Expert Support for Parenting Your Teen or Young Adult Resources For Parents & Providers August 2024 Newsletter “Parenting Advice From a Tree” |
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“After being planted in the ground, it requires daily watering and nurturing. And then, nothing happens: Despite the effort, days, weeks, months, and even years go by with no signs of any growth. Two years, three years, four years pass, with continued daily inputs and not so much as a break in the surface to show for it. But suddenly, in the fifth year, everything changes: The Chinese bamboo tree breaks through the surface, and in the span of just six weeks, grows up to 90-feet-tall.” |
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It occurs to me that parenting (and doing the work of supporting families), like most hard, important and meaningful things in life, is a delicate balance between being proactive and patient. Especially during those transition years of adolescence and young adulthood, even more so when your child is struggling with a mental health issue, parenting requires a constant yin and yang of showing up everyday and reminding yourself that change takes time. Like the bamboo tree, our kids require constant attention: they need our support, even when they are pushing us away, they need our advice, even when it makes them aggressively roll their eyes, they need our help with schoolwork and rides to soccer and navigating inevitable friend drama. If your child is struggling with something like an eating disorder or anxiety or depression, they likely need even more from you: help finding a therapist, support during meals, encouragement to use skills, most often when they don’t want to. Our kids require the warmth of our sun and the quench of our watering. Like the tree, they will not thrive without getting what they need. We have to be proactive in our support. |
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So soothing to look at too. |
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But, like the bamboo tree, growth is not usually obvious. Or linear. Or fast. Personal growth, like setting down deep roots, tends to hide beneath the surface, particularly in the beginning. So we need to balance that proactive work with a great deal of patience. We can spend months, even years, pouring into our kids without feeling like we are seeing the changes we want for them. And this is where things get hard. “This isn’t working” is the sneakiest form of self-sabotage. It is impatience wrapped up in, what feels like, evidence of a lack of progress, which puts us at great risk of giving up. Patience is inherently an act of faith. It is an act of great trust in the process. A process that believes if you keep showing up, if you keep doing the work, in time, things will shift. You must believe in the process and trust that growth is happening, even when you can’t see it. (And that is super hard. I guess that's why they call it a virtue?!) |
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But, let's be really clear: this isn’t about doing nothing and waiting around. So ask yourself this: - Am I doing everything (that is reasonable and sustainable) in my control?
- Can I cultivate more patience?
If your answer to the first question is NO, explore your options. If your answer to the first question is YES, go onto the second question. (Where I think most of us can can YES and I have some ideas below to get you started.) And if you are looking for ways to be more proactive but you aren’t sure where to start, September 8-Week Virtual Course + Cohort (Only a few spots!) October 1-Day Virtual Workshop (co-hosted with The Eating Disorder Foundation) November 2-Day EFFT Caregiver Workshop (In Person; Denver, CO) Every one of these offerings will help you, not only add tools to the toolbox of things to be more proactive, but also help you develop a strategy to establish what is in your control, so you can be sure you are being as effective as possible with your time and energy in your support of your teen or young adult or the families you work with. |
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Here is to finding your own balance of being proactive and being patient. You've got this, |
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