Parents want the best for their children. But children tend to grow up being confronted with success and performance. To avoid stressing them out too much, here’s what can help.
From a young age, children are structured and grow up following a well-paced day: between school, extracurricular activities and sports, it’s often a race. All this coupled with constant pressure to succeed in everything they undertake, although parents (and society) seek above all to offer them the best to raise them to the top of success.
Result: these children who are too quickly confronted with adult problems by being pushed to perform often feel stress, anxiety and intense fatigue. A modern phenomenon that affects more and more young people and that Dr. David Elkind has named the hurry-up child syndrome. Faced with this pressure, children can also suffer from sleep disorders, concentration problems and headaches. In the long term, they risk not feeling up to their parents’ expectations and developing psychological disorders such as depression or chronic anxiety.
To protect your child from this syndrome, it is essential to review their schedule. Reducing the number of activities and allowing them to enjoy moments of relaxation will help them to release some of the pressure. Parents must also learn to manage their own expectations and not impose their ambitions on their children. But the key would lie in play…
Free play, for example, without a specific goal, is very beneficial for developing children’s skills by encouraging their curiosity and imagination. Group games will encourage them to communicate, negotiate and interact with others. To develop their creativity, offer them manual activities with objects to make, painting, drawing or any other type of crafts. Finally, construction games are perfect for encouraging a taste for learning and concentration, without any pressure.
Finally, listening and dialogue are also important. The child must be allowed to express his feelings and needs. Ultimately, the goal is to create an environment where the child can grow and develop at his own pace, without excessive pressure, with discoveries and simple pleasures.
