“Hi there! I need help with a reframe. Backstory, I feel like I’m in a slippery slope with my almost 13 year old. He doesn’t like to study & still does ok on quizzes and tests. If he would study, he would do better. Multiple times this last week, he kept putting off studying saying he was fine, it’s fine, I’ll do it later. Screens or just ‘I don’t want to’ were the priority. Only ended up giving about 15 minutes in study hall an hour before.
Comes home and says ‘I got 12 out of 15’ on my test & was upset with me bc I didn’t tell him good job. He thinks the least I could say is good job. I feel like you say good job to someone when they put effort into something. You get a good job when you try. I told him I am proud of him for so many things - but am stuck bc I don’t want him to think I’m too hard on him but I also want him to learn that success in life takes effort. He’s always been in advance classes and hasn’t ever had to try at sports - everything has all came naturally to date, so trying to teach effort & finding motivation now without being a ‘mean mom’.
Any reframe suggestions would be incredibly welcome! Many thanks!”
—Anonymous
Reframe:
Thank you so much for sharing this!
What I hear most of all is how much you believe in your son and how much you’re a champion for his success and his future, and I think that’s really beautiful.
And lucky for him that things come so easily!
For me, one of the most difficult things about parenting is noticing when I compare my son to some image of what I think he *should* be doing.
And when I catch myself doing this, and I remember to look deeper, what I notice, is that I’m holding him to a standard that I internalized from a belief system from my past which suggests that elbow grease and what I accomplish are the things that determine my worth.
This stuff is so engrained, it’s hard for me to even recognize that I’m doing it half the time. And yet bc I want my son to be worthy, I fall into this trap of thinking I need to push him to work harder. Which causes me a lot of anxiety and worry, which I then transfer over to my son.
I’ve lived most of my life feeling like I need to exert more elbow grease and push, push, push to be better, to be more. And honestly, I haven’t liked how it’s made me feel.
And when I look deeper into this default way of mine, what I notice is an underlying unmet longing to be accepted first as who I already am, no elbow grease required. A longing to know that the being in me has enough inherent worth to matter, a lot.
This is not to say that we don’t need to push through. Pushing through is how we grow—like the seed that pushes through the constraints of the soil etc, etc, but the thing is, I think pushing through is a sacred act and one should have a say in what they push through.
And this is so counterintuitive to what our society so often dictates—that we should push through what we’re told to push through.
And yes, schools can provide a lot of exercise for pushing through. But for some kids, getting to choose what they push through is imperative to their autonomy, their inherent worth and value.
I’m not saying this is who your kid is, but, if school and sports come easy for him, maybe try letting him pick something completely on his own to push through.
For me, it was letting my son explore things on his screen like 3-d building and graphic design and editing and even creating projects with his friends. I let him manage his own time and saw him push through on his own terms, so determined to follow through and meet his own challenging goals.
I think as a society, we are so not used to accepting who we are, as we are. We’re so often so busy running ourselves towards something better, that we skip right over the victories that are already happening. And this can create a lot of unnecessary stress where there could be connection.
It’s so hard. I have to make a concerted effort not to catastrophize about my son’s future. And it really is hard to unplug from that default wiring. But when I am able to create a space of acceptance, I’m always amazed by what shows up.
I’m not sure if this speaks to your particular context, but hopefully someone else will chime in and share some different wisdom!