Post #2 in category. We suggest reading posts in numerical order.
Parenting Belief
Family life is both universal and unique. There are core elements that apply in every family, and aspects that are expressed differently in every individual family and society. But a fundamental value that has proven indispensable for all individuals, families, and societies for thousands of years is: “What is hateful to you, don’t do to your fellow.” Hillel
A Foundation of Mutual Respect
Children, all children, respond to fairness. They thrive when requests are clear, when expectations make sense and when they feel capable of meeting instructions and expectations. But children must feel confident and trusted, know that their parents believe in them, even when they do not always succeed. Parents need to believe in their children, and their children need to believe in their parents.
Trust is not blind obedience. It is the child’s growing confidence that their parents and family understand them, that they know what their children need, and that they will support and guide everyone competently and fairly.
“Children need your presence more than your presents.”
Jesse Jackson
Presence is more than being in the same room. It is a tone, an understanding, a way of attending, steady, reasoned and value-based modeling, consistent availability, and enjoyable and important everyday interactions that ensure connection and affection.
Over the years, respect deepens through countless small interactions: a parent preparing the child for a transition, siblings including each other in play, a family that treats every member with the same dignity they hope to receive. These simple acts support each person’s agency and self-worth.
The Particular Needs of the Particular Child and Family
While the fundamentals of good parenting are universal, each child’s individual developmental profile requires its own set of considerations and adaptations. A child who hears poorly may need parents who emphasize gesture, rhythm, and visual cues. A child with attention difficulties may require parents to divide tasks and instructions into smaller, more familiar, and more manageable sequences. A child with visual challenges may rely heavily on voice, touch, and predictable spatial layouts. A child with cognitive or language delays may need to first learn necessary prerequisites, to attach the elements to more established experiences and contexts. A child with difficulty regulating emotions may need caregivers who slow the pace and offer repeated and patient co-regulation.
These adjustments are not deviations from “normal” parenting. They are responsive, attuned, and individualized parenting.
“My mother taught me my ABCs. From my father, I learned the glories of going to the bathroom outside.” Louis Grippard
Children learn essentials and also experience the unexpected and the strange from their parents. Parenting is never only instruction and instructions. It is the sharing of pleasures, quirks, and daily rituals. For all children, for all children with delays and divergencies, connection, communication, joy, humor, shared feelings, and experiences are central ingredients of growth.
“The secret of fatherhood is to know when to stop tickling.” Anon
And there is also wisdom in knowing limits. Parents of children with developmental delays often develop a special sensitivity to thresholds, learn how much stimulation, how much language, and how much their child can manage at a given moment. This is not learned from articles and books. It comes from closeness, unending commitment, from years of mutual observation, from frequent interactions, from two-way communication, genuine empathy, intuition and deep mutual understanding.
Behavior as Communication
Young children and children with communication delays speak with their behavior. Their play, their gestures, their enthusiasm, their cries and their refusals are encoded messages. Over time, parents learn to read these messages and to respond in ways that soothe when necessary, and challenge, support, and extend capacities when appropriate.
Children want what all children want: to feel they belong, to feel understood, to be taken seriously, and to feel competent and liked. They need the structure that keeps life predictable. They need to learn “how” and “why”, to be given the responsibilities that foster purpose and pride, and the reassurance that they are loved, supported, are wanted, and genuinely belong in their family.
The Parent as Protector, Provider, Model, Mediator, and Believer
Parents play many roles, sometimes all at once. They are the model for how to meet frustration, learn, solve problems, and correct something that has gone wrong. Above all, they are the child’s most important believers. Parents need to assume their child has more understanding and competence than they are currently able to show.
“Abandon all hope, you who enter here”. Inscription on the gates of Dante’s Hell.
If parents lose faith in their child’s potential to develop, or in their own ability to support that development, expectation fades. Connection, learning, and progress slows, or plateaus, or retreats. When hopelessness creeps in, energy and joy drain away. A child always absorbs the emotional atmosphere of their family. Belief breeds confidence; hopelessness breeds despair. Confidence and despair are both contagious.
“The story that is you, and the child’s story that you helped to create, is in turn continually creating you… and continually creating what you and your child can be.” Anon
Parenting a child with delays influences the development of the child’s parents and their siblings. It can stretch their patience, deepen their empathy, and reveal capacities, commitments, skills, and creativity they did not know they possessed. It can also exhaust them. There is a reciprocal shaping. A new story is continually evolving, one that neither the parents nor the child can create alone.
“While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.” Angela Schwindt
The child’s vulnerability strengthens a parent’s resolve. The child’s confusion, fear and isolation, their lagging progress teaches the family they must step up, they have no other choice. The child’s efforts and triumphs also strengthen a parent’s resolve. Parents learn to appreciate their special connection with their child. They are one with the child and together celebrate each small step forward. The child’s hidden strengths and unique way of seeing the world open their parents and family to unexpected surprises and to hidden beauty that they would not have known if they had not seen the world through their child’s eyes.
Belief as a Catalyst for Change
Parent belief is not a sentimental, naive luxury. It is valid and necessary. Belief energizes imagination and communication. Belief fuels daily mediated play and learning experiences. Parent belief galvanizes the child’s entire development team.
Parents are the “stable unity” that allows change to occur. The parents’ positive belief system radiates outward, uplifting the child, strengthening the entire family, and all of the dedicated persons helping the child. When the child knows you believe in them, they can believe in themselves.
Copyright © 2025 Shlomo Chaim
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