Author: Joe Van Deuren

As our children get older they have the ability to do more and more on their own.  As parents we need to allow them to take on those responsibilities even if we could do the job better or faster ourselves. We want our children to strengthen the muscles of decision making, judging what is good and bad for them.

When children start making choices in what is right and wrong, healthy or not healthy, safe or not safe, fair or not fair – they do so under our guidance.  But getting them to the point where they are thinking through these choices, weighing the pros and cons, teaches them to learn to rely on themselves.

It may start at home with what is a healthy snack or who and how to include others in games that they are playing.  Later they will judge whether to cheat or to be honest on a test, and how and when to stand up for someone who is not being treated fairly.

Helping them to learn to judge things from their own knowledge and conscious is so much more rewarding for them and you as a parent – as you watch them making decisions from a place inside of themselves and not from you as a parent telling them what to do from the outside.

During the month of September we are going to discuss the concept of self reliance in regard to our children.  As parents we know that we want our children to grow up and be able to think for themselves, not be afraid to try new things, to practice new things with diligence and not give up when it does not come quickly to us.  Yet learning to balance that with not expecting too much for the age of the child can sometimes be challenging.

One additional challenge that comes for parents is allowing their child to try and fail more than one time, while we encourage increased effort and not just step in and do the project or task for them.  Yes we may be able to do the task better and faster, but for our children to learn self reliance they must be allowed to try and try – fail and fail, and with patience and practice to succeed.  

In a study done recently out of Harvard a comparison was done between what was emphasized in parenting from two different cultures.  One culture was Americans and the other was from the Asian country’s of Taiwan, S. Korea and Japan.  It was found that the Asian culture emphasized effort and self reliance in reaching goals, whereas the American culture emphasized “the goal”.  Self reliance is better learned by all of us by putting forth the effort, persevering, allowing for failures and triumphing as we develop our skills.

Is that hard to do?  Yes.  Is it hard to watch our children struggle with it? Yes.  Is it worth the end results? Yes.  That is if we want our children to grow up not feeling entitled to someone else coming in and ‘fixing’ everything for them instead of them learning and earning it.  This month we will be focused on helping both children and parents work on self reliance, gaining trust, responsibility and confidence in ourselves.