Parenting Basics: “You can do that yourself”

Grandma was right! There is an easy way and a hard way to raise kids. By and large, today’s parents are choosing the hard way. This series of blogs will tackle familiar phrases that used to be commonplace but fell out of favor during the last few decades of the 20th century—and why parents should not be afraid to follow the sentiment expressed in the phrases.

How many times have you done something for your children that they can do for themselves? Most of us do way too much for our seemingly helpless kids. The phrase “You can do that yourself” has not gotten much of a workout these days.

Image courtesy of digitalart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It’s hard to watch our kids struggle with a task, whether it’s learning to tie their own shoes or figuring out the fingering on a piano piece or finishing a particularly tricky bit of math homework. But what we fail to realize is that by jumping in and doing the task for the child—or significantly helping a child with the project—we are actually enabling her to not learn to do it herself. 

Many parents have forgotten how to say to their children, “You can do that yourself.” Instead, enabling has taken over modern parenting. Enabling is evident whenever a parent does something for the child that the child is perfectly capable of doing for himself. Many parents fail to figure the cost of enabling and how it affects the child—and themselves. The cost of enabling to the child is increased dependence on parents, which increases the anxiety of the mother.

The child feels inadequate and helpless, lacks problem-solving and competency skills, and lacks appreciation for his personal strengths and weaknesses. In turn, that fuels the mother’s increased frustration at having to teach the same things constantly to the child.

Enabling also lowers the child’s academic performance, triggering in the mother a tendency to personalize her child’s school performance, as she ties his school performance with her worth/performance as a mom. 

To break the enabling cycle, we as parents need to stop doing so much for our kids. Start by taking counting to ten and repeating to yourself, “She can do it herself” whenever you see your child struggling or getting frustrated with a task. Turn away and focus on something else when your child is attempting to figure something out, such as homework, so that you won’t be tempted to jump in too soon.

Sure it's hard to watch your child fall down while learning to ride a bike and skin her knee. But only by testing her limits will she learn the sweet taste of doing it by herself. Give your child the breathing room to fail—and you will be surprised at how often she succeeds.

In October, Sarah will be giving a series of talks on The Well-Behaved Child: Discipline that Really Works through the City of Fairfax Parks and Recreation Department. Also in October, Sarah and Mary Elizabeth Peritti will speak on Parenting With Love & Leadership in a four-part webinar series. Contact Sarah through her website for more information.