Making kids lives easier doesn’t teach them how to handle life challenges. Offering help occasionally to do something they know how to do is okay. Be careful to not get caught through their pleading to continue. Here are guidelines to check to see if you are strengthening or weakening your children. At the end is a link to quiz by Jean Illsley Clarke titled Why Do Parents Overindulge Quiz?
Strengthening Children
Children need to learn how to gain control over their lives gradually. Teach them how to take on self control as you lovingly let go. Understand and manage your own insecurities as your children stumble through this process.
When we strengthen our children, they have a tendency to:
Develop courage
Feel a sense of high self-esteem
Ways We Strengthen Children
- Turning control over to the child as soon as possible.
- Hanging in there when the going gets tough.
- Let them face their mistakes and use them as an opportunity to grow.
- Teaching them problem solving skills
- Loving them unconditionally
- Sharing how their actions affect others.
- Giving them opportunities to make a difference and contribute.
Weakening Children
Self reflect about situations where you are doing too much for your children. What are your beliefs that cause you to overdo? What needs of your own are you trying to fulfill?
When we weaken our children, they have a tendency to:
Become immobilized
Feel a sense of low self-esteem
Ways We Weaken Children
- Doing too much for them
- Giving them too much
- Overprotecting / rescuing
- Lying for them (making excuses for their behavior.
How are you giving your children opportunities to develop courage and a sense of high self-esteem?
How are you causing your children to feel helpless and develop low self-esteem?
Here is the link to Jean Illsley Clarke’s quiz Why Do Parents Overindulge Quiz?
Download a list of Independent Living Skills
2015, copyright Cynthia Klein, Certified Parenting Educator, www.bridges2understanding.cvom
