One of my proudest moments as a parent of a teenager came last year. My newly driving teen hit the curb at an away tennis meet and severely damaged one tire and punctured another. This was not great timing; it was 9 at night and Ben Davis was about 40 minutes from our house, and I desperately wanted to go to bed. As my wife and I were going to get him and his brother, I said, “He will be changing the tire when we get there.” Had I ever taught him to change a tire? Nope. So why did I think that? Because part of my goal as a parent and pediatrician is to prepare kids to become adults. I often tell my families that their teenage years are an important time to practice being an adult, and teen’s parents often need to be reminded of that.
A few weeks ago, one of my high-schoolers was talking about how his teacher is troubled that parents have gotten “soft”. By soft, he meant that the kids were not doing things for themselves, and the parents were over involved with their teen’s education, instead of the teen taking ownership of his education, successes, and failures. From what I heard from my kid, “soft” had nothing to do with discipline. I thought about it and sadly, have to agree. Not all parents of course, but over the last 20 years of taking care of kids and coaching parents on how to interact with their kids, it is definitely a growing trend. Why does this matter? Because it severely hurts kids’ self-confidence, imagination, self-efficacy, and future success.
Obviously, we all want to experience the love of our child, enjoy watching them grow up, have fun with them, but ultimately, what is the goal - our duty as parents? For myself, it is to raise independent humans who thrive as adults, and lead happy, loving, fulfilling lives. As we all know, doing that is harder than we anticipated! And for a lot of parents, one of the hardest parts is letting them take control of their own lives. This should start gradually in young children, and as the child gets older, they should be expected to have more and more responsibility. Now I am not suggesting that I should allow my 17 year old to stay out until 3 am, or my 15 year old to borrow the car without a license. Obviously, we need to provide guardrails, but should I be helping my 17 year old write a paper for English class? No. Definitely proofreading the finished project, and making suggestions if he asks for my opinion, but he should be writing his paper. Should I be doing my 15 year olds laundry - hard no. These are responsibilities that should have been handed off to them years ago.
Children are born striving to be independent. Every day I hear parents of toddlers talk about how they want to “do it themselves.” Brushing their teeth, eating, putting on a shirt, even if it takes 4x as long, they instinctively want to do it themselves, but unfortunately our parenting style can extinguish that instinct. I notice this often at the six-year-old exam. A healthy six-year-old should be able to easily jump/climb on top of a kitchen counter (the height of our exam table). There are two types of families, the first where the kid scrambles up the table and the parent relaxes in the chair, and the second where the parent jumps up to help the child get up even when they don’t need it! Having observed these families for years, it is often the case that the second type of family has kids that have lower self-esteem, are less independent, and ultimately less successful as young adults. The danger is these kids are being taught that they can’t do something they can, and they need help for something they don’t! What happens when the challenges get harder? They collapse, where the first group is more likely to struggle to overcome their obstacles, and ultimately exceed. That struggle will bring confidence and increased self-esteem.
I know some of you are completely stressed by reading this. Part of you knows it is true, but the other part is thinking, “But if I don’t do X, Y, and Z for Suzy, how is she going to get into the college of her dreams? Besides, everyone else’s parents are doing it.” They aren’t, but the ones that do tend to talk about it. Also, if Suzy thinks she needs her parents' help to get through high school, how will she cope with the demands of college, which is much more rigorous. Which is better, preparing them for the next 80 years of independence, confidence, and success, or helping them achieve straight A's for the four years of high school? These are tough dilemmas all parents face. I wrote this article for a local high school a few years ago, and as I am posting it to our blog in December 2024, I am waiting to see how my college freshman's first semester report card. And, I hope we made the right decisions!
Until next time, good luck parenting!
Dr. William J Fisher, MD
Fisher Pediatrics
Follow us on Facebook
Comments