Even though this will post after “Independence Day”, I thought it was important to talk about the hardest part of being a parent- walking the line between dependence and independence.
One of our jobs as parents is to take small people and gradually prepare them to be independent people, just like us. Yet when you start out with babies who are 100% dependent on you for every need, this journey seems long and impossible. You can start to like the dependency- of being so important to your kids. I breast-fed both my kids, and I can remember for years afterwards, my youngest would still come up and occasionally put his hand under my shirt just to touch my belly skin, because just touching me made them feel so much better and more secure. Now the power to change another person’s life, just by letting them touch you- that’s a pretty heady experience for anyone. I am SuperMom, healing problems, big and small, by the simple laying on of hands or kissing of boo-boos.
But as kids get older, we really have to begin to teach them about independence and responsibility, step by step. It starts with having them help around the house; then letting them go get items several aisles away in the grocery store; and before you know it, you can leave them at home for short periods on their own, and some day, even go out, leaving them at home, and the house will still be standing when you return.
Amazing.
All of these steps of testing their readiness for more responsibility, letting them succeed and fail from time to time, prepares them to be their own grown-ups when the time comes.
Now granted, from a kid’s perspective, learning how to clean a bathroom or do your own laundry does not look like a “grown-up responsibility”- it looks like you are just trying to turn them into Cinderella. Trust me, I played that role to the hilt as a teenager myself, having two younger siblings, and feeling like I was the only one who got asked to help, while they played. I never saw it as what it was as well- my mom trusted me enough to let me do those things, to help and contribute- and that made the ultimate transition into adulthood so much easier.
In the end, I have been so grateful for all that experience, and felt like whatever other complaints I might lodge at my mom, it was never one about lack of trust or not wanting me to be independent. I was not over-protected or under-protected- my mom got that dance pretty right, even if I could’t see it at the time.
I hope I will be able to do the same things for my kids- teach them about independence in a way that makes them better people in the end- that should be what this parenting dance is all about anyway, right?
And no matter how much it may be in vogue to be a helicopter parent- my goal is to actually get my kids to the point where they want to leave the house and live on their own, and have the skills to do so. I do not want to follow them to college, and take a job as their permanent full-time maid to fulfill some weird need of my own. But that job starts early on, because the responsibility fairy doesn’t deliver maturity on a kid’s 16th or 18th birthdays.
What do you think? Is giving your kids responsibility around the house and more independence a good thing, or is the world really so different that we need to protect our kids more than in the past? If we need to protect them more, when will they learn to fly on their own? What do you think?
Photo graciously provided by dcassaa, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved
1 response so far ↓
Debbie // Jul 23, 2008 at 8:33 am
I had a similar teenage experience of having lots of household work to do and a younger sibling, and I did feel put-upon, and even my friends thought I did too much around the house. But I felt proud even at the time that I knew how to do laundry and clean house and cook, and I was grateful almost immediately upon getting to college and seeing how clueless my classmates were.
I have zero desire to be a helicopter parent. My kids are 4 and 5, and I am content to watch from a safe distance and let them come get me if there’s a problem. Because we adopted our kids at near-3 and near-4, we had to teach them to do that. My method, now that I think about it, is to discuss tough situations when all is calm and give them tools for managing them on their own–e.g. what to do when a classmate uses a potty word at them. I never intervene in fights at home unless a kid appeals to me directly, and then I only give a negotiating point, e.g. “There’s only one toy and both of you want it. What do you guys think you could do?”
As for giving responsibility, chores, etc–I am ALL for it. I think kids want to help, want to feel part of the work going on around them. Adopted kids, especially, benefit from feeling that they contribute to the family’s operation. My husband and I are trying out various help-out tasks with the kids right now to see what fits them; we’ll make a chore chart in the fall.
I recommend the book “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee” for advice on fostering independence and matching responsibility to the child’s personality.
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