Bonus Episode: Long-Game Parenting
In this bonus episode of the ParentWhys podcast, the mother-daughter host duo talk to Amber Ito, a marriage and family therapist who specializes in children with special needs. Amber and Carrie reflect on past adventures in parenting and those times gave birth to the idea of long-game parenting, seeing the future so as to not be overwhelmed by the present.
Carrie and Amber talk about the fundamental beliefs of long-game parenting: training children for adulthood, making sure children feel safe while going through rough time, and stop children from committing catastrophic mistakes, while not trying to fix them or stop their emotional experiences. A parent’s responsibility is to allow a child to practice what feels frustrating and help them journey through that. Carrie also imparts some long-game parenting do’s that parents should consider.
One of these long-game parenting do’s Amber expounds upon is that children should be able to take time to discover the outside and their inner world, being able to process what is happening in their environment and internally, instead of being over-programmed and not given the space to be a child. Another long-game parenting ‘do’ is having a willingness to learn about oneself as a parent, and make the necessary, and perhaps difficult, changes—since parents are models for their children, and children mimic behaviors and beliefs.
Carrie explains how it is important to show your children how to develop a kinder inner voice. Our inner voice remains with us our whole life, and it steers us towards both good and bad behavior. Parents are advised to help children develop their own control and autonomous decision-making by giving them choice, because, ultimately, a parent cannot control what his or her child does.
The episode concludes with encouragement to parents to share their own mistakes, embarrassments, and struggles with their child, and let them inside their world. It’s important for a child to see how a parent struggles and overcomes the struggle, as those will be the struggles might experience later on in their adulthood.
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