What to do when your child doesn't live up to your expectations

Cynthia Whitham, LCSW, Associate Director of UCLA's Parenting Program, shares advice for parents on what to do if your child doesn't live up to your expectations for him or her
What To Do If Your Child Doesn't Live Up To Your Expectations
KidsInTheHouse the Ultimate Parenting Resource
Kids in the House Tour

What to do when your child doesn't live up to your expectations

Comment
136
Like
136
Transcription: 
Well we all have dreams for our children, absolutely. And some children meet our dreams and our expectations and others don't. Of course we can't let our disappointment kind of leak into the atmosphere and hurt a child. I think the most important thing to know is children need to be happy. And I don't mean happy because you gave them the thing they wanted or they got to use your iPad. I mean happiness that comes from the inside knowing, I'm a good person. And that's what self esteem is all about. You get self esteem from positive messages from your parents, but also from feeling capable. I can do it. I'm clever at this. From the time a child walks to riding a bike to reading, every skill that they get makes them feel better about themselves. Your child's source of self esteem may not be school. Your child may not be a scholar. Your child may have a high IQ but have learning disabilities that result in lousy grades. So help your child discover and nurture what he or she does do best. You can usually find it by seeing, what do they love to do? If you nurture that, develop that, help your child have an identity about, I can do these things, then you're going to keep his or her self-esteem intact. And my guess is by following that passion they'll do just fine.

Cynthia Whitham, LCSW, Associate Director of UCLA's Parenting Program, shares advice for parents on what to do if your child doesn't live up to your expectations for him or her

Transcript

Expert Bio

More from Expert

Cynthia G. Whitham, LCSW

Director, UCLA Parenting & Children’s Friendship Program

Cynthia G. Whitham, LCSW, Director of the UCLA Parenting and Children’s Friendship Program, has been training parents for over 30 years. She is the author of two books, Win the Whining War & Other Skirmishes: A family peace plan, and The Answer is NO: Saying it & sticking to it, which have been translated into nine languages. In addition to her UCLA group classes, Ms. Whitham has a private practice on the east and west sides of Los Angeles. In 2000, she spent a month training clinicians at the National Institute of Mental Health of Japan. A lively speaker, Ms. Whitham does presentations and trainings for schools and organizations. Ms. Whitham raised two happy, healthy, and (relatively) well-behaved children (she thinks that may be the best credential of all). Daughter Miranda McLeod is a fiction author and is in a PhD program at Rutgers University. With sadness, Cynthia tells us that her son Kyle died in 2007, within months of graduating from San Francisco State University.

More Parenting Videos from Cynthia G. Whitham, LCSW >
Enter your email to
download & subscribe
to our newsletter