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.
The slow normalisation of asking for help
Yet beyond those who have sought out these pockets of parenting support, it often 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 both personally and professionally.
Sometimes the reasons for not seeking such support are very understandably logistical or 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 seem to 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 generally is one of the strongest things we can do, as we are reminded of in Charlie Mackesy’s beautiful book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (which is lovely to read with children if you haven’t already):
“What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever said?” asked the boy. “Help”, said the horse.
But more specifically, obtaining parenting support as the norm just makes sense.
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 otherwise 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 just meant to freestyle?
We train for most things we care about 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 courses!
This is true. And so are a number of other things.
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 isn’t generally 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.
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, for many, 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 a higher volume of connections 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. We sometimes need a faster, more efficient solution with input from people who have already done some of the work for us. Obtaining knowledge and equipping ourselves with parenting skills 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 more about creating capacity through parenting skills in my previous blog about parenting lessons learnt from running a business).
We live in a time where we can access huge amounts of existing and ongoing research about aspects of childhood
It seems sensible to use this 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 and ongoing research and development, as we do in so many other areas of life.
This is hugely valuable for all children and can become even more important for neurodivergent children, to ensure we support them and meet their needs fully and effectively, both at home and in school. It is said that knowledge is power and that is certainly the case when it comes to supporting neurodivergent children as well as possible. Having some help in understanding neurodivergence, identifying the right resources, signposting to relevant health professionals and navigating the special educational needs system can save endless time and be life changing.
Just “surviving” isn’t the goal
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 and one of our jobs as parents is to equip our children to deal with those. 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.”
Constant happiness isn’t the aim - that wouldn’t be realistic. But we do want to generally enjoy time with our families rather than it being an ongoing source of strain. So through learning to do our best as parents for our children, we also help ourselves to live contented and more peaceful 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, children 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 who they are, as unique individuals, and what they need to be happy, contented and thrive in their lives. This is just one of the areas where some of the real magic of parenting support can come in.
A more supportive future, learning from the past
There will of course be families who don’t receive any parenting support and they will be completely fine. Though I would suggest that, for the vast majority, some parenting support will always 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 swimming lessons.
That parents will be encouraged to proactively learn approaches that can set their children and families up for success from the start, rather than feeling embarrassed to reactively seek input if things don’t go as hoped.
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.
And that it will be as normal to seek out support with parenting as it was in generations before us. The format may now be different. adjusted for the modern world, but the principles remain the same.
Mary
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Email us at admin@theparentpractice.com or book a free Discovery Call with me to have a friendly chat about how we can work together to help support you and your family.