After a recent Student Success Project Presentation, a mother came up to me to complain that her husband never lets their son solve anything on his own. She definitely pushed a button. You see, the greatest skill a kid can have is the ability to figure things out when there seems to be absolutely no solution in sight. It’s our responsibility to nurture students’ innate ability to problem solve.
Letting our kids figure things out means backing off and cutting the cord when all you want to do is jump in and save the day. I call this “high responsiveness and low demandingness” parents.”
These parents are highly responsive to the perceived needs and issues of their children, and don’t give their children the chance to solve their own problems. These parents “rush to school at the whim of a phone call from their child to deliver items such as forgotten lunches, forgotten assignments, forgotten uniforms” and “demand better grades on the final semester reports or threaten withdrawal from school.”
The good news is that there are some quick fixes:
1. Provide opportunities to choose
Too many times, parents make all of the choices for their child, never allowing them to make choices for themselves. Giving children the freedom to choose forces them to live with the consequences of those choices.
2. Allow failure
Too often, parents push an idea of perfectionism onto their child, making them believe that they are not good enough if they fail. It is important that we allow children to fail at things in order to teach them that it is a natural part of the learning process.
3. Don’t give out all the answers
Too many times, parents are quick to give their kids answers without giving their children the opportunity to find the answers for themselves. In the long run, an answer that comes from a parent can be disputed. An answer that is self-obtained and actualized becomes a part of a child and is not something that he will easily part from.
4. Do not hover
Sometimes helicopter parents make the moves for their child — from fighting their kid’s battles to negotiating their wages. Don’t be a helicopter parent. If you want your child to succeed in life and learn then don’t take the learning opportunities away from them. Let them solve their own problems and come up with their own solutions. Most importantly, let them fight their own battles.
5. Ask your kids questions
Allowing our children to learn things for themselves is a difficult thing for many parents to do because it requires that we take a step back and watch them take the lead. But as we allow this to happen, we will see our kids gain greater confidence in themselves and their abilities as they learn to solve their own problems and learn greater insight into their own lives.
Failure-avoidant parenting would seem, on the surface, to be synonymous with good parenting. Children stay safe, get into good colleges and seem happier, at least in the moment.
Unless we allow our children to learn how to take on challenges, they won’t thrive in school and in life. Parents will ultimately serve their children better by allowing them to stand on their own abilities and experience the occasional failure.
I wait for the day when students learn to roll with the punches, find their way through the gauntlet of adolescence, and stand firm in the face of the challenges — challenges that have the power to transform today’s children into resourceful, competent, and confident adults.
And that’s something that MacGyver would be so proud of!
This column is by Ritchie Lucas, Founder of The Student Success Project and Think Factory Marketing. He can be reached at 305-788-4105 or via email ritchie@thinkfactory.com and on Facebook and You Tube as The Student Success Project.
