Kindling a Fire: Parenting through Transitions

With students now back in classrooms and routines beginning to take hold, many families find themselves navigating transitions: new schools, new divisions, new friends, new expectations. As a result, September often brings a quiet wave of parent anxiety, and I’m frequently asked for advice. So let me share the same guidance I’ve offered over the years to our Cincinnati Country Day School community.

It’s important to keep in mind that most transitions go well. Students are far more adaptable than we sometimes give them credit for. But any meaningful change comes with its share of bumps. I predict that at some point soon, your child will be excluded from something. They’ll get a bad grade. They’ll lose something they care about: a game, a friendship, a bit of confidence.

And the most important question is not whether these things will happen – because they will, to everyone – but how you, the adult, respond when they do. That moment is the crucible of parenting. Because resilience isn’t cultivated in the abstract. It’s forged in real-time, under pressure, often in transitions like these.

We all know the instinct we feel when our kids are struggling. I’ve felt it myself: the urge to fix, to soothe, to rescue. To send the carefully worded email to the principal, arrange the restorative playdate with the erstwhile friend, or plead the athlete’s cause with the stubborn coach. And yes, sometimes those interventions are appropriate. But they shouldn’t be our first move.

Because when children are in distress, what they need most is not for us to remove their discomfort. What they need to know is that we are not afraid of it. That we can sit beside them without panicking or rushing to resolve. That we can be a calm, non-anxious presence and say the most powerful phrase in parenting: “Tell me more.”

This response is powerful because it models resilience and offers support through a sturdy (but not pushy) sense of authority. In a world that all too often valorizes victimhood and pathologizes routine hardships, this response shows our children that sadness can be survived, that anxiety can be endured, and that failure is not the end of the story.

But it does raise one of the singular challenges of parenting: in trying to protect our children in the short term, we can often inadvertently harm them in the long term. When we treat every setback as a threat rather than a learning opportunity, when we rush in to solve our children’s problems for them, we send the unspoken message: You can’t handle this. And that message, no matter how well-intentioned, causes fragility in children.

Instead, if we want to raise strong young people, we must let them face the Four Ds: discomfort, disappointment, distress, and yes, sometimes even (safe, age-appropriate) danger. Not recklessly, not alone, but with us nearby, steady, and supportive, without clearing the entire path ahead of them.

This will mean sitting with our own discomfort, our own anxiety, our own ache to make it all better. But those are the moments when our children need us most – not as problem-solvers, but as models of resilience and grace under pressure. If a metaphor helps in these moments, remember that our children are not bonsai trees, to be meticulously pruned and sheltered. They are wild oaks, meant to grow freely (and a little crooked) in real soil and real weather, anchored by the invisible but strong roots we provide.

So the next time your child comes home upset about some routine struggle, resist the urge to jump in. Don’t explain it away. Don’t rush to smooth it over. Sit. Listen. Say, “I’m so glad you’re talking to me. Tell me more.”

In doing so, you send one of the most powerful messages a child can receive: I am strong enough to handle your feelings. And so are you. That is what resilience is made of. And it is one of the greatest gifts parents can give – not just for this school year, but for life.

"Kindling a Fire" is a column submitted regularly to Indian Hill Living by Head of School Rob Zimmerman '98. This ran in the September 2025 edition of the publication.