Parents nowadays try to please every child’s need and can easily take over if the child starts nagging and crying if something seems hard for them to do. This, of course, leads to rigidness in thought and laziness and it can eventually cause a lot of difficulties in their future growth.
Have you been held to high expectations? How many of the things you were expected to achieve have you really achieved?
Without knowing you, I can assure you that if you took those expectations seriously, your efforts in living up to them made you a stronger and more responsible person (regardless of whether you have achieved the expected result in the end).
Expectations come from the idea that the person you hold those expectations to is CAPABLE of meeting them. You cannot hold someone to high expectations if you know that they are not capable of doing it. Expectations correlate with the abilities that the person possesses and are a very natural response.
Now, if you looked it the other way around, the person who is held to high expectations will feel the pressure to meet those expectations.
The privilege of being expected to do something (because you are capable of doing it) comes with the respective responsibility.
It doesn’t really matter if you feel capable of doing it – you’ll have to make everything in your power to achieve it. And here comes the growing process. While you try to meet someone’s expectations, you begin to combine your abilities in a different, unique setting that will allow you to achieve the results.
If you read carefully so far, it all comes to this: The way to achieve something depends on the person; the ability is something every person constructs on the way; the lessons stay for life.
The further you go in life, the higher the threshold will become and thus the expectations too. This means that with every stage of your growth, the difficulty of the tasks will grow too. So, the best time to start building this ability is from an early age.
The fact is that it’s not your child being incapable of doing whatever they are supposed to. You think that if you leave them on their own in such situations where they feel frustrated, it would cause them ‘traumas’ and ‘frustrations’ that would hold them back.
You think that the stress you feel when someone holds you to high expectations may be too big for them, so you spare them from it.
With that, you unfortunately spare them from the growth they need to achieve to become complete individuals capable of finding the appropriate patterns to achieve ANYTHING in life.
So, how to start having high expectations from your child and have them realize that they are capable of achieving them?
First, you need to KNOW that your child is capable of so much more. Every new challenge comes with its own difficulties and you need to let them face them and overcome them.
Being a supportive parent means just that – being SUPPORTIVE, not doing their chores, learning their lessons or finishing off where they started. Consult with your children, help them figure it out and do it – but never take up their role.
It may be harder for them to face the challenge without your mingling, but the long-term effects of this approach are worthwhile.
It has been proven time after time that teachers who hold their students to high expectations see those same students succeed (I am a teacher and I do this all the time). While the teacher is primarily focused on what the student needs to learn from their lessons, parents are their children’s teachers for life.
Of course, expectations you can have on your child depend on their age and capability. Don’t forget that you should expect as much as you can get from your child.
The key is your ability to recognize their current capabilities and skills and recognize if they are able to combine them. Don’t hold your children to expectations they can’t live up to and respect their abilities.
And don’t forget that you CAN’T FORCE your child to meet your expectations. If your child is ‘slacking’ and is being lazy, you should let them be. In the end it’s enough to truly show your disappointment.
Every child wants to see their parents happy, so be true to how you feel about it and they will see their errors and try to fix them.
Hold your children to high moral, personal, educational, social (and you name it) expectations. Let them know that you believe in their capability of handling tasks as they come and help them go through them by supporting them emotionally and psychologically.
What your child learns during young age will reflect throughout their whole life. So, I am holding you to this high expectation: Help your children face their odds by letting them know that you expect that from them. Don’t take over because you feel ‘sorry’ for their short-termed frustration on the way.
Hold your children to high expectations and see them bloom!
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A professional writer with over a decade of incessant writing skills. Her topics of interest and expertise range from health, nutrition and psychology.
