Preventing Your Child from Hitting Rock Bottom
Parenting can be a lot harder than it looks. For some parents, they could do everything by the book and still face the reality that their child won’t learn until they hit rock bottom.
Many parents will talk, teach, and model healthy behaviors until they’re blue in the face and their child still won’t get up on time, do their homework, or complete chores until there is a punishment. Often, this lack of motivation then cascades into progressively worse behavior. After a few punishments, some kids will learn and mature and some won’t. Correspondingly, when your child struggles to learn these lessons of life, you only have one choice. Accept it.
As parents we have 18 to 21 years to directly influence how our children mature into productive adults. I’m not saying you don’t do everything within your control to teach every lesson you can within those 18 to 21 years. However, I’m saying that your child may have to hit rock bottom before they learn. So, if you keep preventing them from hitting rock bottom by using helicopter parenting or snowplow parenting they may never learn.
The best thing you can do as a parent is instill the values that lead to self-motivation over your 18 to 21 years of influence. If you do this, then eventually your child will figure it out. Obviously, the hope is that it won’t take rock bottom to get your child there. However, if rock bottom does become that final lesson, all a parent can do is be there to support their adult child’s continued growth.