by Cheryl Donaldson, Licensed marriage and family therapist
As parents, we are raising children to navigate the unknown. The world today is nothing like the one we entered. Everything has shifted – tech, culture, education, work – and it will continue to shift in ways that we cannot predict despite our best efforts.
The question becomes: how do we prepare our children for a world we don’t yet understand?
In my 30+ years as a licensed marriage and family therapist, and in raising my own three children, I know that adult self-esteem is shaped in childhood. The small things we say to our children, and what we expose them to, have a profound and lasting impact on how they come to see themselves.
I define self-esteem as the internal confidence we have as individuals to tackle the unknown. That confidence is not built through belief alone; it is gained through incremental exposure to new and uncomfortable things.
With our children, this can begin in very small ways. It could be letting our child spend the night at their grandparents’ house, or letting them order for themselves at a restaurant. It’s bringing them into new social spaces where they have to learn to manage themselves in others’ presence. These moments may seem insignificant, but they compound internally during development. And as parents, we need to affirm them when they face challenges, even if it doesn’t go to plan. We can say things like, “I love how you navigated that situation!” or “That was so cool how you challenged yourself in that new environment.”
In our own family, we introduced this idea in both big and small ways. When my three boys were all under the age of five, my husband and I moved our family from Chicago to the Netherlands. It was a complete step into the unknown. They were suddenly immersed in a new language, a new culture and a completely different way of life. At every stage, we repeated the same message: you are capable.
That experience gave us, as a family, the opportunity to talk about differences, to stay curious rather than fearful, and to expand what felt familiar. At times, this was messy. It’s not always a perfect picture. That messiness is how you know you are putting them in new situations. If it were straightforward, then there would be nothing pushing them to learn new skills. Over time, I watched this shape how my children moved through the world. They became more adaptable and more open to engage with unfamiliar environments, while still staying connected to themselves.
We tend, as parents, to shelter our children from things that are different from them. When our child is struggling with something, we want to take that struggle away. This instinct comes from a loving place, but it often has the opposite effect. I once worked with a parent whose child became anxious if she was even a few minutes late for school pick-up. Her immediate instinct was to eliminate that anxiety. She would plan her whole day around not being late, stress about getting there, and over-apologise if she was late, as if it were a major mistake. That behaviour communicated to the child that his emotional response was valid and didn’t allow him to develop a new skill for coping with those difficult emotions.
Anxiety is our body’s way of communicating to us that we need a new skill. When we step in too quickly to remove that discomfort from our children, we prevent them from learning to tolerate it, manage it and move through it on their own. The more we solve our children’s problems, the more we communicate that they cannot solve them on their own.
This is not an argument for loose parenting. Our job as parents is to keep our children safe. They need structure to feel safe exploring that unknown territory. But there is a difference between protecting a child and preventing them from having experiences that help them grow. As parents, we need to cultivate intentional experiences that push them out of their comfort zones so they develop internal self-esteem and resilience. Again, this process can be messy. But it’s so important for the long-term growth of that child.
Adversity is something we do not want to remove from our children’s lives. It is that adversity that will produce the circumstances for them to grow. As parents, we have to decide how we are going to define adversity. In my practice, I’ve seen a child not being invited to a party, for example, quickly become catastrophic. Not because of the event itself, but because of how the parents interpret and react to it. Children absorb our reactions. If we respond with panic or distress to minor adversities, we reinforce the negative experience. If we respond with calm and perspective, they learn that they can move through it.
In many ways, we are helping our children create a story about what challenge means. Is it something to avoid, or something to move through? When we begin to frame challenges as something they are capable of handling, rather than something to fear, we lay the groundwork for something incredibly important: flexibility.
Flexibility is the ability to say, whatever situation is given to me, I am going to make the best of it. It is what allows a child to navigate not making a team, struggling in school, or facing disappointment without losing their sense of self. It is also what allows them, later in life, to adapt to careers, relationships and environments that do not go according to plan.
We are not raising children for a predictable world. We are raising them for an unknown one. And in that world, it will not be their environment that determines how they fare, but their internal capacity to meet it and thrive despite what comes their way.
Cheryl Donaldson is a licensed marriage and family therapist who works with individuals, families and organisations to build systemic self-esteem. Her cross-border private practice and consultancy firm is based in Charleston, South Carolina and London. For more information on her work please visit www.cheryldonaldsonlmft.com
