There are differences between good parents and bad parents; this is the second column about some of those differences.
The first point was that children need for their parents to be a strong presence in their lives, and that good parents provide that presence.
Good parents also build their children’s ability to trust.
Building trust is pretty easy during children’s first 18 months to two years. Even some parents who later become abusive do a reasonable job of building trust for the first two years. Children under 2 don’t need much if any discipline, but do need protection and nurturing.
Children who are under 2 who cry when they are uncomfortable and have consistent people respond to them, learn about expressing themselves, and about the world being a basically safe and good place.
When caring adults respond hundreds of times to their children’s different discomforts – being cold or hungry, having dirty diapers, hearing scary noises, wanting to get up from a nap or falling down – the children come to trust that the world is basically a good place. They are better prepared to learn the next things.
Children who are abused before they are 2 may never gain a sense of basic trust in the world. They may have trouble trusting the most trustworthy of people. In fact, the brains of young children who live with safety develop differently from children who are abused as language abilities develop.
Abused children’s brains overdevelop in those areas that watch for danger. They spend energy watching those who are closest to them rather than trusting those who are close so they can explore the rest of the world.
Building trust in children becomes more complicated as they get older. There are important lessons in studying children who live in war zones or who experience natural disasters. They do surprisingly well if they can stay close to their parents, and if their parents can communicate to them a sense of safety and hope.
If children and their parents are in a crisis, the most effective way for others to help is to help the parents so that the parents can help their children. Helping parents experience hope and some sense of safety allows them to pass that on to their children.
That is one reason that domestically violent homes are so damaging to children. Those children live in a danger zone, and neither parent can give them a sense of safety and reassurance.
Perhaps as young as 4 years old, children begin to notice another important part of the trust issue. Not only is it important that their parents want the best for them, but also that they are wise enough to provide safety and reassurance.
Trust increasingly has two parts: intentions and capability. In that way, it is like coaching or teaching. In performance activities such as sports or music, young children first need their teachers and coaches to make it fun. They learn by playing, and any adult who can make it fun will be a trustworthy adult.
Soon enough, though, children need adults to know how to teach them skills they must have to play better. Teachers and coaches help children learn the skills through drills and practice, and that becomes more important than just having fun.
Later, their teachers’ ability to help them learn advanced skills becomes more important than either having fun or teaching basics. In this stage children and teenagers in performance activities take on the activity as their own. They don’t have to be told to practice or play hard very often.
Parents who can help their children mature in the same sequence are trustworthy for their children.
Parents like that listen without getting overly emotional to what their older children want, what they fear or what they are doing.
They live with the discomfort in themselves that is caused by seeing the discomfort in their children.
Parents like that are clear. Their relationship with their children is too important to settle for quick answers to problems, so they are patient enough to seek the right solutions to problems.
The children learn to trust their parents’ maturity, wisdom and patience and not just their intentions.
Bill France, a father of three, is a child advocate in the criminal justice system and has worked as director of clinical programs at Luther Child Center in Everett. You can send e-mail to bill@ billfrance.com.
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