In this episode, Lauren explores what it means to truly accept your child when they’re struggling, and why acceptance isn’t about giving up. Through insights from thinkers like Carl Rogers, we discuss how embracing where your child —academically, emotionally, or behaviourally—can be the first step toward growth. Acceptance is about seeing your child’s journey as it is, supporting them along the way, and understanding that from this place of acceptance, positive change becomes possible.
TRANSCRIPTION
Acceptance – meeting your child where they are
Today, I want to talk about acceptance and what it means when your child is struggling.
If we think about the change cycle, the change cycle starts with denial, and it moves through a series of different points, not necessarily in it, well definitely not in a linear way, but it moves into and out of anger, bargaining and depression and maybe back to denial. The goal is to try to get you to accept.
But acceptance is such an interesting thing for a parent to get to or to think about getting to, because in some ways, we understand the word acceptance as giving up.
I really want to talk about how acceptance is absolutely not giving up. Acceptance for me is understanding what is and the current situation you find yourself in, and accepting that to be true, and then moving out of that, rather than this idea of accepting and then letting it be at that and not doing anything about it.
I lean into quite a few sorts of really big thinkers in the 1900s. If you look at Carl Rogers, he was an American psychologist, and he spoke about the curious paradox that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. That really sums up what I think of acceptance as. What I’m thinking of when I’m asking a parent to lean into where their child is right now and who their child is.
Michelangelo, who sculpted David, was asked the question, how did you get to the statue of David, and he said David was always in the rock. He was already there. It was the pieces that weren’t David that needed to be chipped away. And I think that’s what I’m trying to do with children. That’s what I’m trying to Feuerstein, the founder of Mediated Learning, he said, ‘if you love me, don’t accept me for what I am’.
If we can hold both of those together, then we can find acceptance for what is, and then we can move beyond that and understand that children can grow and develop, and that’s their goal, that’s their role. And when we accept and do nothing about it, especially when a child is as young as six or seven or younger than that or even slightly older.
So the first step is to, as far as possible, lean into exactly who your child is. Accept them for where they are, for the struggles that they are experiencing, whether it be academic, behavioural, or emotional. They are where they are at. They cannot be any place other than there. They can’t be at the top of the mountain when they’re at the bottom of the mountain. Their journey is to get to the top.
