Gathering the Right Parts at the Right Age to Achieve Success

children holding a headline to illustrate gathering the right pasts for a non-anxious child

Did you ever hear about the man at the car plant stealing the right parts to make a car, one at a time, over the years, so he could eventually end up with a Cadillac? I think it was a Johnny Cash song.

There was a crucial flaw! He had his eye on the end game – achieving success in his filching game and swaggering around in a Cadillac!  – instead of thinking things through at the time with a laser focus.

So he didn’t realise the impossibility of connecting a 30-year-old door with a 25-year-old chassis with a 20-year-old side light… you get the idea. Nothing matched, and he failed to end up with a Cadillac.

So – what do we learn from this about bringing up children?

Well, I sometimes do a double-take when I see

  • a child of six in a bikini more suitable for a maturing 15 year old, posing for a holiday photo, or
  • a four year old talking about the family finances as if they were the adult.

These parts of a child seem a misfit, like the incongruous parts of a Cadillac built over 30 years with no forethought.

It’s easily done, of course, due to

  • peer pressure,
  • desire for kids to grow up fast,
  • inadvertent adult talk in the wrong setting, or
  • giving in to social influencers etc.

But it’s hard to know these days how to assemble the right parts.

Childcare takes every last bit of your energy and watchfulness – maybe a bit like that man thieving the parts he needed. Maybe he was so watchful, stealing the parts and covering his back, that he had no energy left for sensible thought!

Bit like parents, really! Always flaked out and just about managing.

And I wonder what he did with the useless pseudo-Cadillac?

We can’t just consign our kids to the scrap heap if we get it wrong!

So let’s have a look at a simple way to think about which parts of our children are important to gather together at each age, to ensure we end up with a super adult we can be proud of. Without adding in parts that are not appropriate to their age.

The right parts at each age: which ones matter?

CLANG is a good starting place, and you may have read about that in my previous post. But that's general.

I’m thinking we can list some examples of "right parts" under three headings that cover what matters most (after love and a secure environment):

  • Physical skills
  • Social skills
  • Emotional skills

My experience is that any child who has the right parts in these areas at the age they are is going to have the wherewithal to be

  • resilient,
  • confident,
  • not overly anxious, and
  • a delight to be with.

What does this look like in practice?

Physical skills

This might range from

  • the ability to stack bricks into a pile, to
  • being able to dress themselves in the “right parts”(!) by themselves, to
  • cutting safely with scissors, knives and (um) garden shears when you want help outside, to
  • the skill of making mugs of coffee and sandwiches for visitors.

Somewhere side by side with physical skills, you find they not only grow in strength and manipulation ability (finer motor skills) but also develop executive ability.

What’s executive ability?

That means being able to foresee, plan and carry out a series of actions without getting tangled up along the way. Some adults fail to get to this point, but most do, to some degree. It’s hugely useful in life!

So that’s category one of the right parts you need to ensure your child prospers. Decide what’s appropriate at their age and give that a laser focus.

At the same time your child needs category two skills…

Emotional skills

This is aired in the classroom all the time – but it feels sometimes like it’s become rote learning, not heartfelt understanding. Naming emotions rather than working with them.

So what kind of right parts should you nurture in the emotional skills category?

Because having these is crucial to resilience and confidence, as we said.

And missing out means having a child who gets anxious too easily – whereas they could have learn the emotional skills to manage a bit longer, or think of a way through.

So – these emotional skills might range (age-wise) from

  • saying sorry when they’ve done what they were told not to do (it’s only a word at first, of course!), to
  • showing sadness at something that’s happened eg a friend losing something, to
  • a growing ability to try again, knowing failure isn’t their ID but a process of learning, to
  • calmly accepting they’re not always as good at something as someone else, and valuing what they are good at.

There are many more. It’s a huge topic.

What’s important to note is where your child is at their age and gently encourage the next step as they get older.

It’s equally important not to expect more than they can manage – they think concretely not abstractly before age 12.

For example, that’s why you often have to ask a child how they’d feel if that happened – they can't easily imagine being in the other person’s shoes (abstract thinking) without this reference point of themselves.

Let's look at the third category – social skills. Which are the right parts at any age?

Social skills

These might range from

  • playing with another child (not just playing alongside), to
  • ability to make new friendships and be generous to them, to
  • being able to take into account and act on someone else’s point of view, to
  • taking part in some decent social conversation off the cuff when a visitor drops in, to
  • offering to stop what they’re busy doing and help you when they see you’re tired (using their growing practical skills, of course!).

All three categories work together to "make" a healthy child! It's all to do with remembering what's age appropriate and relaxing about the whole thing. While being mindful of it all haha!

Feel you need some prompts so you don't have to remember everything?

Here's a good book with examples. Have a look at Ages and Stages, which takes you up to 9 years with lovely vignettes. 

ages and stages cover

What happens to the right parts over time?

The short answer is your child moves on from them because they’re integrated efficiently into who they are.

The skills start to match their unique character and ID – unlike those obsolete parts of the Cadillac that could never work together!

The best thing is that with everything gained in the right order and added in securely at the right time, you have a whole, rounded child who isn’t

  • frustrated with unrealistic expectations or
  • worried about trying to fit in with something they shouldn’t be bothered about yet.

And as you see them develop, it’s dead easy (um, well at least easier!) to start letting them go gradually as they mature. That way, you avoid the all or nothing tsunami at 15 when they tell you to get out of their life! 

Give it a go?

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