As a parent, it is natural to feel sad when your kid is unhappy. You want to run and alleviate the suffering of your child as soon as it surfaces, especially when you are the cause of their unhappiness. However, it is important to remember that seeing our kids unhappy is a side effect of teaching them necessary life lessons.
Remaining in a constant state of happiness is not possible in life. By focusing on keeping your kids happy all of the time, you are giving them the idea that everything in life will come easy. You are not allowing them to learn how to effectively deal with times of adversity. You are not allowing them to feel the other half of being human — negative emotions and suffering.
Our suffering oftentimes brings about the best lessons we will learn in life. It is the same with the suffering of kids, and sometimes that means watching our kids suffer. We do not learn or grow if we do not face times that force us to learn or grow.
An Effective Parent -> An Effective Discipliner
Part of being an effective parent is being a teacher, which also means being an effective discipliner. With the parent being the first and primary teacher, it is your obligation to teach your kids responsibility, respect for others, right from wrong, that there are repercussions for bad actions, and much more. Growing up in a home without a set of expectations to uphold and the knowledge of the repercussions that will come if a kid doesn’t abide by certain rules will often lead to a problem child later in life.
What Researches Say About It
Research shows that ineffective parenting can lead to academic problems, behavioral problems, mental health problems, and emotional problems. Having a kid that is unhappy due to effective parenting that teaches them necessary life lessons far outweighs having a kid that has behavioral problems due to ineffective parenting. The downside is that having a set of expectations and responsibilities for your kids will sometimes lead to having very unhappy kids, and that’s OK.
Having an unhappy child does not mean you are a bad parent. It is so important to not allow the sight of unhappiness in your kids to sway you away from upholding expectation, responsibility, or disciplining them. You may feel extremely wrong, sad, and it may hurt you, but this is part of parenting.
Things To Remember
You are not a horrible parent if there are days where your kid is not happy because you made them do the dishes. You are not a horrible parent if your kid does not talk to you for a week because you grounded them for bringing home a bad grade on a report card. You are an effective parent, teaching your kid that sometimes in life we have to suffer the repercussions of our actions. You are teaching them that not everything in life is given with ease and that we have to work for what we want. You are teaching them that sometimes in life, we have to do things that we don’t want to do. And you are teaching them that sometimes we will face unhappiness and we have to learn how to deal with that unhappiness effectively.
Disciplined kids grow up to be successful, responsible, and respectful adults. And most likely, later on in life when your kids are parents themselves, they will thank you for being the role model, teacher, and rule-holder that you were. They will thank you for those moments of unhappiness they had to face for not upholding the expectations you set, because it taught them how to be a successful adult, and parent, themselves.
