“We must stop leading our kids with short-term vision and see the long-term impact of our decisions. Hurt is far better than harm.”
– Dr. Tim Elmore
How do we help kids and young adults take responsibility in light of having parents who struggle to let them fail? Parents who, instead of letting them learn from the pain of failure swoop in to rescue them at any sign of trouble so now we have a generation that struggles to take responsibility for their own actions.
Again, I would blame us adults for some of this issue because in an attempt to be the best parents we have unintentionally or intentionally not allowed our kids to meet the great teacher of old, Failure.
Nobody likes to fail. No parent likes to see their kid fail but a wise parent knows that their child must experience some levels of failure in order to grow and become a mature adult. We are now beginning to see the effects of overprotecting our children. A report from November 2016 found that “45 percent of young adults in New Jersey between the ages 18 and 34 now live with their parents.” Yikes!
Why don’t we let our kids fail?
Dr. Tim Elmore suggests the following few small or subtle ways that parents may intentionally and/or unintentionally take too much responsibility instead of equipping their kids to do them:
- Picking up their clothes, toys/cleaning up their mess
- Filling out forms when they are capable of doing it
- Or asking someone for them to fill out a form instead of having them do it
- Calling their high school teachers or coaches to excuse their behavior
- Rescheduling their appointments when they double book their calendar
- Resolving their conflict with friends*
Now these are not bad things and you will do these things when your kids are younger but there comes a point when they need to do them on their own. These are simple skills that we need to teach our kids so they can grow into mature and functional independent adults.
The struggle to produce self-sufficient independent young adults has gotten so bad that a term was created to describe it: Failure to Launch Syndrome.
(If you have extra time, go check out this article: The Failure to Launch Epidemic)
Here’s the question that I have: What motivation do young adults have to branch out on their own if their parents take care of everything for them? But I also think it goes deeper than just motivation. I don’t think these young adults even think about “freedom” because they have never truly experienced it. They have never been weaned off of their parents but again I would say it is not entirely their fault. To use a clique, parents need to push their kids out of the nest so they can fly.
The dark side of this problem is that we now see teens attempting ridiculous stunts because so many have been so protected as children and have no clue about the harm risky behavior can bring.”*
Again, being the old guy, just go and look at the social media accounts of students. The most viral ones are of people doing risky activities or even illegal. I know about risky behavior because when my brother, my cousin and I all got together on our grandparent’s farm there was about half a brain between us three. We raced four-wheelers across fields, pulled each other behind the four-wheeler on a pick hood, we sharpened metal rods on the grinder, jumped out of the hayloft, lit things on fire, shot guns, wrestled, threw rocks at the rooster, and the list goes on. We did some dumb stuff but never got seriously injured…I have no idea how we didn’t.
So how are the actions of us three boys different from teens these days?
We knew our limits, and this gave us boys confidence in ourselves that others did not have. When we faced a new situation, we were not scared because we knew what we could or could not handle.
We knew our parents/grandparents would take care of us if we got hurt.
We also knew they would whoop us if one us got seriously injured. This meant we always watched out for each other.
The biggest difference I would say is that we did not do it for attention. We did not have a phone to record and then post it for the world to see. Yes, we tried to impress each other but that was not our motivation. It was just us being boys having fun.
I recently watched the movie The Sandlot with my wife and kids and it got me thinking about how different parenting was back then. Was it better? Yes and no. But in the movie, you see the kids go and play all day and then come back for supper. Parents don’t check in on them or have them text on their cell phones (there were no cell phones.)
My favorite part is not when Squints fakes drowning but when Small’s mom changes Smalls’ life with the following words,
“Get out in the fresh air and make some friends. Run around, scrape your knees, get dirty. Climb trees, hop fences…get into trouble for crying out loud! Not too much but some. You have my permission.”
This is the turning point not just in the movie but also in Smalls’ summer and ultimately his life. All it took was for his mom to lovingly push him out of his comfort zone to embrace the unknown.
*Elmore, Tim. 12 Huge Mistakes Parents Can Avoid. Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2014.