Here's a wake-up call for American parents: We are doing too much for our kids. This is the origin of "helicopter parenting," in which we constantly remove obstacles so that our kids don't have to deal with challenges.
There were many unpopular parenting rules I followed as a young, single mother. But my No. 1 was: Don't do anything for your kids that they can do for themselves.
That worked out for my daughters. All three grew up to be highly successful: Susan is the CEO of YouTube, Janet is a doctor, and Anne is the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe. They rose to the top of competitive, male-dominated professions.
Parents need to stop coddling their kids
The more you trust your children to do things on their own, the more empowered they'll be. The key is to begin with guided practice: It's the "I do, we do, you do" method.
You can try this with all sorts of simple, everyday actions:
- Waking up: Have them set their own alarm.
- Getting dressed: Let them pick their own outfit.
- Breakfast/lunch/dinner: Give them simple tasks like stirring the pancake batter, cleaning their lunchbox and setting the table.
- Getting their backpack ready: Have them run through a list of what they need to bring that day.
- Making plans: Let them come up with weekend or after school activities.
- Checking homework: It's okay if they don't get 100% of the answers correct. Let them learn from the mistakes.
Chores are especially important. Washing dishes was a big one in our house. All my daughters stood on a little stool at the sink and washed the dishes after dinner.
And when we went grocery shopping, I'd ask them to get two pounds of apples. They had to pick out the good ones, which I'd taught them how to do, and measure pounds on the scale.
If we went over our grocery budget, they'd help me decide what to put back.
Don't worry about perfection
I expected my daughters to make their own beds every morning. Ha! A bed made by a kid can look like she's still asleep in it. But I didn't fight them. As long as they did it, I was happy.
Mastery means doing something as many times as it takes to get it right. Being a writing teacher taught me this. In the 80s and 90s, one of the supposed characteristics of a good teacher was that your class was so hard that many students failed.
But the kids who got a D on their first paper found it impossible to recover and lost the motivation to improve, since they were starting out so far behind.
So I gave them the opportunity to revise their work as many times as they wanted. Their grade was based on the final product. And when it came time for testing, my students performed in the 90th percentile of state exams.
It was the learning and the hard work that I wanted to reward, not getting it right the first time.
Kids are smarter than you think
To be clear, I'm not saying you should make your kids do things they don't understand or aren't capable of, nor am I saying you should let them play in the street if it isn't safe, or walk to the store if the neighborhood is dangerous.
The idea is to teach them how to cope with what life throws at them. One of the most important lessons I taught my daughters is that the only thing you can control is how you react to things.
When you trust kids to make their own decisions, they start to feel more engaged, confident and empowered. And once that happens, there's no limit to what they can achieve.
Esther Wojcicki is an educator, journalist, and bestselling author of "How to Raise Successful People." She is also the co-founder of Tract.app and chief parenting office at Sesh. Follow her on Twitter @EstherWojcicki.
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