Dr. K's Corner

by Dr. Rachel Kavanaugh, School Counselor

Throughout elementary school, students are exposed to and begin to understand and navigate friendships and balancing interactions with others. This includes sharing interests, understanding differences, and building flexibility and patience, particularly with those they might not necessarily get along with. Although first introduced at this age, these interactions and life skills apply across our lifespan (I’m sure many of you can relate to this in your workplace or home environments). Since the return to in-person learning, however, an interesting pattern has emerged within grade levels: 

How It Started
It goes without saying that the length of this pandemic (over two years at this point!), has played an influential role in the social development of elementary-aged children. The pandemic has required people to interact with others to a lesser degree. For most of us, small social circles were created to foster connectedness while still preventing the spread of COVID-19. We were able to avoid those we did not get along with as much or did not like, while increasing connections with those we found fulfilling and supportive. We had a different type of control over who we, and our children, interacted with--a consequence of this was curbing or eliminating interactions with those we had more differences than similarities with. 

Moreover, when options of things to do were limited, children also had the control to choose which toys they played with at home, whereas if they were at school, they would have to navigate transitioning between more tasks or activities as well as sharing preferred items with others and being introduced to new things by observing or interacting with a variety of peers. On top of that, caregivers had more ongoing exposure to the day-to-day learning their child(ren) received, thus providing caregivers with more opportunities to teach or intervene in the moment. Given the circumstances, these new, yet temporary, ways of life were generally an adaptive and helpful coping approach. 

Perhaps until now. 

How It’s Going
Students have returned to in-person learning, and with that comes different expectations and groups of people. As a result, additional learning is needed, for all of us, around flexibility and patience. After consulting about these observations with other counselors and psychologists, it became apparent that this is a trend occurring across settings. Many of us, without realizing it, have begun engaging in snowplow parenting (this term can be generalized to snowplow caregiving), defined by WebMD as “a parenting style that seeks to remove all obstacles from a child’s path so they don’t experience pain, failure, or discomfort.” 

As things change again and again, we are strongly reacting to that changing sense of control, especially when we see our child(ren) experiencing varying degrees of social or academic frustrations, challenges, and failures. Students might be stumbling or making mistakes to a seemingly greater degree than usual, simply because they haven’t had the same opportunities to learn from many related social mistakes. Combined with this shifting sense of control, there’s an impulse to fix or prevent such negative, uncomfortable, or difficult things from happening in the first place. While this might provide us and our children with short-term relief, such an approach has a longer-term impact on a child’s development, including:

• Reinforcing the idea that children are not capable of doing things/solving problems on their own. Children make the association that they can’t make decisions, cope with successes or challenges, resolve conflicts, or succeed without adult intervention.
• Inhibiting or stunting skill development. Children miss the opportunities to learn or practice the helpful, adaptive, and appropriate skills necessary to manage stress or failure, problem-solve, cope with emotions, organize their time, and navigate social interactions.
• Expecting things to always go their way. If the path has been or is always paved for them with hurdles and obstacles removed, children will believe that success comes naturally and easily. However, they’ll likely struggle more socially, emotionally, and academically when things do not go their way. In this sense, children will develop a “fixed” mindset and have more difficulty tolerating or managing frustration, even for seemingly small obstacles or issues.

How It Can Improve
Just like our emotions and feelings, challenges are a part of life, which need to happen and are an important learning tool. As the adults and models in a child’s world, we can still be involved to shape growth and change instead of turning into a snowplow. To that end, below are a few key strategies to help in their growth:

• Let consequences, including failures, happen. Oftentimes the best learning/learning that sticks follows a failure, a stumble, a disagreement, etc. 
• Praise effort, not ability or success. Emphasizing the journey (i.e. the effort), not the destination or final result, will foster a growth mindset and, in turn, build their skills of perseverance, patience, creative thinking, and problem solving. 
• Don’t prevent problems from happening. Fixing or erasing a child’s problems or failures when they arise prevents them from experiencing and understanding the connected feelings as well as developing problem solving skills. At the same time, some hand-holding is still important--in this sense, walk them through how to solve, manage, or cope with their problem, knowing that some steps might not work out as expected.
• Listen to understand, not to respond or fix. It can be easy to jump right into fixing or working through a problem, however it’s instrumental to hear what children want, how they’re feeling, or what they’re thinking. In turn, this can increase comfort in asking for help, expressing oneself, and recognizing that failure can arise when faced with a challenge or working towards a goal.
• Model for your child(ren). This includes modeling positive and helpful ways to cope with or learn from developmentally-appropriate consequences, to ask for help, and to embrace the rollercoaster process that can happen when working with other individuals, towards a goal or through a difficult task. 

The importance of being patient and compassionate with ourselves and others cannot be emphasized enough. None of this is easy. However, working together or asking for help can make it a lot easier. Please do not hesitate to reach out to your child(ren)’s teachers, the administrative team, or me with any questions or concerns.
 

Resources & Additional Reflection:

WebMD: What is Snowplow Parenting?
How the Snowplow Parenting Trend Affects Kids  
TedxKingstonUponThames Video: Does Snowplough Parenting Remove Grit? 
Video: Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck 
Understood: What Is Growth Mindset
UCLA + DMH Wellbeing for LA Learning Center: The Power of Letting Children Fail