What Is Scaffolding Parenting? An Expert Explains The Child Rearing Concept

We've taken Bruner's core scaffolding idea of an authority figure guiding a child toward independence and expanded and redefined it into parental support and guidance, not just in an educational context but in an emotional, social, and behavioral one, too. The metaphor of the parental scaffold is visual, intuitive, and simple.

If a piece of the building falls off, the scaffolding is there to catch it and make fast repairs. Eventually, when the building is finished and ready to stand completely on its own, the parental scaffold can come down. It may come down one section at a time since all parts of the building might not be completed at exactly the same time. And, as needed, parts of the scaffold can go back up.

The framework of all your decisions and efforts as parents is the three pillars of your scaffold: structure, support, and encouragement. By relying on these pillars, you will boost your kids' confidence, self-esteem, and coping skills so that they develop into adults who support, encourage, and provide structure for themselves. You scaffold a child so that, eventually, he'll be able to scaffold himself: 

By building a structured home environment when your children are young, you will be role modeling stability, a necessary component of being a successful adult, and setting up a secure bond between you and your children that will strengthen and grow as they become adults. 

Last, giving support means offering instruction. Your child may need help learning a range of skills—from preparing for a test to making a friend. Your role as the scaffold will be to coach and instruct but never to take over and do the work for your child. Although you can outsource tutoring your child in math, you shouldn't hire someone to give him instructions about life skills and values. The strongest support comes from the parent directly.

Encouragement is gently pushing your child to try new things and take risks. When kids fail, as they inevitably will, encourage their future boldness by talking through the "why" of what happened. Empowered by the knowledge of what went wrong and what they can improve upon, kids will be excited to get back on the bike, stage, or field again. If you don't encourage your children to risk failure, you're teaching them to be afraid and dependent.

Throughout the process, you will need to model and teach positive behaviors, giving corrective feedback and boosting your child's sense of competence. Role modeling doesn't breed dependency; it encourages independence. In our patient population, we see a lot of pain and suffering that could have been prevented if parents focused on the scaffolding pillars.