Let’s Challenge our Thinking in 2024

How often do you find yourself passing judgement on other parents, children or people in general - either outwardly or mentally? Perhaps more often than we care to admit?

If a child is being boisterous or running amok in the supermarket, it can be easy to frame the problem as being one in which the parent needs to ‘take responsibility or ‘provide some discipline for goodness sake’.

However, imagine if we take a moment to put ourselves in the parent’s or even the child’s shoes.

Maybe, just maybe, the parent is totally exhausted from being up all night, stressed about the cost of living, or struggling with a personal health issue. Maybe the family have been anxiously waiting for more than a year for an appointment for their child to discuss their behavioural issues and are feeling utterly helpless.

Maybe the child is trying to express their own frustrations and doing their absolute best to ‘fit in’ - but this is just hard work.

Our society has become very individualistic, supported by narratives such as ‘life is tough, deal with it’, or ‘I’ve had kids, I managed to keep them under control’. These mental models can be not only unhelpful, but extremely harmful. To learn more about mental models impacting early childhood development, follow this link.

Let’s all challenge ourselves this new year to catch ourselves and look beyond the situation and ask ourselves; ‘I wonder what is happening for that person?’ Taking an empathetic view and creating more positive perceptions can benefit parents and children and strengthen our communities.

We all want strong, resilient communities that stand the test of time, and something as simple as changing our thinking is a great place to start.