We must understand that
making good choices is
like any other activity:
It has to be learned.
All loving parents face essentially the same
challenge: raising children who have their
heads on straight and will have a good
chance to make it in the big world. Every
sincere mom and dad strives to attain this
goal. We must equip our darling offspring to
make the move from total dependence on us
to independence, from being controlled by us
to controlling themselves.
As parents, this means we must allow for
failures and help our kids make the most of
them during their elementary school days,
when the price tags are still reasonable.
The cost of learning how to live in our world
is growing up daily. The price a child pays
today to learn about
friendships, school,
learning, commitment,
decision making, and
responsibility is the
cheapest it will ever be.
The older a child gets,
the bigger the decisions
become and the graver
the consequences of those decisions. Little
children can make many mistakes at
affordable prices. Usually all they’re out
are some temporary pain and a few tears.
Yet those prices are too high for some
parents. They protect. They reason, “I love
him. I don’t want little Johnny to learn the
hard way.”
True, it’s painful to watch our kids learn
through natural consequences or, as we like
to call them, significant learning opportunities
(SLOs). But that pain is part of the price we
must pay to raise responsible kids.
The challenge of parenting is to love kids
enough to allow them to fail—to stand back,
however painful it may be, and let SLOs
build our children.
To help our children gain responsibility, we
must offer them opportunities to be responsible.
That’s the key. Parents who raise responsible
kids spend very little time and energy
worrying about their kids’ responsibilities;
they worry more about how to let the children
encounter SLOs for the irresponsibility. They
are involved with their kids, certainly,
lovingly using good judgment as to when
their children are ready to learn the next level
of life’s lessons. But they don’t spend their
time reminding them or worrying for them.
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