Help kids face failure without stepping in to fix it

Kids can learn to carry the “boulders” of their feelings, build resilience, and make independent choices without parents taking over. As hard as it is to watch them struggle, sometimes the best support is simply listening and being present. 

In this episode, Dr. Nanika Coor shares practical ways to hold space for kids facing challenges at school, with friends, or in social situations.

• Download: Is my child resilient?

• Listen: Why let your child fail?

• Read: My son failed a test. Here’s how I helped him.

Julian Saavedra: Ever have one of those parenting moments when your child is struggling with some kind of failure at school? Maybe they did badly on a test, or they've had a big fight with their best friend during recess. And all you want to do is just swoop right in and fix it.

Dr. Nanika Coor: Sometimes the listening is the fix for a lot of kids. Sometimes me just talking about it out loud to you, and you not having some big reaction — like, you neutrally listening, keeping your anxieties and your judgments and your interpretations at bay while I am telling you this story — sometimes that's the fix.

Julian: That's Dr. Nanika Coor. She's a family therapist based in Brooklyn. She's also the host of a podcast called "Project Parenthood". And she looks at parenting not only through the lens of how to best support our children so they can thrive, but also how can we as parents better understand ourselves so that our kids can thrive.

Welcome to "The Opportunity Gap", a show where we talk about how it is to navigate the education system. I'm your host, Julian, an assistant principal with over 20 years of experience. Today, we're talking with Dr. Coor about why it's important to let go of that urge to fix our children's failures. We'll try to understand where the urge comes from in the first place and learn about some better strategies for showing up for our kids. Dr. Coor, welcome to the show.

Dr. Coor: Hello there. Thanks for having me.

Julian: All right, so let's jump right in. I want to talk about what I call this urge to fix things for our kids. I'm a parent. I have a daughter that is 10, a son that's 11. And I have the urge myself when something goes wrong or they're struggling with something. I want to jump right in and try to fix it.

Prime example: It is snowing in Philadelphia. It has been snowing all throughout the Northeast. We were at the barbershop and he brought his coat with him into the barbershop. And we got home, we're about to go out to go sledding, my wife looks at me: "Julian, he can't go out without — oh yeah, a coat."

And guess where that coat was? At the barbershop. Now, my first instinct is, well, I've got to fix this, because for my son, he gets really hard on himself when he forgets things. I think so many of us, like myself, we have this urgent feeling that in that moment, it's almost like an alarm clock going off, like, "Oh, we've got to do something." So can you tell us, Dr. Coor, that feeling or that urge to want to fix things, why is it so intense sometimes?

Dr. Coor: Yeah, you know, you have a kiddo who is struggling with something or is, as you said, your child maybe even feels bad about it, getting sort of self — critical about it too. It's really hard for us to see our kids struggle. Just that. Just tolerating your child in a state of struggle is hard.

Tolerating any human being in a state of struggle is pretty hard, but certainly when it's your child. You want to sort of take their upset away, you want to make it better, you want to get them out of whatever sticky situation they have found themselves in. We feel protective of our kids, right? And we want to make it better for them.

I sort of think about it — you know, we have a lot of anxiety. We can have anxiety about them in the moment of the struggle, but also in the future. A lot of times our brain goes to the future. You know, "If I don't help them with this today, what will next week look like? Next year? Ten years from now look like if I don't nip this in the bud in some way?"

And also, sometimes, depending especially on the age of the child, sometimes we can feel like our child isn't capable. Like they need me to step in because they just can't handle it, they just can't manage. And, you know, those are some of the things that get in a parent's way of being able to maybe take a step back.

Our desire to protect them, our desire to fix it for them, smooth the way, and then our own anxieties about their present situation or their future situation. In the line of work that I do outside of the podcast, I work with parents, and my entire practice is working with parents around these kinds of anxieties.

And a lot of times parents are behaving from their anxiety, and their anxiety is sort of leading the way and doing the work — doing the fixing. And so it's important for us to slow down a little bit so that we can get in front of that anxiety and parent our child and parent them from what they are showing us that they need — what their needs are — rather than trying to sort of ameliorate our own anxieties.

Julian: So I'm hearing the idea that anxiety from the parent side can impact our reaction to what our children are experiencing. I would wonder, though, isn't it okay for us to want to fix these things in the moment?

