During their child’s infancy, warm parents are highly attuned to their baby’s needs, and they meet those needs quickly and cheerfully. When the child is school-aged, warmth is the interest and empathy parents demonstrate toward their child. Warmth toward the adolescent is demonstrated by parents when they allow the teen to be independent as possible while continuing to “be there” for them as needed.
Good Warmth: Acceptance, Understanding, and Involvement
Acceptance does not mean that you approve of all that your child does. Rather, it means that the child, no matter what his behavior, remains precious to you. It means loving them when they are on a crying jag during infancy; it means loving them during their teens when they are trying on various identities and when they challenge or reject you.
Acceptance by both the mother and the father is important to the child. As it turns out, the father’s warmth and acceptance are predictive of both academic success and social competence. It is also associated with a low incidence of behavioral problems in adolescence. (Levine, 2006)
Understanding means seeing the child clearly, faults and all. It also means listening to him actively and patiently without rushing in with advice, which tends to limit understanding. Understanding develops over time, and it is only by spending time with the child that you get to know him intimately. Knowing him well makes it clear that the child is a unique individual and not just an extension of ourselves. (Levine, 2006)
Appropriately-involved parents step back as soon as possible at every stage of development while continuing to provide a safe home environment to which the child may retreat when things get rough. (Levine, 2006)
Bad Warmth: Over-Involvement and Parental Neediness
Over-involvement is unnecessary involvement that involves doing for our children rather than supporting their attempts to do for themselves. This slows the progress of the child toward independence. Over-involvement tends to begin in early childhood and can continue into the teen years and beyond and is often compensation for the parents’ guilt at not spending enough time with the child. Unless the child is engaged in unsafe behaviors, allowing him a certain amount of distance is important. It is best not to obsess over every detail of your child’s life—just let him live it.
Over-involvement in the lives of our children can cause other relationships, including that with the spouse, to suffer. If this occurs, parents can become overly-dependent on their child to fill the void in their lives. (Levine, 2006) When we fail to cultivate rich, rewarding relationships with other adults, we may turn to our children to fill this role. In doing so, we “sap children of the emotional energy and the sense of security they need to work on their own development.” (Levine, 2006, p. 140 )
One example of over-involvement is parents who allow the modern-day “threat” of their child not getting into an elite college, for example, to trigger the fight-or-flight response of our early ancestors. This reaction does not do the child any favors.
Over-involvement works against the child’s drive toward independence. In addition, it interferes with the development of important skills including the following:
• the ability to be a self-starter;
• the courage to engage in trial-and-error learning;
• the ability to delay gratification;
• the ability to tolerate frustration;
• the ability to exert self-control;
• the ability to learn from mistakes; and,
• the ability to be a flexible and creative thinker.
The development of all of these tools is essential for the child to manage well on his own in the world. When we intervene unnecessarily, we
inhibit the use of these tools by our child to solve his own problems, and in doing so, to feel competent. (Levine, 2006)
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References
Levine, M. (2006). The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressures and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids. New York: Harper Collins.
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