As parents, we devote a great deal of our lives to ensure that our children get the best possible start to their lives - be it through their home lives, through their education or through guiding them through the first 18 or more years of their lives. Often, we are worried more than they are, we are overthinking what their futures might look like and we try to even the playing field for them as much as possible.
All this is important and actually what our children need: a caring home, parents who take a keen interest in their children’s lives, an education that prepares them for life once they become independent young adults. Not that many children are fortunate to have a life where their parents invest such a great deal of time, energy and money into raising their children and having them grow up in a protected and well-managed environment.
However, caring and protecting can also have a downside. Don’t we want our children to grow up to become independent, resilient and responsible adults who have all the tools and skills necessary to successfully navigate the opportunities they encounter? Don’t we want our children to be able to venture into the world well-prepared for what life throws at them?
For that to be possible, we need to give them space to make their own mistakes. We need to give them the opportunity to find out things for themselves without us hovering over them all the time.
For some of us, this is really difficult. We want to spare our children hardship and difficulties. But do we really then prepare them for life? We want to level the road ahead of them so that they don’t stumble or even fall. But isn’t stumbling or falling just what we need to be able to grow? Only when we make mistakes, fall and get back up, fall again and get back up again, do we learn how to handle these whirlwinds that occur in our lives.
It is application season at the moment for our senior students. Each year, I get parents who take this process on themselves. They do research for their child’s further education, they write to me with questions, and they even at times do their child’s university application for them. This past week (and this is what prompted me to write about this today) I had a father send me a recommendation that I should send - my recommendation - to universities to ensure that his son gets the best possible opportunity to get into university. Is this really giving him the best possible chance to start his adult life?
Let your children make their own mistakes, let them find out things for themselves.
Let our children create their own paths for their own lives.
It is their life -
we should be there
to support, understand, and guide,
but not to take over their responsibilities.
Maggie Reiff
Secondary Principal/Career Guidance Counsellor
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