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If You Love Your Kids, Stop Helping Them
A kid who solves a thousand small problems will be well prepared when a big problem comes along.
“Can you help me with my juice box?”
When I heard this question a lightbulb popped on in my head and it’s a moment I’ve never forgotten.
As a teacher, I love helping kids struggle with difficult concepts, learn new skills and wrestle with what it means to become an adult in this difficult time.
As a mom, my hands are wired — almost separately from my brain — to help kids. Without even thinking, I open snack packages, tie shoes, fix ponytails and hand out wet wipes. If you have kids, you probably do a hundred little things for them every day without even noticing it. Zipping coats, holding the door, buckling buckles and yes — pushing the straw into juice boxes.
The kid asking me to open his juice box though, wasn’t my kid. In fact, he wasn’t really a kid at all. He was one of my able-bodied high school students who had become accustomed to getting help punching his juice box straw through the little cellophane hole instead of learning to do it for himself.
In this moment, I had a parenting epiphany. I realized that by helping our kids, we aren’t helping them at all.
