There is no impulse more natural than the desire of parents to protect their children.

Sue David

Nobody wants to see their child in distress. However, the tendency to Fix It can wind up exacerbating their anxieties rather than alleviating them.

When we protect children from regular life occurrences that makes them nervous, we can unintentionally prevent them from developing coping strategies, prevent them from developing self-confident grit, and we stop them from growing as resilient individuals. We can’t always be there to remove the source of distress for our children, nor should we. The job of a parent is to prepare our children to be able to handle these experiences on their own.

Here are a three steps we can take to help children manage their distress while protecting their future successes.

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1. Listen to the anxieties of the child, and validate their experiences.

Be on their team. Tell them it makes sense that they’d initially feel as they do given the task ahead of them. Validating their emotions doesn’t mean you are in agreement with their cognitive conclusions.

Some of my favorite lines are:

“It makes sense that you’d feel that way.”

“That makes sense.”

“I can see why you feel that way considering how this challenge is impacting you.”

2. Find connections with what they’re going through.

Don’t patronize them by pretending that you have the same fears. Do draw on your experience and let them know that they’re not alone in having an emotionally vulnerable experience.

Knowing that adults, and especially parents, feel vulnerable can help to reassure children that they are normal.

Children haven’t yet internalized the awareness that the only person whose inner life they have access to is their own, so they believe outwardly projected confidence reflects inwardly felt confidence and are comparing themselves thusly.

3. Express curiosity about the responses to their distress.

Ask open-ended questions that will help them solve the problem themselves. Some of my favorite lines are:

“What other options can you think of?”

“What do you think would be the best choice to make, here?”

“What advice would you give [their best friend’s name] if they were in your position?”

This post was inspired by the amazing work of Susan David who calls this resilience “Emotional Agility”. Watch her TED Talk, take her Emotional Agility quiz, read her book, and follow her on all the socials: F, T, I, L, P.