Please Don't Help My
Kids
Dear Other Parents At The Park:
Please do not lift my daughters to
the top of the ladder, especially after you’ve just heard me tell them I wasn’t
going to do it for them and encourage them to try it themselves.
I am not sitting here, 15 whole
feet away from my kids, because I am too lazy to get up. I am sitting here
because I didn’t bring them to the park so they could learn how to manipulate
others into doing the hard work for them. I brought them here so they could
learn to do it themselves.
They’re not here to be at the top
of the ladder; they are here to learn to climb. If they can’t do it on their
own, they will survive the disappointment. What’s more, they will have a goal
and the incentive to work to achieve it.
In the meantime, they can use the
stairs. I want them to tire of their own limitations and decide to push past
them and put in the effort to make that happen without any help from me.
It is not my job — and it is
certainly not yours — to prevent my children from feeling frustration, fear, or
discomfort. If I do, I have robbed them of the opportunity to learn that those
things are not the end of the world, and can be overcome or used to their
advantage.
If they get stuck, it is not my job
to save them immediately. If I do, I have robbed them of the opportunity to
learn to calm themselves, assess their situation, and try to problem solve
their own way out of it.
It is not my job to keep them from
falling. If I do, I have robbed them of the opportunity to learn that falling
is possible but worth the risk, and that they can, in fact, get up again.
I don’t want my daughters to learn
that they can’t overcome obstacles without help. I don’t want them to learn
that they can reach great heights without effort. I don’t want them to learn
that they are entitled to the reward without having to push through whatever it
is that’s holding them back and *earn* it.
Because — and this might come as a
surprise to you — none of those things are true. And if I let them think for
one moment that they are, I have failed them as a mother.
I want my girls to know the
exhilaration of overcoming fear and doubt and achieving a hard-won success.
I want them to believe in their own
abilities and be confident and determined in their actions.
I want them to accept their
limitations until they can figure out a way past them on their own significant
power.
I want them to feel capable of
making their own decisions, developing their own skills, taking their own
risks, and coping with their own feelings.
I want them to climb that ladder
without any help, however well-intentioned, from you.
Because they can. I know it. And if
I give them a little space, they will soon know it, too.
So I’ll thank you to stand back and
let me do my job, here, which consists mostly of resisting the very same
impulses you are indulging, and biting my tongue when I want to yell, “BE
CAREFUL,” and choosing, deliberately, painfully, repeatedly, to stand back
instead of rush forward.
Because, as they grow up, the
ladders will only get taller, and scarier, and much more difficult to climb.
And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather help them learn the skills they’ll
need to navigate them now, while a misstep means a bumped head or scraped knee
that can be healed with a kiss, while the most difficult of hills can be
conquered by chanting, “I think I can, I think I can”, and while those 15 whole
feet between us still feels, to them, like I’m much too far away.
