«Children need parents who take time for them»

Fabian, would you like to be a child today?

Absolutely. I think we are living in challenging but exciting times. When I look back at the history of mankind, I would choose the time of my generation or the present - I would certainly have been less happy to be a child in the time of my parents, grandparents or great-grandparents.

You grew up in the 80s/90s - to what extent has the world children live in changed since then?

One major difference is certainly the advancing digitalisation. A lot of things have shifted to the digital space, and relationships are also cultivated more via social media than in the real world. I see a decrease in free spaces, especially for children. In my day, we played outside a lot with other children - often unobserved. Today, these spaces are severely restricted.

There is much more guidance from adults and children spend more time in institutions. All of this robs them of the experiences of autonomy that are important for developing a sense of self-efficacy.

But parents are also much more involved with their children than they used to be.

That's true. Many parents are much more active in their endeavours to have a good relationship with their children, which is a wonderful thing. On the other hand, they find it more difficult to let go. Sometimes they lack the confidence to allow their child to master things on their own or to set themselves apart and go their own way.

What are the biggest challenges for parents today?

The two topics that parents often approach me with are «school» and «media». How can I get my child interested in school, motivated and able to overcome themselves when they don't feel like it? And how do I manage to monitor and regulate media consumption so that it doesn't get out of hand?

How do you see the role of parents in relation to school?

I think it's very important for parents to be interested and show interest: How is my child doing at school? Is he or she getting on well with the teachers and classmates? I think this interest in the child as a person is more important than constantly sticking to the material.

Many children can now read and write before they start school.

There is a proportion of children who take an interest early on. And you shouldn't discourage them. But if 15 out of 20 children in Year 1 can already write, I don't believe that all of them were that interested. There are parents, especially those with an academic background, for whom it is clear that the only option for their child is grammar school and then university. Without considering whether this is the best path for the child.

Media consumption is not about slavishly adhering to time limits, but about agreeing with the children when a sensible end has been reached.

This pressure is felt to varying degrees in Switzerland. If you live in a certain municipality in Zurich and your child doesn't go to grammar school, you very quickly get the impression: I'm a bad mum, a bad dad. My child didn't make it. It's not so pronounced elsewhere.

In addition to the grades, the teacher's assessment also counts in the transfer procedure. If the teacher does not recommend the grammar school, this is certainly not an easy message to convey to the parents in many cases.

These are very difficult conversations for teachers. But once again: the question should not be at the centre of such a transfer decision: Will my child make it to grammar school? But rather: Which school suits my child? If a child always has to achieve the maximum in order to reach the minimum, so that they can keep up with just the bare minimum, this is incredibly gruelling. It's not good for self-esteem and self-efficacy. I also often see parents trying to get the maximum out of their children with rewards, for example by promising them money or a mobile phone for good grades.

Which brings us to the second major issue facing today's generation of parents: the media. On the one hand, people don't want to and can't ban digital media, but on the other hand, they don't want to allow media consumption to run rampant. How do you experience this conflict-laden topic?

This balancing act is very challenging. There are time recommendations from institutions or media experts that are supposed to give parents guidance, but usually only put them under even more pressure. Because if you are honest, the child is often glued to the device for longer than the recommended 30 or 45 minutes per day. Out of a guilty conscience, the next attempt is then made to stubbornly adhere to the recommendation, but this doesn't work.

Because then the child rebels.

Exactly - and rightly so! How would we like it if we were watching a film and our partner switched off the TV just before the end, saying: We agreed on 90 minutes! As parents, we should be a bit more flexible. Children have the need to finish something, to wait for a logical end.

Parents should give their child enough difficulties to grow with.

It is therefore not a question of slavishly adhering to time limits, but of agreeing with the children when a sensible end has been reached. It is also advisable to prepare for this end by sitting down with the child shortly beforehand and signalling to them: Now it's almost time.

That sounds sensible, but also time-consuming. Tools such as the screen time setting are designed to help parents limit their children's media time - without having to constantly keep an eye on it themselves.