Dr. Coor: Absolutely. And sometimes we do, right? If it's a matter of safety, imminent danger, we need to make split — second decisions about our kid and about their safety. But sometimes we have a little time. Like, the world isn't going to end. Is somebody not going to go out sledding? Perhaps.

But the world is not going to end, and we can figure this out for next time, perhaps. And so maybe not everything is super urgent. So we have to sort of get in our minds: What is an urgent fix that might be in our mind and what is a fix that may take some time for us to figure out? And we might not be able to solve it in this exact second.

Certainly, you could go back and get the jacket and now we have the jacket for today. But that doesn't ultimately fix the problem that tomorrow you may still be in a situation where your child has forgotten the jacket. So it's not a durable, lasting fix. Sometimes the fixes are just band — aids in the moment.

And sometimes that's what's needed in the moment. Like, you want your kid to go out sledding, you go back to the barbershop, you get the coat, they go sledding today. But we have a larger conversation to have and we have a larger problem that's — that's ongoing. And so maybe we could put our brains together and try to fix it together, but it's not actually fixed.

You know, getting that jacket that day doesn't actually fix the overall problem of your child having some problems remembering their belongings. That's a bigger problem, and that's a larger conversation than just in this moment. It's not going to get fixed in two minutes.

Julian: Right. I mean, it's almost like that old proverb of give a man a fish, he eats today, teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever. But in modern parenting, you and I both know it's a lot of things going on. And sometimes as parents, we have to pick the faster road as opposed to the teachable moment. And the teacher in me wants to say there has to be productive struggle, like where the child has to go through some of this process to learn, but in the moment, we don't all have the time to take to do that.

(06:52) The importance of active listening and reflecting a child's feelings back to them

Julian: I want to pivot, Dr. Coor, to school, right? On "The Opportunity Gap", we really focus on the issues happening at the school level. So I'm thinking about what happens when a child brings some sort of failure home from school.

Dr. Coor: Yes. Fixing it is not really an option. First of all, you're not there in the situation, like at school, on the playground to help them with that, right? So kids really do have to navigate a lot of this without you. So that's the actual reality of it.

So there does have to be some agency of their own to, like, what will they do in these situations? And so when your kid does bring you "Here's a problem I'm having that's school — related," the first thing you do is just listen, really. Like, sometimes the listening is the fix for a lot of kids.

"I'm having a problem and it's with a friend and it's bothering me." And sometimes me just talking about it out loud to you and you not having some big reaction — like, you neutrally listening, keeping your anxieties and your judgments and your interpretations at bay while I am telling you this story — sometimes that's the fix. Me just sort of venting about it out loud helps me come to my own conclusion about what I want to do about this.

Julian: Dr. Coor, I want to stamp that for our listeners, because that's such an important point. And I'm stamping it for myself, too: Listening is the fix. In many cases, that just the listening — I have to say, that's one of the hardest things to do, especially if you have little ones, where sometimes they can ramble and sometimes the story goes on and on and on. But the fact that listening, authentically listening for understanding and not for solution — I love that that's a great way to look at it.

Dr. Coor: And sometimes hearing your own — if you can reflect it back to your child, you know, like using their words, using their phrases, using their metaphors, using the feeling words that they said. Even if it was like, "You know, that kid is a jerk," and like maybe you don't like that kind of talk and you don't want to reinforce that.

But in this conversation, maybe you do say, "You're even feeling like this kid is a jerk," that you say. Reflect back to them. Because it shows you're listening, it shows that their actual feelings are important, and sometimes it really helps a child understand what's happening for them when they hear it back, like externalized outside of their own mind.

Right? When you say it back to them, it's like, "Oh, yeah, like now I'm hearing my thoughts coming out of your mouth, and like now I'm having some — some thoughts can percolate about what I might want to do about this." And so you — you're sort of helping them get it out of — like, sort of, you know, we can all do this where we sort of ruminate about something and we just sort of think about it in circles over and over again.

But sometimes when we can get it out, we sort of can work it out while we're talking about it. And that's the gift you can give to your child is just presence, just being present with their thoughts, with their feelings, and reflecting it back as "Here's what I understand you to be saying" from your point of view, not from my point of view, but from your point of view.

