Help Children Be More Independent in 8 Steps

There's a delicate balance as a parent, between caring for your children and empowering them to care for themselves. There's a time and a place for adult guidance, when your children need your support. But, most mothers I know err on the side of doing too much for their children, rather than too little. It's hard to feel as if you can carve out a part of the day for your own needs when you're always putting out fires, taking on your children's and family's crises as your own. In order to create space in your parenting, sometimes it means saying no to your children, and giving them tools to solve their own problems.

Here are eight ways to empower your children to become more self-sufficient:

1. Ask for their ideas. Children are smarter than we give them credit for. When I was exasperated with my daughter for her perpetual forgetfulness about bringing the laundry upstairs, I asked her how she would solve the problem. She made a two-sided sign that says, "Bring up the laundry," on one side, and "No laundry to bring up," on the other. Then she hung it on a clipboard in the kitchen, and has me flip the sign whenever I've folded a load of clothes. Viola! I don't have to nag her about the laundry; she gains confidence and self-mastery.

2. Systematize as much as possible. What makes for a successful business? Systems that enable employees to work independently. What makes for a successful homelife? Systems that enable children to function independently. Our children have chore charts, so both my husband and I, as well as our children, know what is expected of them every week. We have a sign out sheet for our eldest daughter, who is old enough to go places alone, so we always know where she's at, even if Mom is holed up in the office. We have a shopping list on a clipboard in the pantry. Whoever uses the last of the toilet paper/almond milk/post-it notes writes it down on the list, so I don't have to hear all day long, "Mom, we're out of eggs," or, "Mom, I've outgrown my tap shoes."

3. Make healthy eating easier. In a book on children's nutrition, I read the best advice I've ever heard about raising healthy eaters:  The parent's job is to stock the home with healthy food. The children's job is to pick something to eat from that selection of foods. I've implemented this rule in our house for snacks and meals that I don't cook (most lunches and some breakfasts.) My children understand that they can make themselves a snack from anything in the house whenever they are hungry, as long as it includes a protein source. (Even my five-year-old handles this, although, it took some explanation about what constitutes a protein.) We do have a few "treat" foods---granola and ice cream---that require parental permission. But, overall, this simple system teaches my children how to cook---they're all very motivated to learn how to make things---and frees me from hours of kitchen duty.

4. Have your children keep an agenda. I have four children, work in two businesses, and run our family household:  a lot of information goes through me as the gatekeeper. How do I keep track of it all? We use an "inbox" system for each member of the household, hold regular meetings, and have our children keep agendas. When my daughter needs to bring a snack for her dance class, instead of telling me (and thus giving me the responsibility for taking care of it), I have her put it in an "agenda" folder. During the workweek, I have daily, 10 minute morning meetings with my daughters, where we then cover any items on their agendas. I can tackle her requests, add items to the family calender, and teach her responsibility in one swoop.

5. Make peace with a training period. Initially, training your children to put their dishes in the dishwasher or to clean up after themselves may entail more work on your part. But good training pays off down the road, when your seven-your-old fixes herself a snack, puts the food back in the fridge, and loads her dish in the dishwasher, all without your involvement.

6. Let your children make mistakes. Let your children fail. Don't rescue them every time they have a problem. Before you rush in to make it better, stop, pause and ask yourself:  Is this something my child can solve on her own? It's better to let our children "fail" over the little things---missing homework or missing soccer practice---than shelter them so that they fail over the big things later on down the road---missing work or missing an important deadline. When my daughter lost her coat liner by leaving it on the playground, I made her pay me back for the purchase of a replacement. Harsh? To some, I'm sure. And yet she hasn't misplaced a coat since.

7. Be a strong support system. While it's important to let your children make their own mistakes, likewise, show your children how to pick up the pieces afterwords. Show your children how to make amends. Did they break something that needs to be replaced? Do they need to apologize? Is there a way to make up for the lost homework, the poor grade, the missing DVD? Likewise, teach your children that mistakes are opportunities for growth. Help them make a plan so they can prevent the problem from reoccurring in the future. Use this time to share the universality of our struggles:  how we all procrastinate, get angry, or show forgetfulness.

8. "Think" outloud. Children are immature; immature in the sense that they don't have the mental capacity or skills of a full-fledged adult. This means that they need to be taught skills that we as adults take for granted. Parents do this by modeling. An easy way to show your children how you solve your problems is by thinking outloud. Talk through the steps that you're undertaking to unclog the sink, to get yourself motivated to do something challenging, to forgive someone who's hurt you.

How do you empower your children to solve their own problems? Submit a comment and share your ideas.

For further reading, here's an article that outlines age appropriate chores for children.