doing a new thing that’s kind of hard or takes practice.
Example 2: Disappointment and Tolerating Frustration
I talk to kids a lot about these two things, because they are simply still learning to navigate them. It feels so icky to be disappointed or frustrated, no matter how old you are, and kids have a lot of opportunities to experience big wins, as well as big moments of disappointment or frustration.
Let’s take the example that I use intentionally in my office - one that any therapist who works with kids will back me up on: playing Uno. We know and love/hate the game in all its iterations, and we all have been on the losing side of that dreaded draw four stack. What do you do when that happens? Do you cry or yell or throw your cards down and leave the table? You get the benefit of the doubt while I assume you, the grown up, can probably push through and keep going, even as you draw eight cards and add them to your handful. In my experience, this simple act of not getting overly worked up when something is frustrating is shockingly huge for kids to see. It doesn’t mean they won’t get upset when you lay down a skip, reverse, draw two triple play, but simply seeing you laugh your way through drawing card after card or forgetting to call “Uno!” helps them see that it’s not that serious and that whether you win or don’t, the game and connection are still safe and fun.
As for disappointment, Uno can still work - how do you act when you lose? How does that behavior show your kid the ways they can respond when their soccer team doesn’t win the game? Not only does the way you model the same behavior teach possible strategies to your kids, it also reflects permission for how they can behave. If you talk smack about your own team after your rec baseball game in front of your kid, why can’t they do the same? If you’re disappointed in a loss or how something turned out, you can return to Example 1 and consider how you can show your kid ways you regulate.
Example 3: Practicing Self-Compassion and Self-Love
Kids and teens get a lot of messaging about body image and food from external sources like social media and TV. While some of these are health promoting, positive, or neutral about bodies and food, others can be harmful and stigmatizing, leading to negative perceptions about body-image, concerns around eating and exercise, and more. While I am not a feeding/eating or eating disorder specialist, these things come up with clients often. One of the things I think parents can do with general ease is to create an environment at home that values nutrition and self-compassion around bodies and food. The way you talk about your own body and eating habits set the stage for how your child perceives themselves, their attitudes, and their behaviors around these same topics.
Regardless of your personal choices - those are yours and yours alone - if you spend a lot of time talking about diets or food restriction or commenting about other’s bodies, your child internalizes those things as normal and important because you are their safe source for information. When you model self-compassion and listening to your body, your kid can learn to do this too. This can look like honoring hunger and cravings, prioritizing nutritional choices alongside tasty ones, not naming specific foods as good or bad, and even showing compassion and love for your own body when it changes. All of these help a child of any age develop perceptions around themselves and their bodies that avoid harm.
I hope that you can find something relatable within these examples, or connect them to your own life and your own kids. While we may not find perfect “teachable moments” in our every day like they walked right out of a text book, I assure you that they’re there! I encourage you to notice where and how you are already teaching your kids skills that will benefit them as they grow, and how your awareness of this benefits them!
In future posts, I hope to interrogate more ways you can help your kids build skills by adding intention to your daily life - let me know your thoughts and interest level about things like building media literacy skills, challenging assumptions, or finding patterns to build executive functioning skills!
In this with you,
Katie
References:
Berkel, C., Sandler, I. N., Wolchik, S. A., Brown, C. H., Gallo, C. G., Chiapa, A., Mauricio, A. M., & Jones, S. (2018). "Home Practice Is the Program": Parents' Practice of Program Skills as Predictors of Outcomes in the New Beginnings Program Effectiveness Trial. Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research, 19(5), 663–673. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-016-0738-0
Burstein, M., & Ginsburg, G. S. (2010). The effect of parental modeling of anxious behaviors and cognitions in school-aged children: an experimental pilot study. Behaviour research and therapy, 48(6), 506–515. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2010.02.006
Carter, J.S., Smith, S., Bostick, S. et al. Mediating Effects of Parent–Child Relationships and Body Image in the Prediction of Internalizing Symptoms in Urban Youth. J Youth Adolescence 43, 554–567 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-013-9985-6