I myself have activated an Instagram time blocker on my mobile phone, which switches the channel off after a certain amount of time. But I have committed myself to this. Neither my partner nor my father decided that. And this requires a certain maturity that children don't have until a certain age. Children need parents who take time for them, are interested and accompany them - we can't delegate that to apps.

You spoke at the beginning about the need to be allowed to have your own experiences. What other areas does this apply to besides unobserved free play?

Parents should be able to allow their child to have enough difficulties to grow with. In other words, parents should have a supportive attitude, but not take too much from their child.

Suppose a father notices that his nine-year-old son is not getting on so well with his new teacher. The teacher often gets loud during lessons and makes children sit on the bench during sports lessons because, in his opinion, they are disruptive. His son is also sometimes among the «punished». What should the father do?

In terms of a reliable parent-child relationship, I think it's important that the father listens to his son when he talks about such problems at home. He should recognise that it's not so easy right now, but also encourage his son and ask him: How do you want to deal with this situation now?

If your child is really suffering, you should of course intervene. Otherwise, you can trust them to cope with some unpleasant moments as long as they have a safe haven at home.

Do many mothers and fathers intervene too quickly?

Yes, in this respect I sometimes wish I had more composure and more trust in the child. If you look back and ask yourself in which phases you learnt the most and developed the most inner strength, then these were often not the easiest times, but those in which you had to deal with some kind of resistance. We should be aware of this: Resilience also develops in the face of resistance and not so much when everything is wonderful and nothing challenging happens.

During puberty, the relationship between parents and child changes. Friends become more important and mum and dad fade into the background. How do you maintain good contact with your child?

I often see parents trying to influence their adolescent children in order to be able to determine in some way what the child thinks, feels, does or achieves. But that doesn't go down well with young people.

It's a terrible idea when we as parents know exactly where the child is and with whom, but have no idea what it looks like on the inside.

What should you do instead?

If we want young people to remain in dialogue with us and our opinions still count for something, we must also take their views seriously. A teacher who asks young people how they feel about their lessons and what they can do to help them learn better will have a greater impact than a teacher who primarily tries to control the young people.

The same applies to parents. If I reflect on myself as a parent, if I am honest, tell something about myself and listen seriously to what the child has to say, we are closer than if I simply have an image in my head that I want to mould my child according to. Young people often rebel against the latter, and rightly so.

What else is important?

It is also worth asking yourself: How do our conversations go? What do we talk about? Many young people complain that it's all about organisation, rules and their behaviour: Have you thought about this or that? When do you have the maths exam? When are you coming home? Many parents try to control their child, especially at an age when their offspring no longer allow it. But the more I'm in this mode, the more my teen blocks me out.

But family time is at a premium. Everyone has lots of appointments. They have to be coordinated.

Of course, but we mustn't lose sight of the essentials in all this organisational stuff. It's a terrible idea if we as parents know exactly where our child is and who they are with, what they are doing and what they need to do, but have no idea what they are doing inside. We need to make it a priority to take 20 minutes a day to do this.

Parenting today seems to have become more demanding than it was in our parents' day. Expectations have risen, family and parenting have moved more from the social to the private sphere. This can be a burden.

People often mourn the proverbial village that helped raise the children and no longer exists today. Of course there is something missing, but I also think that we romanticise this village a little. Village structures also have something restrictive about them and perhaps we made a conscious decision to move away in order to be freer in our decisions - and now have to live with the disadvantages, such as the lack of grandparents.

Parents overestimate their influence on the child's development.

The book «Kindheit - eine Beruhigung» (Childhood - a reassurance), published by Zurich paediatrician Oskar Jenni, states that the increased demand for perfection is partly due to this privatisation. How a child turns out is now the sole responsibility of the parents. And they want to do a really good job. But the parental influence on a child's development is not that great.

I also think that we overestimate parental influence. Genes and the environment play a much bigger role than we think. And it's relieving to be able to say as a parent: There are so many influencing factors, I am just one of them.

But why is there sometimes such a heaviness about being a parent?

