Tips for setting realistic expectations
Now we don’t want either of those elements to affect our kids negatively. For that, we need to stop having excessively high and unrealistic expectations out of our kids. All that unrealistic expectations do is creating unpleasant pressure on our kids, which in turn affects their morale and self esteem. We want to raise confident, joyful munchkins! Why put undue pressure on them due to “our” unrealistic expectations!
Let’s understand unrealistic expectations
Expecting a fish to fly is unreasonably unrealistic. If we expect certain things out of our kids without understanding their interests, ability and limitations, we are probably being unrealistic in our expectations.
We already touched upon…
How unrealistic expectations can break the self esteem in growing young people. Setting unrealistic expectations on kids creates undue pressure on them. Imagine your little one walking around with a ready-to-explode pressure cooker on his/her little head. Now that’s not a picture that you even want to imagine!
Let’s look at how not to set unrealistic expectations
It is imperative to want your child to do well at school, in art, sports and so on. It is natural and necessary to want your child to well and help your kids do that. However, we need to learn to draw the line at setting
“Realistic” expectations. Here’s how to do that:
- Understand your child. Do not assume things about him/her. But truly watch what they enjoy doing, what comes to them naturally, what are they good at, what do they struggle with. Little hints will help you understand the pulse of their skills and abilities. Rest in your hands, to help or if to unduly push them.
- Drop judgements. May your little girl is a ball of high energy but simply hates reading. Maybe your boy loves helping you out in kitchen (why not! There, stop judging, you :D) as much as he loves playing football but is just about okay at school. Maybe your kid aces everything and needs just a little push to stay focussed. Maybe your kid is yet to figure out what he/she is good at. Whatever is the case, you simply do not judge them and don’t let loved ones judge them either. All an ernest parent can do is enable the child to learn , look for opportunities, be supportive and simply help kids grow, naturally.
- Once you know where they need help, expect them to make little incremental changes to achieve certain goals. Not lofty goals, but small, important goals like developing the habit to read, reading one story a day, working on basic math, learning discipline bit by bit. Make “small and incremental” your best friends when setting expectations from your kids.
- Do not go for extremes. Don’t let your kids be on their own, without expecting anything at all from them and on the same vein, do not be competitive, breathing down their neck either. If you be a balanced parent, your kids would be so as well. When you need a laugh, come to us! We got your back, always.
- Engage your kids, how-much-ever you feasibly can, after school, your work, office and everything in little activities that tell them how important it si do well in life and how you want to help them learn fun things.
There, this list will help ensure that you never set unrealistic expectations from your kids and push them over the edge. If you wish to understand this topic better, do enroll for our online parenting program. If you have done that already, go watch this video on Unrealistic Expectations from the Building Self Esteem series!
