Parenting is always a fine line between pushing your kids too hard and letting them fall behind; between taking an interest and interfering; between listening and prying. We all want the best for our kids, whether it be in their personal life, their education or their career – it can just be really hard to know exactly how to help them get there. Often years later, we look back and think ‘ah, now I can see what they needed – I wish I’d realized at the time.’ Hindsight is a beautiful thing! But luckily broadly speaking, there are a few simple ways you can make sure you’re doing the right thing for your kids without being overbearing.
- Education
This is a fairly obvious one, but frankly, it’s one that gets overthought a lot. You want your kids to have a great education – period. You could send them to one of the best private schools in Canada or you could send them to your local high school, but either way, it just needs to be a place that’s going to foster their individual talents. If your child loves theatre and acting and you send them to an academically rigorous school with fantastic grades but low interest in the arts, they aren’t going to fulfill their potential or pursue that talent and they’ll be miserable. Similarly, if your child is bookish and academic and you send them to the local school with the best reputation for sports and not much else, that’s not great either. Use your common sense to pick a well-regarded school, but also be led by your child and who they are.
- Self-esteem
Growing up is hard, and keeping a firm hold on your sense of self and feeling good is often one of the hardest things about it. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the hardest things to reinforce as a parent – how can you let them know they’re perfect the way they are without activating that teenage eye roll and being ignored? Sometimes, actions speak louder than words in this context, and a thoughtful gift like the best earrings for kids or some tickets to a movie they’ve wanted to see can be the best way to make sure they feel loved and valued, without having to actually put them through the ordeal of hearing it, which would be very uncool.
- Career
Increasingly, our kids are moving into careers in web and tech sectors that just didn’t exist a couple of decades ago, so it’s even harder than it might have been to offer them any advice. How can you advise on something you’ve never gained any experience in? Luckily, there are a few things that span across most tech sectors that you can at least pretend to understand – and the need for link-building is one of them an effective SEO and link-building strategy will be an important part of any company’s marketing strategy, and you can take an interest without having to ask too many questions they won’t want to answer by recommending a site like Rexoriginals.com which works in this niche. They’ll be pleased you’re taking an interest and hopeful a tiny bit impressed that you know what link-building is, but they won’t feel like you’re trying to pry into their life.
So there you have it – one of the most difficult things about parenting can be knowing how involved you ought to be in your kid’s lives. Sometimes, they want us to leave but clearly need us around – sometimes, we want to stay but they’re clearly fine on their own. The best way to establish a lasting understanding and confidence in your relationship is to be led by them, and to always do your best to walk the line between interfering and taking an interest carefully.
