How much independence are you giving your children?
Imagine your child 20 years from now still depending on you for financial help, calling you, asking for rides and complaining about how their pancakes didn’t have a smiley face made out of strawberries and bacon. Oh yeah, and they refuse to move out.
Some may like the idea of a child still needing their parents this much. Others may find it a tad bit pathetic. If you don’t want your children to have the least bit of independence, it’s better to do something sooner rather than later.
Something every parent should do is to let their children make mistakes. If your kid doesn’t fall, how is he or she going to learn to pick himself back up? Without mistakes, your children won’t be able to learn, and therefore become dependent on you fixing their problems.
Another thing every parent should do is support the child in what he or she wants to do. If you keep filling their minds with what YOU want them to do, they will never learn to think for themselves.
Smothering your child with saftely paranoia is a definate no-no. You don’t have to wrap your kid in bubble wrap if they just want to go to the park, or handcuff them to your wrist while walking through a mall. Let them play in mud, trip over rocks, stand more than three inches away from you.
It’s one thing to care and love your child, but another to overprotect and leave them unexposed to activities and actions that will build their independence.
Are your kids totally dependent on you? Why do you think that’s the case? Share your stories below!
Raising Children To Be Independent [BlissTree]
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This is a great article! It is sometimes difficult to decide, as parents, when to let go and let the kids make mistakes. But it is through mistakes that children learn. Some mistakes can be too costly, particularly those involving money. Another approach is to start teaching them key financial principles very early on. I wrote these children’s books on finance so that kids as young as 5 years can grasp these principles. You can check them out at finance4kidz dot com.
Prakash
Father, Author & Professor of Finance
finance4kidz dot com