Is it a limitation, or is it a weakness? Your child stalls on a task and you cannot tell which one you are looking at. Are they truly unable, or is this a weakness that needs strengthening? The two look identical from the outside, and the difference decides how you lead. I call it the incapability illusion. The child presents as unable. Most of the time they are unwilling. Sometimes they know it. Often they do not. A child can limit themselves without ever deciding to, and that is what makes it confusing, for the child as much as for the parent.
Start here, because everything else depends on it. The most important thing you have is your love for your child. That love is the reason you cannot let their tactics for avoiding effort, focus, and determination get in the way of challenging them to realize their potential and to live with intention and purpose. A parent who lets the tactic win has not chosen love. They have chosen the easier afternoon.
There are many reasons a child, or any person, is not willing or able to complete the specific tasks required to accomplish a goal. Several can be going on in the same moment, and they overlap:
- Fear. Something bad might happen during or after the process. Failure. Even success.
- Lack of knowledge or skill. They do not actually know how to do what the goal requires.
- Laziness. Preferences and priorities are focused elsewhere.
- Resistance. They just do not want to do it. That is the whole reason.
- Rebelliousness. They are taking the opposite stance on purpose, and there are many possible reasons why.
- Apathy. They gave up caring. Either the goal is not worth the cost, or they cared too much for too long, nothing improved, and quitting became easier and simpler than caring.
Here is the truth underneath all six. Human nature, for most anyone, is to avoid hard work and to fight difficult tasks. Your child is not the exception. Neither are you. Laziness is not a rare condition. It is the default setting, and it dresses itself up as fear, as “I don’t know how,” as “I don’t want to,” and as “I don’t care.” Only one of the six is about ability. The rest are about willingness, and every one of them will present itself as “I can’t.”
Do not fall for the presentation
As their leader, it is vital that you can discern not only their level of willingness but their level of capability, and name what is truly the obstacle. Incapability is easy to present, and the child does not have to be faking it to present it. “I can’t” is a message, and most of the time it is not an accurate one, even when the child believes it. Do not fall prey to the presentation. It happens all the time in homes, in schools, and in the community. I have watched it for three decades.
You will want to react. Most leaders do, and most leaders do it wrong. The three most common reactions:
- Come down on it. Disapproval, punishment, restriction, negativity, criticism, judging, frustration, anger, resentment, vengeance, and hatred.
- Take it over. Solve the problem for them. Too accommodating, way too much concession, over-nurture, over-affection, over-support. It is meant to help, it ends up enabling, and enabling ends up disabling. Working too hard to help someone find their true limits wastes time, effort, and energy, and it sets an awful dynamic of dependence.
- Swallow it. Just plain take on the negativity, the obstacles, and the discomfort, and let it sit in your soul.
The first is aggressive. The other two are passive. None of them is assertion.
All three do damage, and not only to the child. They damage the leader and the relationship. It is bad for business. And it keeps happening for the same reason the child stalled in the first place. Working through all of the messaging that interferes with a person overcoming fear and obstacles, like having to work or having to figure something out, is a lot of work. The leader’s nature is to avoid it too.
Calling it a limitation because a limitation asks nothing of you
Many parents have given up. They call it a limitation, because a limitation asks nothing of them. They line up resources and support around it, when it is not a true limitation at all. It is a weakness that could be trained up and improved with the proper process and the proper investment of time. That investment is the hard work the whole family has been avoiding.
Many parents do not know what that process looks like, or how to do it without making things worse. As always, the solution involves not only your response but assertion in the initiation of the process.
The solution is always assertion
Always. Assertion rides through the storms. It stays calm and composed, and it challenges the child to dig deep and to see the value of overcoming the obstacle internally, relationally, and physically or externally.
Assertion is what love looks like when a child is trying to get out of the work. It is not the opposite of warmth. It is warmth with a spine, and it keeps the child pointed at their potential and their purpose when every tactic they have is pointed at the exit.
Show them exactly how to do it. Role model it. Walk with them through the process. Discipline if necessary. Do not fall for the tactics, whether they know they are using them or not. Help them realize they are stronger and more capable than they believe. Teach them to feel the discomfort, experience it, and use it. Be okay in the storm and work through it step by step.
Expect them to fight you. Expect to want to quit yourself. That is nature. Assertion is trained, for the child and for the leader: through coaching, through mentoring, or on your own accord. For more strategies, tools, and tactics, contact me for one-to-one coaching, live in Southern California or virtually, or through our online parent coaching sessions.