Trust and success

In the movie we saw yesterday about the rescue dogs, part of the film was following the training of a puppy through to her passing her search and rescue dog test. As the puppy was being trained, her partner/trainer said (in regards to training search and rescue dogs), "They have to trust you completely. And we do everything we can to make sure they succeed." (If that's not a word for word quote, the meaning is exactly the same.) It struck me because this is pretty much what my parenting model has become; it is connected parenting in a nutshell.

Now, before everyone goes and gets their pants in a knot saying that there is also a lot of operant conditioning in dog training and we shouldn't treat our children like dogs, I know that. That is not the point I am trying to make. The focus on trust and success is my point. 

There is no relationship without trust, and trust first has to be earned. In a newborn-parent relationship, that trust is earned every time a baby cries and the parent meets the need. If a baby's needs are not met by the parent, trust does not develop, but attachment problems do. To build trust with a person whose first relationship was broken, even if it was broken with good intentions, requires greater effort. It often means revisiting those newborn days on some level. 

Think about it. A newborn learns to trust their parents when the baby can offer nothing in return... not obedience, not compliance, not good behavior, nothing. The effort comes solely from the parent meeting this tiny human's needs. The baby receives (in a good scenario) everything they need just because they are valuable because they exist. Contrast this with a child entering a new family at an older age. So much of their existence can often be conditional: rewarded for good behavior and punished for poor behavior, or at least what is judged to be good or poor behavior. Yet the unconditional care and love of a newborn, that is with no strings attached and simply because the child exists, is exactly what they need. This is how trust is built. Without trust, nothing else can happen.

Let's move on to ensuring that whoever is doing the learning will succeed. This seems to be more difficult than it would seem on the surface. Sure, adults say they want children to succeed in what they do, but I'm afraid that a spoken goal is very different in practice. There are so many different examples. The easiest are teachers who create tests to be purposefully difficult, taking pride in how many of their students fail. I have news for them. Tests are not really a learning vehicle, but tests created to be failed by the majority can certainly be punitive ones. Or the parent who asks questions waiting to trap a child. You know the type, "Who broke this vase?" is a mild one. Even if there is significant trust between parent and child, this type of question is very difficult for a child to answer honestly. If a child is still developing trust for their parent then it is virtually impossible.

The list of examples can go on and on... 

• Giving schoolwork that will prove to be too challenging in the misguided hope that the child will learn to push themselves
• Sports lessons which reward students who are doing well with more playing time while making the students who struggle sit out when they do something wrong
• Leaving something that would be a temptation to steal out for a child who struggles with this

I know first hand how difficult it can be to both want my child to succeed and to create ways for that to happen. When you find yourself wanting your child to fail in order to prove how very difficult that child is and how unfair it is to you to have to continue to raise them, then that is the moment when things need to change. Helping your child to succeed doesn't mean you then lose. In families, the only time the family wins is when everyone wins. Life if a cooperative game, not some bizarre winner-take-all version of Life.

Allow your child to succeed. Sometimes to encourage success we set the bar to high, making it impossible, thinking that somehow easy success doesn't count. Think about how you would feel, or possibly do feel, if the bar to success always felt impossibly high; that even "easy" success always seemed out of your reach. Would you want to keep trying? What if you were in a job where you felt this way but also felt trapped because it was the only option? Would you think,"Well, I'll just try harder and I'll get there someday and then everyone will appreciate me," or would you think, "I don't know why I even bother to try. I can't do anything right, no one likes me, they are think I'm stupid and maybe I am"? If you are raising a child who is learning to trust, which of these thoughts do you suppose they have much of the time? 

I know which I answered. It was not an easy question to ask... or answer. It was not complimentary to my parenting nor to my stated goal of wanting this child to succeed. In answering this question, I also realized that I had to be the one to change. I had to turn that child back into an infant in my head and have the same expectations... which would be nothing. At that moment, the ground shifted and the healing began even though it would be years before it came to fruition. 

So you want the best parenting advice I can give? Two things. Just two.

1. Build trust with your child. They have to know deep, deep down that you are on their team no matter what. 

and 

2. Make sure they can succeed. There is no tricking or motivating or coercion, just creating a place where they can feel successful and capable and valuable. Even if that success seems small to you, it is still a big thing.