Everyone hates being micromanaged, and everyone hates being left unsupported. Just as we feel this tension as adults at work, our kids also feel it growing up in our homes. As parents, how do we manage this tension while raising our kids to become responsible, independent adults?
On the one hand, we want our kids to LEAD – Lead Courageously, Eliminate Passivity, Accept Responsibility, and Desire the Greater Reward. We want them to make good independent decisions and to be able to act responsibly. We don’t want them to live in the basement forever. We want them to move out and to have their own life, leading their own families.
On the other hand we want our kids to be safe, and we put boundaries in place to help protect them – physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We want to be there for them, and we want them to know that they can count on us. We don’t want them to be hurt by bad choices. If you’re in a certain age demographic, you might have Chris Farley inspired nightmares about them ending up living “in a van down by the river!”
Balancing these sometimes competing and sometimes complimentary tensions consumes much of our decision-making as parents.
Tip #1: Use your spidey senses.
The Spiderman Principle – “with great power comes great responsibility” – can be applied to giving our kids freedom at any age. Freedom and responsibility go together, and the earlier we can start reinforcing this relationship, the more runway we have to try to help make it stick into adulthood. It can be something as simple as having the freedom to play connected to the responsibility of age appropriate chores, or it could be the freedom to go out with friends connected to the responsibility of maintaining one’s school work. Consistently tying freedoms to responsibilities helps reinforce the relationship between the two, and it incentivizes responsible behavior.
Tip #2: Celebrate successes.
Reinforcement affects behavior. Correcting negative behaviors is important, but celebrating positive ones is also powerful and rewarding. As parents, we know that when we extend freedom, mistakes will happen at some point. That’s part of the deal. By celebrating successes we positively reinforce responsible choices. In doing so we’re putting a deposit in the bank for when we will inevitably need to have a corrective conversation down the road.
Want to dive deeper? Check out this article from Saddleback Parents for more information.
