Making space for discomfort

Remember when there was nothing to do in the backseat but look out the window or bother your neighbor? (SDASM Archives)

When my siblings and I were little, my parents didn’t have special “kid dishes.” They served us scrambled eggs on bread plates.

Sometimes, the bread plates would run out, and they’d serve scrambled eggs on a saucer. Like all annoying kids, we might complain about it once we ate enough eggs to discover the indentation where the teacup was supposed to go.

My dad, undaunted, tricked us into believing we had won something special. He had a special song, like a fanfare: “The secret ring! You’ve found the secret ring!” Mollified or perhaps even pleased, the secret-ring-haver would would go back to eating their eggs.

As one of four kids, I was used to this kind of thing. For legitimate logistical reasons, we didn’t always get what we wanted. We learned how to want the things we had. And because this was part of the family culture, my parents were emboldened to take this further. They didn’t mind saying no to things and felt no qualms about limiting our exposure to things we might have the potential to want. For instance, since we didn’t watch Saturday morning cartoons, we didn’t know about all of the possible toys and breakfast cereals. And our only family vacation that was not a visit to extended family was in Maine — and we already lived in Maine.

I wasn’t always happy with, say, my early curfew and limited options for attending college, but in retrospect, I appreciate most of the decisions my parents made. And as my world has expanded and I’ve become more familiar with other parenting philosophies, I am downright grateful for my parents’ comfort with the word “no” and their emphasis on self-sufficiency.

I grew up with limits — my parents functioned, to a degree, as gate-keepers, gradually easing restrictions until we kids reached adulthood and were responsible for all of our own choices. On the other hand, many of the parents I’ve encountered in my career as an educator operate as concierges, curating experiences for their children and providing them with everything they could possibly need or want in the realm of material possessions.

This approach isn’t fundamentally wrong — it’s just different. The problem comes when parents, taking on the role of a child’s tour guide through life, want to save them from every hassle or hardship. Since solving problems is how we grow, these parents are depriving their child of opportunities for growth.

Sometimes, parents want to save themselves from hassle and hardship, and they streamline life to the point where their child has had every privilege but such limited life experience that they reach their teen years without know how to identify coins, tell time on an analog clock, ask for help, make their own breakfast, or deal with boredom.

Discomfort is not necessarily a bad thing — it’s a trigger for learning and growing. When I want something I don’t have or have something I don’t want, I have to figure out how to deal with it. This may take some time, and a temper tantrum may well be part of the process. If someone steps in to resolve my discomfort for me by giving me what I want or taking away the thing I don’t want, I have missed out on a key developmental process and strengthened my reliance on someone else instead of myself. Ten or fifteen years later, I’m not going to be a very effective adult.

Instead of resolving the discomfort, a parent can model the problem-solving process in various ways. By singing “The Secret Ring” song, my dad was demonstrating a way of reframing the situation. That’s just one example. A parent can help the child to recognize her choices, to script appropriate responses, and to take action. And, of course, the parent can guide the child as she practices the practical skills necessary to carry out the solution (“Here’s how you know it’s time to flip the pancake over”). And sometimes, the parent’s job is to simply hold space for a fellow struggling human (“I’m sorry you’re upset. It’s disappointing to run out of strawberries when you really wanted some.”) We don’t always need to fix it, and it’s better if we don’t.

I’ll admit, I do feel sheepish providing parenting advice without any children of my own. But time and time again, I’ve seen that a lot of parents are afraid to upset their children, and their children are suffering as a result. I’ve had to coach teachers on this, too. Sometimes we have to do the “mean” thing and give a kids work to do. We’re going to make them mad. And that’s okay. To use an old-fashioned cliché that has a bit of wisdom to it: It’s for their own good.

We don’t need to provide kids with every possible life-enriching experience and support their every glimmer of interest with expensive lessons and equipment. Most of all, we need to let them develop self-efficacy and meaningful skills, including the ability to overcome the frustration and disappointment of things not going their way. To do this, we need to allow things to not go their way all the time. It may seem unkind, but it’s actually an act of love.