As parents today, we often feel that our role is to protect our children- no matter how old they are- from the world. But controlling a child’s entire environment and keeping all pain at bay isn’t feasible; we can’t prepare the world for our children, so instead we should focus on preparing our children for the world. “The solution is not removing impediments from our children’s lives,” writes Krissy Pozatek, “it is compassionately encouraging them to be brave.” (Brave Parenting, by Krissy Pozatek, LICSW).
There are many tools that we as parents can use which parallel the tools our Guides use in Tej Acton Academy’s studios. Krissy Pozatek identifies several of them in her book, such as: Trail Guiding (vs Trail Fixing), compassion, developing their Capacity to Be, deep listening, and offering clear choices along with fair and logical consequence. Ultimately when our efforts at home align with intentional education at school, positive qualities can be seen blossoming much earlier in a child’s development.
Qualities such as self-confidence, a positive outlook, self-reliance, grit, adaptability, problem-solving, internal motivation, and gratitude must be developed with intentional effort throughout their early years in order to give our children the best chances of success [including happiness] throughout life.
Here are some pictures of our Guides compassionately encouraging our learners to be brave in taking on challenges!