Julian: And would you recommend that language, like saying, "Here's what I understand you to be saying"? Is that something you say back to the kid?

Dr. Coor: Yeah, I mean, you could say that maybe with an older kid. Maybe with an older kid you might say that. With a younger kid, I usually say things like, "It sounds like, it seems like, I imagine you might be feeling..." Like we don't want to tell them, "You are angry. You are sad."

We want to say, "It sounds like — I can see by the look on your face you might be a little sad, you might be a little..." Like we use the emotion words that they've said, and if they haven't said any emotion words, we want to try to insert some in there. But we talk about them as something we're guessing at, not something we are certain about.

Because we could be wrong. But when you say it out loud, "Maybe you're feeling this, maybe you're feeling that," you give them the opportunity to correct you. "No, actually, it's more like this." "It's — I'm not so much angry, I'm more frustrated," right? Like you give a kid the chance to clarify, right?

And a lot of kids get to the end of their vent and that's really all they wanted to do. They just wanted to tell you about it, tell you they were frustrated about it, tell you that it sucked and they didn't like it. And then they move on, and they don't actually even need you to give them any more help than that.

And then sometimes they do, right? Like I always like to say sort of try to see if you can listen — listen to your kid all the way, right? Like did they like wring themselves all the way out? And when they change the subject or start talking about something else or go off to play, then they've said all they want to say about it.

And if they seem kind of stuck and they're still really talking about it for a long time, you might then, if after you've reflected back and maybe now they're repeating themselves, you might say, "You know, I wonder, like, what do you feel like you want to do about this? Like, what do you want to have happen after this?"

And sometimes kids need your help, right? They need you to actually step in. And I have actually asked my child, "Do you want some help with this, or do you want to try to figure it out on your own?" And so, and oftentimes my kid will say one or the other, like sort of 50/50, right?

Sometimes my kid's like, "No, I need some help. I need — like, what — what do I do?" And sometimes they're like, "Nah, it's fine. I'll figure it out." You know what I mean? But it's sort of like giving them the — giving them the option rather than just sort of jumping in and fixing it and saying, "Well, this is what you should do and this is what you should say and this is how you should feel about it." What we would do in their situation might be quite different than what they would do and — like, we're different people. We have different personalities, different experiences.

(12:24) How parents can support children with ADHD through social difficulties

Julian: Let me ask you a very specific example that I think kind of cuts to exactly what you're referring to. And I think this is a very common example for a lot of our listeners with children with ADHD. So we know a lot of our kids with ADHD — socialization is really hard. Sometimes the struggle of picking up on social cues or body language or tone of voice, it doesn't come as easy as neurotypical kids.

So say, you know, your daughter is maybe fourth grade, they're on the playground, they go out to recess every day, and they come home one day and they're visibly upset and they just break down to you and say, "Mom, I'm just not having fun at recess. Nobody wants to play with me. I don't think I have any friends. What do I do? I try to go up and talk to people and they just don't want to play with me."

Now, just your reaction as I'm watching you, you breathe heavy. I know as an administrator, I — those are some of the hardest things to hear from parents sometimes when they come in and ask, you know, "My child's struggling to make friends" or "They're struggling to socialize."

And our instant reaction as parents is we want to do something. We don't want our babies to be sad. But I'm wondering from your professional opinion, Dr. Coor, in that situation, what would you recommend?

Dr. Coor: Active listening. That is what I always recommend, right? Like, what does it feel like to be so lonely? What is it like for you when you go to the playground and there's no one to play with? Like, what is that like? I mean, that sounds terrible, right? It sounds hor — like it sounds like a terrible experience that like I'm thinking of that.

But I would talk about that sounds really tough. And I would give a child a space to talk about how hard that is. Because before we get to fixing, it's really important that a child feels like someone sees this pain of mine. Right? So many parents go straight to, "Well, let's get you a friend. Let's get you some social skills. Let's get you all the things."

And it's not to say that those things are wrong or bad; it is to say not yet. They're not ready for any fixes yet. Right now, when they bring you that problem, they want someone to sit with them in that problem. Imagine that those feelings, that loneliness that that child is experiencing, is a big boulder and they're carrying it all by themselves.

