If you want your kids to grow up resilient, you need to practice responsive parenting.
That according to child psychologist Mona Delahooke who has written a book called “Brain-Body Parenting: How to Stop Managing Behavior and Start Raising Joyful, Resilient Kids”.
She said: “Relational neuroscience research is clear that what nurtures that [resilience] is responsive parenting.”
Responsive parenting vs gentle parenting
“Gentle parenting is not well-defined,” Delahooke says. “It’s not defined in the research. It’s a very catch-all term.
“What it really stands for is a parenting style that’s different from a generation ago."
Responsive parenting, though, is something Delahook and others in her field have defined.
“Responsive parenting is about meeting the child where they are and soothing them when their nervous system is in distress,” she says.
How does responsive parenting work?
Delahooke’s book challenges the assumption that kids act up for negative attention, to get something they want, or for no reason at all.
That assumption, she says, “leads to consequences” when you’re practicing traditional parenting.
“My approach questions that and says that actually children [behave] well when they can and when they can’t there is a reason,” she says.
“We believe that children want to please their parents.”
Emotional development
A child having a meltdown in a store because they aren’t being bought the snack they want is not intending to be ungrateful or difficult.
They just haven’t developed the emotional tools to deal with being let down.
But traditional parenting doesn’t really consider this.
“Traditional parenting is agnostic of social emotional development,” she says.
Traditional parenting
“Not only do you get mad at them, you blame them for being rude or you assign a motive that is negative to a very normal process of a child seeing something at the store and wanting to get it."
In responsive parenting, you acknowledge how they are feeling and validate that disappointment.
“You have to teach a child to regulate,” she says. “You build self-regulation through relationships of safety and trust.”
Does science support this method?
Approaching your child’s tantrum with empathy instead of judgment can affect their brain chemistry in a positive way.
“When disappointment is compassionately witnessed and you are emotionally soothing, the child’s brain and body stress response is reduced,” Delahook says.
“An adult’s caring presence changes the way a child’s body and brain responds to stress. It reduces the stress hormones.”
How does this help develop a resilient child?
When you allow a child to figure out how to handle unpleasant emotions by themselves, you’re increasing their ability to be flexible.
If you don’t let them struggle when they are having a tough time they “won’t develop resilience”, Delahooke says.