A groundbreaking approach to parenting that builds emotional maturity as the foundation for happy, resilient, successful children--from the clinical psychologist behind the Emotional maturity is the single most important quality a parent can help develop in their child--it enables a person to function autonomously, handle stress, flourish in diverse environments, form lasting relationships, and achieve personal and professional success. In Identifying common traps and behaviors to avoid and explaining why striving to be a “perfect parent” is impossible and unhealthy, this book helps parents nurture their children''s emotional maturity--and feel good while doing it.

Autorentext

Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD, is a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and clinical psychologist with over thirty years of psychotherapy experience. Her bestselling book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, has sold over a million copies and been translated into 38 languages. Dr. Gibson provides national and international training programs for psychotherapists and is the author of eight books. She has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, and has appeared on major podcasts like The Oprah Podcast, Mel Robbins and 10% Happier.

Klappentext

A groundbreaking approach to parenting that presents emotional maturity as the foundation for happy, resilient, successful children—from the clinical psychologist behind the New York Times bestseller Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

Emotional maturity is the single most important quality a parent can help develop in their child—it enables a person to function autonomously, handle stress, flourish in diverse environments, form lasting relationships, and achieve personal and professional success.

In How to Raise an Emotionally Mature Child, Lindsay C. Gibson explains the cognitive, psychological, and social challenges children face, from forming strong attachments during infancy to dealing with emotions and achievement in early school age to establishing personal identity in the teenage years. At each stage, she offers compassionate guidance to help parents support their child's emotional development through the lens of the Seven Parental Mindsets for Maturity, including:

• My Child Is a Unique Individual With Their Own Interests
• My Child is Vulnerable and Requires Protection
• My Child Has Psychological and Emotional Needs That Must Be Met
  Identifying common traps and behaviors to avoid and explaining why striving to be a “perfect parent” is impossible and unhealthy, this book helps parents nurture their children's emotional maturity—and feel good while doing it.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

Your Job as a Parent

So here you are, trying to do the world’s most important job—­the psychological construction of another human being. As a parent, you find yourself in situations that challenge parts of yourself you didn’t even know existed. You learn embarrassing things about your limitations. You regularly aren’t sure what you’re doing. You are brave but exhausted. Well-­meaning, but more reactive than you’d like. Some days, your stamina and resilience run low. It’s hard to keep being resilient when the stress never stops. In this most important of all jobs—­parenting—­you frequently have to trust your intuitions and hope that there is such a thing as good gut instinct. How are you to approach such a mission? How do you even conceptualize such a job?

It’s as if you are an intrepid explorer who has been promised a huge sum of money to show a very important, but utterly inexperienced, client how to survive in a wild and dangerous area that you’ve come to know well. They’ve heard you’re the best, and you’re the one they want. You’ve never met them before, but you will be fellow travelers, equal souls, and you’re the only one who knows the area. Your client is a fair but exceedingly demanding person, and they will be writing your review and determining what, if any, bonuses you receive. It’s bound to take years, and due to their inexperience, they will inevitably make hair-­raising mistakes and endanger you both. You know that your tact and respect are going to be necessary if you’re to get along on this journey of survival, not to mention get your bonus at the end.

You watch out for them and show them all the tricks you’ve learned in this challenging place. After a while, you start to enjoy their curiosity and companionship and manage to still like them even when they begin exploring on their own and put both of you at risk. You started out treating them well for the bonus, but you soon realized that they really are just as smart as you and just as worthy of respect, even though they would surely die out here without you. You notice how weirdly satisfying it is that they’ve got so much to learn and you’re the only one to teach them.

You were always equal as human beings, certainly, but toward the end of their training with you, you two gradually become competent equals in this risky land. In fact, they’ve become such adept explorers after mastering your teachings, they will be going on and discovering new lands themselves that you have never visited. If you’ve been a good guide and mentor, they will want to return periodically and tell you all about their travels because they know you love a good yarn and because after all you’ve been through together, there’s a bond there. You get paid your bonuses, but by then you realize that your time with them was in some ways even more rewarding than those new lands you still explore yourself. You feel good about training them up to be capable explorers, and you look forward to hearing about their latest adventures too. They’ll want to come back to visit because you were so kind to them when they were ignorant, and you took such good care of them when they were difficult and discouraged. They won’t forget a mentor like that.

Like that explorer-­guide, you hope to somehow transform the raw, uncivilized essence of your child into a reasonable adult, an independent human with a moral sense, intellectual ability, and good judgment. How does this happen? It happens one tiny act at a time, and it happens only because you are brave enough to try to do what the moment requires, even when—­especially when—­you don’t feel up to the task. By doing this a million times—­especially when you don’t want to—­you build the kind of connection with your child that makes them feel loved, contained, safe, and understood. And children who experience those things have a head start in emotional maturity.

When we contemplate becoming a parent, we want to do a good job, so we fall back on what we know about accomplishment. Maybe we’ve worked hard at a job or obtained a degree, and we know that being smart and capable earns recognition. But now we’re parents, and the rules are different. We’re not going to get a good grade or a promotion, and all we have to offer is ourselves. In this most important job of all, there are few external metrics to tell you if you’re doing it right.

So how do you know if you’re being a good enough parent?

The Good Enough Parent

No relationship is perfect. You can do all your parenting jobs just right and still have bad days. Even the most conscientious parent is going to misread cues or get irritated. And children . . . well, children just aren’t very fair or evenhanded about how they assign blame. The opportunities for hurt feelings between parents and children are enormous.

I…