Like, you can help them carry that, so they're not holding it all alone. Because when you first — when you jump into the fixing, they're still holding the boulder. That boulder of their feelings and their loneliness exists even when you're like throwing band — aids at the problem.

And so when they can allow you to hold it with them, when you can make space and say, "Hey, like let me hold this with you for a minute, cause that seems really hard," it's slowing down a little bit. Like, the fix is at step three and we're only at step one. We really need to slow down a little bit and make some room for the feelings.

Julian: Now, let me ask, in that moment, when your child comes to you with something like that, like you might experience extreme sadness where tears might come up, you know, you might have your own emotional response like that. Some parents might get really mad, right? Like they — there's situations where they might get really upset in that moment.

Would you recommend kind of sharing your own feelings with your child in that moment, or would you recommend kind of staying even keel? Does that make sense what I'm asking?

Dr. Coor: Yes, I understand what you're saying. I sort of recommend a measured — a measured dose of both, right? So the idea is, yeah, like once you — you sort of can reflect back, "It's — you know, it's so — it's so sad to see that you're so sad. It's so hard for me to see you struggle like this. I know how I would feel if I were in your situation and it would not feel good to me, and it's hard to know that you're experiencing that," right?

So I sort of imagine, yes, I think it's important that we should share our feelings with our kids, but like if you think about feelings being like — on a scale of one to 10, like you might be feeling it at a nine but share it at a two. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, you don't have to be a non — feeling robot — like, you know, you are a person, you have feelings and response to it.

But your kid shouldn't have to feel responsible. "Now I'm like, oh, I need to take care of you because you're so upset." I have worked with teenagers who have told me, "I don't want to tell my mother that I'm struggling this way because she'll be so sad and worried. So I'm going to keep it to myself."

So like they're protecting their parent's feelings, and that's not a kid's job to do. And so it is important for us to be — to be in their presence anyway, as much as is possible, not in an inauthentic kind of robot-y way, but in a generally — like, if we are struggling so much and we're in the nines and tens, then we need help from another adult, not from our kid, right?

Julian: So like tag somebody in.

Dr. Coor: Tag somebody in. If we're too dysregulated, you want to be as regulated as you can be when you're in these — if you're trying to hold space for your child, you can't hold it if you don't feel sort of regu — you can't co-regulate if you're not regulated.

And so it's — it's we want to be measured about it. But of course, you — you're going to have real feelings of sadness about it, and that's what you take to your adult supports and say, "I'm really overwhelmed. My kid is struggling," right? And you try to be that sturdy person for your child, but don't ignore your own feelings either. Right? Get some help with that if it feels overwhelming.

(18:03) The balance between necessary intervention for safety and giving children the autonomy to navigate their own challenges

Julian: So Dr. Coor, I'm wondering, just in the scope of the conversation we've had, a lot of what I'm hearing is around trying to not intervene when situations arise, other than listening and experiencing it. Are you saying that we shouldn't intervene at all on behalf of the kids, or can you kind of thread the needle for us? Like, where is that line, I guess is my question?

Dr. Coor: Yeah. I mean, certainly if anyone is in any imminent danger, right? Like physical danger, emotional danger, we're going to jump in right away. And sometimes we have to say, "I know you don't want me to say anything, but this is a situation where I'm going to have to be the adult and jump in, and and I — I'm sorry that I couldn't leave it in your hands," right?

Sometimes you're going to have to tell kids like, "Can't let this one go." I — I think about it as like we want to stay as collaborative and give kids as much autonomy as is safe. But if there is a safety issue, just be honest about it. You know, be honest about — like, you know, sometimes my kid has said, you know, "Like, I really don't want you talking to X adult or X kid about this thing."

And I've said, "Well, there's a safety issue here. I can't stay out of this one. I've got to get involved. I'm — I'm very sorry. I understand that that's not what you want." And so yeah, not never. Not never. But — but there are some things that we feel more urgently about than we need to take urgent actions about.

So if you use the rubric of like, "Is there an imminent threat or danger to this child?" — and if there isn't, can you step back? Can you take a breath? Think this through for a second, you know, hear your child out for a second before you make any moves? And can you collaborate with them? Can you ask them, you know?

