Let children be children, University of the Sunshine Coast academics urge

Researchers from Queensland’s University of the Sunshine Coast are calling for more parents to allow their children space to “just be children” and to step into “a more balanced family reality” free from the pressures of extra curricular activities and with space to fail and develop resilience.

 

Associate Professor Dr Mike Nagel and Dr Shelley Davidow’s new book Grounded: The off-road guide to parenting in an unstable world aims to steer parents “out of the stress of years of pandemic panic.”

 

Grounded outlines the developmental essentials that allows children to experience a grounded childhood that sets them up to be resilient, balanced, empathetic adults.

“As parents, we can do a lot to mitigate stress in their lives – but we also need to learn to allow our kids to fall and get back up again on their own,” Dr Davidow said.

“They need us to show them that life is a rich and complex up-and-down journey, not a singular trajectory towards some imaginary finish line.”

 

The researchers draw on the authors’ collective decades of research, parenting and insights, and offers parents a guide to protecting childhood and supporting children’s developing nervous systems while also taking care of their own.

 

Such a goal, they continue, is not only good for children – from toddlers to teens – but is also good for parents. 

 

“We have to let children just be children so they can enjoy childhood and become happy, healthy, resilient adults,” Dr Nagel said.

 

He warned against filling the lives of children with extracurricular activities to somehow build a vast array of capacities that might normally unfold if allowed to do so on their own.

 

“Instead,” he said, “we contend that much of what we need to do is well understood in the research literature and through the experiences of past generations of parents.”

 

Dr Davidow called for a return to the simple things, such as “just playing, being in nature, baking, making stuff, or allowing kids to be bored,” which she believes may have been forgotten as essential elements of growing up in a bid by parents to “raise the perfect child.” 

 

“Academic success in primary school is not the predictor of a happy, healthy, wealthy life later.”

 

Grounded: The off-road guide to parenting in an unstable world was released on 28 February by Amba Press. Image features Associate Professor Mike Nagel and Dr Shelley Davidow on campus with their new book.