The demand to do everything well has increased dramatically. You want to be successful in your job, in your social relationships, in your family. Everything should go well. In my childhood, my father was usually the sole breadwinner and my mother was fully responsible for care and housework.

Today, both of us often work. However, it's not the case that we share 100 per cent of our working hours, but work 140 or 180 per cent together. And we realise that something always falls short. Either I spend a lot of time with the children, but then the household doesn't look good. Or I focus on the job for a while and feel guilty about the family. But admitting this to ourselves is incredibly difficult.

How do you get out of it?

It is certainly helpful if we think about this again and again: What is most important to us? What can we do without? Ultimately, however, we have to recognise that this dilemma can never be completely resolved and that the various areas may be neglected at times.

I can think of three keywords that parents are more confronted with today than in the past. Firstly: social media. To what extent does the ability to constantly compare ourselves with the whole world increase the pressure on us mums and dads?

First of all, I see fewer and fewer people posting their everyday lives. You can hardly find any family photos online that aren't posed. So you don't compare yourself with realistically depicted scenes from around the world. What has increased recently, however, is the commercial side, the beautiful pictures of influencers: stylish children's rooms in pastel colours.

Five tips are not enough to bring about real change. You need more than that.

There is something very artificial and highly polished about this world, which can give us the feeling that we as individuals, but also as a family, are doing very poorly. These often subconscious comparisons inevitably put us under pressure.

Second keyword: parenting guides. The abundance of titles on the book market is immense. Doesn't that add to the uncertainty?

Uncertainty is not bad per se, it is allowed. When we read a book, we should be prepared to be unsettled. We are confronted with a different perspective and are allowed to ask ourselves: What does this mean for me? Is this a coherent picture? What in my dealings with my child should I perhaps review and change? I may also come to the conclusion that I don't want to change anything at all.

Many parents today want the exact recipe: «With these five steps you will achieve the perfect family life and then you will have done everything right.» But real change doesn't come from five tips. You need more than that. And sometimes it requires a willingness to embrace unpleasant feelings.

Thirdly, more and more children are being diagnosed with ADHD, Asperger's or learning disorders, for example. Is one reason for the increase that parents want to be relieved by a diagnosis?

In my experience, parents don't primarily want to relieve themselves, but rather seek clarity. A father once told me: "When we had the diagnosis that our child had a developmental disorder, we were able to set our standards differently. Before, I always compared my child with other children and asked myself: What's wrong with him? Now I could be happy about progress that I hadn't even seen before.

Even if the numbers were lower in the past, these children have always existed. Those with learning difficulties were simply considered stupid. Labelling happened and still happens anyway. But knowing the real cause of certain difficulties leads to a different approach to the child concerned. I think that makes a lot of sense.

Finally, I would like to come back to the question of how we manage to organise family life with joy and satisfaction.

If I want to get something out of a relationship, it needs time. That is an important decision: I consciously invest in this relationship, only then will it give me something back. This applies equally to couple relationships and parent-child relationships. And then I can ask myself: what are the moments that we enjoy as a family? Is it the holidays, eating together? Are they perhaps quite inconspicuous moments like watching a film together?

Many teenagers miss their parents giving them an insight into their emotional lives.

You should consciously build this into your everyday life and savour it. When my children were younger, I realised that it makes a huge difference to me whether I say: I have to go shopping and take the children with me, or whether I say: I'm spending time with my children today and we're going shopping together. It's still the same activity, but as soon as I prioritise the goal of «I want to spend some time with my child», the dynamic changes.

Younger children really appreciate this. How do you do this with teenagers who are no longer so interested in joint activities?

It's also about finding points of contact with them. What does my teenager actually do all day? What does he do? Sometimes it takes a bit of effort to get involved in watching a video or getting to know their friends. And one thing that many teenagers miss is that their parents also give them an insight into their emotional lives. And not always just the superior adults.

The dynamics of the conversation often change when we start with ourselves: «I've had a really bad day today.» I appear as a person, I reveal something. Maybe the young person just listens and doesn't say anything. But it's much more likely that they'll talk about their day afterwards. Every person who spends time with us and engages with us influences us.