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Principle #9: Support Their Struggles
My kids are headed back to school soon, and they will be doing all sorts of assessments to see how they’re doing in math and reading and writing. And this got me thinking. I need to do a series of mini-podcast episodes during this back-to-school season for moms to assess how they are doing, not with balancing equations or diagramming sentences (because I have a feeling most of us would fail those assessments), but to assess something way more important: our own levels of emotional wellbeing.
You may be thinking, is there an assessment for that? And I am glad to inform you that. Yes. Yes, there is!
A few years ago, I took everything I’d learned from interviewing over 300 experts in parenting and self-development and I boiled it down to six (*formerly nine!) principles of self-assured motherhood. These were the common threads that I found between all of the experts. I realized that if we, as overwhelmed moms, could master these areas, we would have so much more joy, more connected relationships, and more inner peace.
I put these principles into a framework and created a self-assessment that overwhelmed moms could take that would go along with this framework. This way, they could concretely figure out how they’re doing emotionally and would be able to see visually where they are thriving and where they deserve to put more attention.
These principles will be the basis for this SAM Framework mini-series.
So, let’s dive into the LAST principle!
Principle #9: Support Their Struggles
You’ve probably noticed throughout this series that I made all of the SAM principles alliterative. I’m a former high school English teacher, and I love poetric devices and I think deeply about words, so it was super fun for me to play with the titles and find the perfect verb to capture the principle in an alliterative way.
So it was no accident that I chose the verb SUPPORT their struggles instead of something like “solve their struggles” or “save them from their struggles,” “stress out about their struggles” or “shame their struggles.” Because those are all things that we as mothers are tempted to do when our children are going through difficult times–we want to solve it and save them from it, or we want to shame them for it, hoping that our disapproval might actually help them approve. These instincts are completely natural! But they don’t actually work–we can’t save our children from their struggles or shame them into changing–and it’s counterproductive to their growth when we try to. Our children need to experience hard things in order to grow, and the best thing we can do is walk beside them and support them, without taking on their problems as our own.
When I look up the definition of “support” in the dictionary, I see a bunch of definitions that I think are really illuminating when you think of them in the context of parenting our children through hard times. I’m going to read these slowly, so you can think about each one and visualize how you might support your child in these ways as they struggle.
- to bear or hold up; to serve as a foundation for
- to sustain or withstand without giving way
- to undergo or endure, especially with patience or submission; tolerate.
- to maintain by supplying with things necessary to existence
- to advocate
- to act with; to assist in performance
For me, all of these definitions give a visual of me standing right beside my child doing what I can to guide them, listen to their big emotions, help them seek resources, and journey with them–without the visual of me removing the load from them and carrying it myself.
It can feel completely overwhelming when you have a child struggling with something, big or small. In my Self-Assured Motherhood program, we focus one of our month-long units on this concept of Supporting your children’s Struggles, and I start by having them make a list of all of the things they worry about with their kids, from picky eating to fighting with siblings, to medical diagnoses and physical or mental issues, to friendship dramas and issues with sports coaches.
We start with a big list, and then we narrow down to a struggle that you feel ready to start working on with your child now. Because you can’t work on every struggle all at the same time–and sometimes you’re just not emotionally ready to tackle something, or you yourself aren’t doing that well emotionally or physically so the thought of helping your child with a big issue feels completely overwhelming–so we pick something that you’re ready to address, big or small, and then we make a giant brainstorm list of all of the ways you could slowly but surely start to support your child with that issue. And we choose ONE tiny next action to pursue that week. Small steps like that over time add up to create an incredible support system for your child.
Support Their Struggles – A Personal Story:
Okay, before I give this personal example, I want to mention that I asked my son’s permission to share this. As he’s getting older, it is getting harder for me to know what I should share and what I shouldn’t, and I am probably going to need to start sharing less and less over time. But he said it was okay for me to share this personal example with you. About three years ago, I started to wonder if he had ADHD. Looking back on it now, it should’ve been very obvious to me from the time that Noah was quite young that he had ADHD, but I didn’t know very much about it back then, and once I started to wonder, I felt overwhelmed by the process of getting him tested and diagnosed, and I worried that I would be dismissed by teachers and doctors, and so I just dragged my feet and didn’t get started on supporting him.
