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Parenting Skills or Parent-Child Connection: Which One Is One Most Important?

Parenting skills are great, but there is more to parenting than that. You can have all the skills in the world and still not connect with a child. Which would you rather have?

Let me explain. Yesterday I was watching a father (an incredible one, by the way) play with his child, and I noticed how many times he missed his son’s cues. By cues, I mean the messages his son was communicating to him through eye contact, body language, and toys.

I found myself recalling some of the skills I typically teach to parents… how to make eye contact with kids, how to turn their bodies toward children when playing with them, how to understand what children are trying to communicate to them with toys, and so on. All of these skills are great, but they’re only useful if they effectively help parents connect with their children on a deeper level. If a connection doesn’t happen, the skills mean nothing.

Let’s go back to the father and his son. The child delighted in his dad, despite his dad’s inability to heed his cues. As an observer, it was clear to me this child was connecting with his father.

Then I remembered something I had learned several years ago from a therapist I admire. He told me what matters the most is how you feel toward a child. In other words, you can do all of the right things with a child, but it won’t matter much if, in your heart, you don’t feel good things toward the child. Children are like sponges. They soak up your attitude toward them.

In that moment, I realized that this father was genuinely enjoying his son, and his son could feel that. He didn’t care if his dad wasn’t getting everything right (i.e. the parenting skills he was working on) because he intuitively knew his father cared deeply for him and enjoyed his company. That’s what mattered the most in that moment.

Though parenting skills are essential, they can’t trump the experience of feeling authentic love and interest from those who matter the most to us. Parents don’t have to be perfect, they just need to be good enough, and fortunately, small children aren’t very difficult graders. Spend time delighting in your child today and make a connection that will last a lifetime.
 

Source: Amy Wickstrom, PhD, Marriage and Family Therapist, Registered Play Therapist Supervisor. The Play Therapy Blog at More Than a Toy: Sharing the Secrets of Play Therapy with Today (www.morethanatoy.com/blog)