Stop Doing For Your Kids What They Can Do For Themselves Parents Families.com

“Don’t do for your kids what they can do for themselves.” I read this profound yet simple statement several months ago and it has been echoing in my head every since. Tyler is good at taking care of his own needs but there are times when he will feign incompetence to get me to do something for him because he does not want to do it himself. Most of the time this happens when doing the “thing” would be inconvenient for him. During these times, he will whine, shed crocodile tears or really try to turn on the charm by batting his big eyes at me. Talk about an academy award-winning performance!

I admit sometimes it is easier for me to just go ahead and do the “thing” even though I know that he can do it himself. This generally happens when I am tired or stressed out or maybe in a hurry. However, as parents we have to learn to stop doing for our kids what they can do for themselves.

Most mornings Tyler comes to me to snap his uniform pants because he swears, “I can’t do it!” He can zip and put his belt on properly but he kept swearing he could not snap his pants. So morning after morning the ritual continued with me snapping his pants until one morning I asked him, “How do you snap your pants at school?” It had never dawned on me that somehow his pants were being snapped at school. I know for a fact that his teacher is not escorting the class to the restroom and I doubt if he was wandering down the hall with his pants unsnapped. He gave me this devilishly little grin while he thought of a quick fib. “I just unzip my pants,” he tells me. Okay, I know that’s how big boys do it, but I know for a fact that’s not the way Tyler does it. When he started laughing I knew that he had been playing with me all the time and I had been doing something for him that he was capable of doing for himself.

So now that I’m on to him he gets dressed in the morning without my help. Making kids do for themselves will teach them responsibility. It will teach them how to get along with out you when they get out in the world on their own. It will teach them how to function independently.

Just the other the day I stopped in the Dollar General store and while I was there I picked up a few women’s magazines. As fate would have it they all had recipes on the front. When I checked out, the cashier, a young women of about 25, said, “Oh, you’re getting your recipes.” She went on to say that she liked reading the recipes but she didn’t like to cook. She said that her mama cooked for her. She was very proud of the fact that although she could cook, she let her mother think that she couldn’t. She said she had lived out on her own for two years and was back home now and felt since she was home her mother should cook for her! She had learned to play the game and unfortunately, her mother had not caught on to what she was doing. So parents be aware when your kids say they can’t do something. Many times they can, they simply choose not to. So stop doing for your kids what they can do for themselves. Your kids will be better off in the long run.