Marvin – supporting children

Very often I get asked, by people who have seen this circle of security graphic, that they’re a bit confused about this thing down here at the bottom that says, “Always be bigger, stronger, or wiser and kinder”. It’s easy to think about, it’s easy to understand that a parent’s job is to be wiser and kind. Sometimes it’s a little more confusing to think about the parent’s job also as being bigger and stronger. And it’s just because the child is, is still vulnerable, is still developing, could get in trouble, doesn’t yet have the kind of wisdom that he’s going to have when he’s an adult, and so, in order to stay protected, in order to survive, children are actually wired to want a parent who is bigger and stronger. And they look for that in a parent.  But bigger and stronger doesn’t necessarily mean “mean”. It doesn’t mean nasty. It doesn’t mean angry. Bigger and stronger means that the child gets this message, “If something goes wrong, I’m big enough and I’m strong enough to take care of you, and take care of it”. And that’s what children really want.   But most important here is that, there are those four things: bigger, stronger, wiser, and kind. And the really important thing is to have all four. And to have some balance in all four. Because if you are bigger and stronger, but you’re not kind, then you’re going to come across as intimidating, scary, and angry. If you are wiser and kind, but you’re not bigger and stronger, your child’s not going to feel safe because if something happens, “There’s nobody there for me who’s big enough and strong enough to take care of it. So you do need all four, but you need to keep them in balance with one another. 

And the thing is, it’s all these little moments, sometimes we think, sometimes we think that it’s the big things. Does the child, is the child in a good preschool? Is the child in a good school? Period. Does the child have lots of friends? That those big ticket items, so to speak, are the really important ones. And it turns out, that what this research is showing is that, that’s not so true. It’s all those little moments, on a minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day basis that really are the things that put a child on a good developmental pathway, and keep him on that good developmental pathway. So these little moments are really, really important for parents to pay attention to. And these little moments are actually more important than the really big things. 

But it doesn’t mean we have to be perfect. It doesn’t mean that at all. You don’t have to be successful at this 100% of the time. So as parents, we can relax a little bit. No one knows the exact percentage but just to give you an idea, maybe 75% of the time. Just really so long as it’s predictable to the child that this is the way it’s going to work, but it doesn’t have to be 100% of the time