Be There For Your Child

Want to raise the best kids? Child experts Daniel J Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson explain how you can do just that by simply showing up

Raising children in 2020 isn’t easy. There are so many challenges – being a single parent; having fewer support structures as we live in urban areas with our families far away from us; not having had any guidance on how to parent a child in a world filled with new technology and dangers our parents never faced.

And even worse, we can’t turn to our elders for help because their views on parenting are often so different from ours.

Luckily there are experts out there who can help. And the solution doesn’t always require a great deal of money. To raise the best children, all you need to do is be there for them, say child experts Daniel J Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson.

In this extract from their new book, The Power of Showing up, they tell you how to do it.

TAKE a moment and imagine a day in the future when your child, now an adult, looks back and talks about what it was like having you as a parent. Maybe he’s talking to a spouse, or a friend, or a therapist – someone he can be brutally honest with.

Perhaps he’s holding a cup of coffee, saying, “My mom, she wasn’t perfect, but I always knew she loved me just as I was.” Or, “My dad was always in my corner, even when I got in trouble.”

Would he say something like that? Or would he end up talking about how his parents always wanted him to be something he wasn’t or didn’t take the time to really understand him?

We all know the cliché of the dad who wants his non-sporty son to be an athlete, or the mom who expects her child to get straight As, regardless of whether the child has the aptitude or inclination to do so. These are examples of parents who fail to see who their kids really are.

How do you avoid being that kind of parent? You don’t have to be perfect. All you have to do is show up for your kids.