Fostering Emotional Growth in Your Children

GRATIFICATION VS. FRUSTRATION

You are responsible for creating a family that facilitates the meaningful engagement of each of its members into society.  As parents, you will not feel satisfied or successful unless your children can make the transition into school, into meaningful relationships with peers, and into substantive activities in the community.  Therefore, as parents your family needs to adopt attitudes and behaviors that will support success in those arenas.  Notice that your responsibility as parents is not to gratify your children.

​In fact, appropriate, empathic frustration is essential to healthy psychosocial development.  Emotional maturity requires the capacity to manage frustration and postpone gratification.  Empathic frustration means that you sensitively help your child confront challenges that they are capable of doing in a manner that maximizes their effort and results in an authentic sense of achievement.  That kind of mastery builds self esteem.  Empathic frustration is the fruit and vegetables of emotional metabolism.  Children raised on “ice cream” will always seek the quick, emotional fix of sensation seeking and avoid the work of preparing for life.  Gratification of children is relatively easy—empathic frustration requires commitment to your child’s potential.  You are your child’s personal trainer—you are the one to decide how heavy a weight they are to lift.  The weight must be heavy enough to feel challenging, but not so heavy that it feels overwhelming.  How you respond to your child's challenges will influence how your child reacts to the normative frustrations and challenges of life outside the home.