Parents who are self-reflective are better able to encourage their children to develop a good risk-taking style. Through self-reflection, you can determine your own risk-taking style and consider how it impacts your child’s style. You can come to understand both how your individual temperament and your upbringing affect your risk-taking style.
A parent’s risk-taking style is made up of temperament, experience, and parenting style. Parents who understand their own approach to risk-taking are better able to learn to modify their own behaviors, if necessary, in order to encourage their children to become good risk-takers.
Parents promote good risk-taking by encouraging their children to grasp at life’s opportunities and by helping them to tolerate set- backs.
Parental Self-Reflection Checklist (Davis, 2009)
1. Is my child’s risk-taking behavior triggering uncomfortable feelings (e.g., anger, anxiety, fear, or sadness) in me at this moment? If so, what are those feelings?
2. Why is my child’s risk-taking behavior making me feel this way?
3. Is this an expected/familiar feeling or is it surprising/new?
4. How is my behavior/reaction toward my child’s risk-taking affecting my child?
In addition to reflecting on your own reactions to your child’s risk-taking, you should try to understand how your risk-taking style was influenced by your family of origin.
Family of Origin Checklist (Davis, 2009)
1. What was your own childhood like? Think of both happy and sad times as well as the times when you felt angry.
2. What characterized your relationship with your parents? Did your parents cause you to feel safe or insecure? Happy or sad? Calm or anxious? Accepted or rejected?
3. What was your parents’ style? Were each of your parents similar to one another or were they different from one another? In what ways?
4. Were your parents kind and generous or harsh and punitive?
5. Were your parents shy and withdrawn (introverts) or social and gregarious (extraverts)?
6. How did you feel about your parents? Were you generally proud of them or did they make you feel ashamed/humiliated by
their behaviors?
7. Are your attitudes, behaviors, reactions toward your children similar to or different from those of your parents toward you?
8. How did you parents react to the risks you took (or didn’t take)? Were they anxious, fearful, supportive, or authoritarian? How did they handle your positive risks? Your negative risks?
9. How were feelings and emotional reactions managed or avoided?
10. How were transitions and separations handled?
11. How was limit-setting approached?
12. How were strong feelings handled?
13. How was discipline handled?
14. How were issues related to achievement taught?
15. Were issues related to sexuality discussed or avoided?
Once you have reflected on your own risk-taking style and your risk-taking legacy, consider how these two things affect your attitudes toward your child’s risk-taking. If you have a tendency to want to hold your child back from taking positive risks, determine ways in which you can modify your behavior to support positive risk-taking in your child and to comfort him when those risks lead to set-backs, partial successes, or failures. Try to be proactive in this. Determine how you will react, if at all possible, before it becomes necessary to react. This will lead to better outcomes for your child.
_____________________
References
Davis, S. and Eppler-Wolff, N. (2009). Raising Children Who Soar: A Guide to Healthy Risk-Taking in an Uncertain World. New York: Teachers College Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment