Doing Less for Teens Will Help Them Do More
written by Dr. Liz Matheis, posted on Psychology Today
When our children were small, it was our natural responsibility to feed them, dress them, prepare their food, wash their clothes, and perform the multitude of other physical tasks that we completed without a second thought. As our children grow older, there needs to be a shift whereby we slowly hand more and more responsibilities to our children so that they are building the skills needed to become independent in their lives.
That shift is a tricky one because no alarm goes off when our child can start washing their laundry, changing their sheets, or managing their calendar. Each of our children is different in their capabilities, and the assessment is just that, an assessment and an artful passing on, resisting the resistance of your child, teen, or young adult and persisting through.
In the end, you have a competent young man or woman who is ready to move on to the next transition, whether that be from elementary school to middle school, or middle school to high school. They have also had experiences with different life tasks in which they can problem solve. Our goal as parents is to provide them with the steps and language to use with others and themselves so they can work through a problem in our absence, because our absence is inevitable.