10/19/2021
Are you parent-pleasing?
Or are you education-providing?
As a recovering people-pleaser, I realize I often did exactly what was expected while a student or an employee. Being task-oriented and amenable, I put the puzzle pieces together to create a product, report, or assignment for what the professor or boss wanted. I rarely pushed buttons, suggested a different approach, or asked why. I just got it done.
This carried over into working with families in clinic settings. If a parent wanted their child to do X, I did everything I could to make that happen. However, this might have been teaching the child a staple skill, rather than building the foundational skills necessary.
As I became a more skilled therapist, I learned that foundation-building and education-providing were much more important than “meeting the goal.” This can be difficult to implement, as it takes patience as a practitioner, and regular communication with caregivers.
A parent may want the child to tolerate or learn a certain task as soon as possible, and who can blame them? They want their child to succeed! But we may see the child isn’t ready, or needs to achieve smaller steps first.
Check in to make sure you’re not forcing outcomes, but rather reviewing the path to growth. Provide this information to your families so they can see how important those small steps are to achieving the higher outcome. 💫