You know, sometimes we really do want to jump in and we say like, "Hey, like I really want to talk to your teacher about this," you know? And and sometimes they're just like, "Please don't." And it's like, you know, you can make some deals. Like, "All right, I'll let you try for two weeks, and then in two weeks I'm going to — I'm going to have to jump in."

Right? You know what I mean? You can do some collaborative things. I mean, our kids are generally not in imminent danger. And, you know, a bad grade is not an urgent thing. You know, it's — nobody's going to die if somebody gets a C.

Julian: Well, I mean, you have to tell that and repeat that a lot because the term that, you know, I — I've heard a lot is the idea of helicopter parenting. How — there is the idea that we have to hover over our kids' every movement to make sure they have a leg up.

And because of the push for this helicopter parenting and jumping in and supporting our kids because we've got to keep up with everybody else, sometimes, as much as we want to listen to Dr. Coor telling us to not intervene and to not jump in and to listen and to check our anxiety, we mess up. We helicopter ourselves right in and we fix what we need to fix and we mess up. Like we — we make mistakes. What happens when you make a mistake? What do we do to repair a situation where we do jump in and try to fix things too fast?

Dr. Coor: Yeah, I mean, whenever there is a — a mistake that we've made, whether it's jumping in too fast, whether it's snapping at our child, you know, doing anything that we just sort of look back later and feel like, "Ah, that wasn't my best self," we can always circle back, right?

We can go back to them and say, "You know, I've thought about, you know, what we talked about or what I did or the actions I took and actually, I wish I'd handled that differently. And I'm sorry about that. I wonder what it felt like when I did XYZ thing that, you know, I wish now that I had not. Um, what did that feel like to you?"

And whatever they say, it's really important to try to respond non-defensively to whatever that is. Sometimes kids will be, you know, very nonchalant, "Oh, don't — no, it doesn't matter. Don't worry about it," like and they just try to end that conversation really fast.

But sometimes kids will be like, "Well, it really hurt my feelings and I really didn't like it when you did XYZ. And I — I wish you'd done something else." And if you can stay non-defensive and stay neutral and just show understanding in those situations, it's really important.

And you're really modeling something important for your child, right? That when we make mistakes we can own up to them and repair the relationship. That the relationship means enough for us that we're willing to circle back to them and revisit something that happened that you wish hadn't happened.

And you know, that relationships can be repaired, that, you know, that we'll have some blips in our relationship and we can just go back and repair them. I like to think of it like, you know, when you lift weights, you've got these, you know, microscopic tears in your muscle and that's actually what makes your muscle stronger, right?

So like the rest day that you have in between is where those repairs happen. And when you come back on day three to lift again, like you're stronger now than you were before, right? It really does strengthen your relationship.

Julian: Oh, that's a great analogy. I might have to use that in my interactions with children. That's a good one.

Dr. Coor: Yeah, like it's really important that, you know, the — the quality of a relationship isn't the — the absence of mistakes made in them; it's how much repair was made in them. You know what I mean? And if you're making mistakes, then you should just be making repairs. You're — you're going to make a mistake. There's just no way you can't. Right?

And so if you are willing to repair it, you're modeling ownership of mistakes and you're modeling, you know, the — the relationship is important enough to me to fix.

Julian: Dr. Coor, I think you've really given us a comprehensive understanding of, you know, what drives our urge to fix things. And that it's not the best way to support our kids. As much as it might help them in the moment, for their long-term success, it's better to listen. The thing I'm taking away from this the most is being a really good listener. I really enjoyed the conversation we had today. I think that there is so much insight that you were able to offer our listeners, our viewers, myself as a parent, as an educator. And I just wanted to say thank you.

Nanika Coor: It was lovely being here. It was really lovely chatting with you.

Julian: Thanks for listening today. We love hearing from our listeners. So if you have any thoughts about today's episode, you can email us at opportunitygap@understood.org. And be sure to check out the show notes for links and resources to anything we mentioned in the episode.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.

"The Opportunity Gap" is produced by Julie Subrin and Gretchen Vierstra. Video is produced by Calvin Knie and edited by Jesse DiMartino. Briana Berry is our production director. Jordan Davidson is our editorial director.

From Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key and Scott Cocchiere. Thanks again for listening. Until next time, OG family.