Why parenting support just makes sense
Many years ago, I did my first parenting course and had some parent coaching sessions. When I mentioned this to others, I was sometimes met with confused facial expressions and questions. Why would you need to do a parenting course? Can’t you just do what comes naturally? Are you not managing? What even is parent coaching?
At that point, there was a good portion of the internet devoted to parenting blogs (which it felt like I read ALL of when worried about various challenges when my children were very small…generally on my phone… at around 3am… not ideal…). Now, things have moved on further with parenting advice all around if you look for it – books, Instagram accounts and whole sections of newspapers. And there are thousands of parents who have completed coaching and courses with The Parent Practice over the past 22 years who have talked about how positive and beneficial it has been for their families.
Yet beyond those who have sought out these pockets of parenting support, it sometimes feels that actively asking for help with parenting still isn’t as widely and fully accepted as I think it should be. This is what comes through from conversations I have personally and professionally.
Sometimes the reasons for not seeking such support are very understandably logistical and financial – not enough time or resources to invest in them (and if financial reasons are relevant to you, do have a look at our Bursary scheme for our courses).
But sometimes the reasons are to do with what elements of society think about parenting support. Does it signal you are “failing” in some way? Is asking for help a sign of “weakness”? Does it mean you can’t do what everyone else is apparently doing easily and without issue? Shouldn’t you be all over this parenting lark given the demanding and complex things you can do in your career?
My answer to all of those questions is no. For a start, asking for support is one of the strongest things we can do. But more specifically, parenting support as the norm just seems to be a logical course of action.
We do ante natal classes. What about the next 18 years?
No one bats an eyelid when you say you are going to an NCT class or similar. It makes sense – if you haven’t done something before and want to do it well, why would you not learn about it? As the old adage goes, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail” (or at least for it to be much more difficult than it might be).
So doesn’t it follow that we might want to actively learn about approaches that can help us in the next 18 years of childhood? Those newborn weeks are undoubtably unique, challenging and involve some specific skills (good luck to anyone trying to swaddle a wriggly and overtired newborn without someone showing you first). But the challenges don’t conveniently end with the last page of the ante natal handbook. So then what? For the next 17 years and 10 months, we are meant to just freestyle?
We train for most things we do in life
There is no other role or activity that we would expect to start and for it to go as well as it could without any learning or training of any kind. Starting a new career? Study or do practical learning. Want to be a decent footballer? Get yourself to the local club and weekly training sessions. Taking up painting? Book that art class to learn about tools and techniques. Becoming a new parent? Good luck!
When viewed in that way, it seems pretty strange that we are not all signing up for parenting courses shortly after those two lines appear on the pregnancy test. Especially when many people often say that being a parent is one the most important things in their life and one of the most important roles - if not the most important role - they will ever have.
But humans have survived for millennia without parenting classes!
This is true. And so are a number of other things.
Firstly, we no longer live the way humans have for thousands of years before us, or even in the not so distant past. In days gone by, living in community was the norm – with extended family and in wider communities of villages or other gatherings. This gave access to physical support, with parenting responsibilities often shared between generations. Community also gave immediate, in the moment access to the lived experience of elders and the wisdom passed to them by generations above.
Whilst grandparents are of course still frequently involved with our families, it generally isn’t involvement with the day to day minutiae of our children’s lives in the way it was centuries, or even decades, ago. And we don’t generally have daily access to great aunties, uncles, cousins and the like. The pool of knowledge and experience has got much harder to access.
Secondly, the parenting landscape has changed. We may still very gratefully receive advice from older generations if we are lucky enough to have them around us. But we are now dealing with many challenges that many of our own parents didn’t face – some of which hadn’t even been imagined when our grandparents were raising children.
This is true of the challenges we need to equip our children to deal with. Social media, screens and AI are some of the most obvious but also in simply managing greater demands with homework, other aspects of school and more extra-curricular activities. We need to support our children in the knowledge that poor mental health among children is increasingly common. And prepare them for a world where the job market is uncertain and evolving at pace, where certain skills may reign superior over the historic model of knowledge being king (The Future of Jobs Report 2025 from The World Economic Forum is an interesting read if you have time).
Changes in the parenting landscape are also evident in the way we, as adults, now live our lives. Professionally, families generally now have both parents working (whether parenting together or apart), with many parents working longer hours and facing greater expectations in the workplace than in previous generations. Our personal lives have also “levelled up”, with more connection through technology and trying to do more “extra-curricular” activities ourselves when compared to our parents and grandparents. Gender roles have changed too, bringing with them incredible benefits and, sometimes, also challenges for families.
As a result, we don’t necessarily have the time or energy to figure it all out with parenting as we go along, to do so on our own, or just with ad-hoc piecemeal advice. Ideally, we need a faster, more efficient solution with input from people who have done some of the work for us. That not only benefits our children and family life but also frees up our capacity for other areas of life – crucial when we are often time poor from juggling so many things (read my previous blog about parenting lessons learnt from running a business).
Thirdly, we live in a time where we can access huge amounts of existing and ongoing research about aspects of childhood which it seems sensible to use for the benefit our children. There is so much to learn from the past which can support children but this can be done in parallel with utilising current research and development, as we do in so many other areas of life.
And finally, just “surviving” isn’t the goal - I hope that families and children can thrive through children being supported in all the ways they individually need. There will be ups and downs for us all through life, some very significant. But all being equal, our children’s contentment is one of the biggest things that can make the difference between family life being relatively straightforward and happy, or being a struggle and stressful.
A lovely friend once said to me something that rang so true and has stuck with me: “As a parent, you are only ever as happy as your unhappiest child”. So in learning to do our best as parents, we also indirectly help ourselves to live contented lives.
Most importantly though, I wholeheartedly believe that all children deserve to be supported in all the ways they need so that they can thrive. Ultimately they of course need to feel loved and cared for, with all basic needs met. But with the right parenting support, we can very easily go further and give them even more than that.
This includes giving our children one of the greatest gifts we will ever give them through truly understanding the unique, individuals that they are and what they need to be happy, contented and thrive in their lives. It is here where some of the real magic of parenting support can come in.
The future
There will be some families who don’t receive any parenting support and the parents and children are completely fine. I would suggest though that, for the vast majority, some parenting support is always going to be incredibly helpful.
So I hope that one day, parenting support will be easily accessible for all.
That signing up for a parenting course will be as normal and accepted as it is to sign up for an ante natal class or your child’s first Little Kickers session.
That parents will be encouraged to proactively learn approaches that can set their children and families up for success from the start, rather than reactively seeking input when things don’t go as hoped.
That, as far as possible, we prevent or minimise certain issues for our children by supporting them in particular ways from the outset - because prevention is better than cure.
And that, as a society, we place the same importance on parenting as we do on training for our careers and the activities we do for fun. I believe parents and children deserve it.
Mary
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