A COUPLE of weeks ago, I shared how Julie Lythcott-Haims’s YouTube video, titled How to Raise Successful Kids—Without Over-Parenting, helped me discover the term “self-efficacy” in parenting. This week, let me continue with the excerpts that resounded with me, as well as continue with how I have applied her key points to my now 16- and 13-year old children.
Below are additional excerpts from the video that resounded with me:
“A second very important finding from the Harvard Grant Study said that happiness in life comes from love, not love of work [but] love of humans: our spouse, our partner, our friends, our family. So childhood needs to teach our kids how to love, and they can’t love others if they don’t first love themselves, and they won’t love themselves if we can’t offer them unconditional love.
“…My kids aren’t bonsai trees. They’re wildflowers of an unknown genus and species and it’s my job to provide a nourishing environment, to strengthen them through chores, and to love them so they can love others and receive love—and the college, the major, the career, that’s up to them. My job is not to make them become what I would have them become, but to support them in becoming their glorious selves.”
Let me share my personal journey based on my key takeaway points from the video on fostering self-efficacy with my own children.
1. Building the habits, mindset, skillset, wellness to be successful rather than imposing a “checklisted childhood” When my kids started pre-K to early grade school, my goal was never to see them in the honor roll. This was a bit tricky considering I enrolled them in the big school where I was constantly top of my class. But I never told my children this and I never cared that my children were not in the honor roll in their early years. What was important to me was to see how they learned and, most of all, what made them enjoy learning. I loved seeing those smiles, and witnessed as well the usual difficulties related to school. I tried to show them that difficulties could be turned into something fun, and every hard task was just like solving a puzzle. [This is why I strongly suggest parents to start with puzzle play as early as 2 years old because for me, I really feel it helped my kids to be psychologically strong when facing any difficulty.] Art-infused learning, which I have shared in previous columns, was very helpful for this. That is why even now, crayons, markers and compounds are still part of my highschoolers’ study desks.
2. Self-efficacy means allowing our children to do a whole lot more of the thinking, planning, deciding, doing, hoping, coping, trial and error, dreaming and experiencing of life for themselves, so they can see the outcomes of their own actions. For me, this starts with giving time for free play especially in their toddler years. Pretend play tools allowed my children to try and build on any activity from cooking, being a doctor, a newscaster or even a combination of roles. Moreover, it exposed my children to chores, and to the confidence at a young age that they can contribute to the “betterment of the whole,” which is their family.
As my children entered big school, I exposed them to various hobbies and sports. Meagan’s first sport was actually baseball. She at one point enjoyed makeup then modelling—which then expanded to fashion design, when she actually designed one of the girl shoes we produced. She worked hard as a basketball player in Grade 4 and eventually won her first team championship in MISA at Grade 6. It was never about seeing her excel at something. It was more for her to expose her “heart” to the delight of something new, to the yearning to do more if an activity really interested her, and to learn from mentors in that field.
3. Teaching our children how to love themselves, and supporting them as they become their glorious selves. Unconditional love is an everyday goal for me, and the best way I show this is respecting decisions that matter to my children most especially starting in their pre-teen years. I had to respect my son’s decision of quitting the violin after playing for eight years. I respected how he wanted to build a new hobby in basketball, even when he continues to thrive in fencing. He now plays both sports.
My daughter at 16 recently chose to join the Asia U23 Fencing Championships in Kuwait. She was the only junior women’s sabre fencer who represented the Philippines together with the eligible Senior Sabre National Team. It was a humbling experience to say the least. Here was the message I sent to her after I saw the results: “Saw the ranking. Proud of you, Ach. You are 16 and chose to compete at such a big competition! Wish mom was there to hug you so tightly. Pray and thank God for another one of your bold fights. Love you so much.”
I always emphasize to my children not to focus on the winning, but relish all the winning experiences… because those are what you remember meaningfully later in life.