In a recent podcast episode that I listened to with Dr. Dave Anderson all about ADHD, he said, “We see in the research that parents will wait years from the moment that they know something is wrong to the moment where they seek help for their kid.” I was glad to hear that I’m not alone in this tendency to get overwhelmed by the prospect of seeking some support for my kid, and I’m guessing this is true for so many issues that children face, not just ADHD. But a few years ago, I sat down and made a giant brain dump list of everything we could do to find out if Noah had ADHD and to support his emotional needs either way. I was clear with myself that I didn’t have to do everything on that list right away–or ever–but I just wanted to get it out of my head and on to paper so we could pick a starting place.
Over the last few years, we’ve worked our way through that list, getting testing, a diagnosis, a 504 plan with the school, talking to specialists, and more. And it has actually been a great journey of supporting my son–not trying to solve him or save him or even rush him through his process.
Right now, the only thing I am really proactively doing to support Noah with ADHD is that I read him a book about ADHD every night when I am putting him to bed. He is 13 now, but he still lets me read to him at night, which I love, so I got ADHD is Awesome by Penn Holderness, and it is perfect for a teenage boy who wants to better understand, accept, and even love his neurodiverse brain. Penn is hilarious and adds all these stories and tangents and drawings throughout the book to make ADHD more understandable, and Noah and I have just been chipping away at it a few pages at a time over the past few months. Just last weekend, I took him to his mountain biking race a few hours way and we had to camp the night before, and I was delighted that he stuck our book into his bag and asked me to read it to him in our tent before we fell asleep. Honestly, reading to him by lantern light as we snuggled into our sleeping bags was one of the highlights of my summer, and it feels so good as a mom to feel like I am supporting my son, and he knows it. He knows I am there for him in this struggle and every other. Even though I can’t do everything to help him all the time, I can show up as a steady presence of support, and I feel like that will be even more important as he heads into his teen years.
So, how are you doing with supporting your loved one’s struggles?
I mentioned above that I developed a self-assessment tool for moms. I use this assessment in my program that I teach to overwhelmed moms who want to know themselves better, more fully honor their needs, and more deeply love their people. I call it Self-Assured Motherhood.
At the beginning of that program, these SAM sisters (as we call them) color in a Venn diagram based on where they’re currently sitting with each of the principles of Self-Assured Motherhood. I give them a definition of what it looks like to be green in this area, what it looks like to be yellow in this area, and what it looks like to be red in this area.
This way, they can visually see how they’re doing and they can honestly self-assess.
At the end of the program, they do the same exercise so they can concretely see how much they have grown and learned over our time together. It is truly incredible to witness their progress!
Today I am going to give you the green, yellow, and red definitions that I give to the women in my program for this last principle of self-assured motherhood, and you can mentally decide what color best describes you right now:
If you’re green: You feel equipped to support your children and partner through the particular struggles and diagnoses they face. You recognize that their struggles are not about you, and you give heartfelt support in the ways that feel aligned for you.
If you’re yellow: You know it’s not your job to fix your loved one’s struggles, but you don’t feel adequately equipped just yet to support them. It feels like you don’t have the time, resources, bandwidth, or emotional stamina to support them in the way that you’d like, but you’re working on it.
If you’re red: You’re completely overwhelmed by the struggles your children or partner are facing right now, and you don’t know where to start looking for tools and resources. Part of you feels like it’s your job to fix them, and your worry or guilt is sometimes all-consuming.
Where are you with supporting the struggles? Are you green, yellow, or red?
Wherever you’re currently at with this, I hope the concepts in this blog post can get you thinking about how you could move a little more firmly into green. If you’d like support for yourself as you do your best to support your kids, my Self-Assured Motherhood program can help you! We take an entire month to learn how to support their struggles.
I hope you will join us in my Self-Assured Motherhood program this fall. Enrollment for the program will open September 9th, and if you download that “Green, Yellow, Red” self-assessment, you’ll be automatically added to the program waitlist and you’ll get a special discount as soon as the doors open for enrollment. (Plus, one lucky mama will get a free admission to SAM!)
You’ve got this! As your loved ones face challenges, you can learn how to support their struggles while not taking on more than yours to carry! I’m rooting for you!
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Related Episodes like this one on Supporting Their Struggles:
- 262: 3 Ways to Recover from Mom Burnout
- 314: How to Feel like Yourself in Motherhood // Aleisha McKean
- 030: How to Coach Your Children Through Their Big Emotions // Georgia Anderson
Mentioned in the Episode:
Sponsors:
- Paleovalley: Go to paleovalley.com/3in30 for 15% off your first order.
