Do you ever worry that you might have slipped over the edge from “helping” to “enabling” your teen?
Today I’m featuring a post by Susie Garlick, a mother three who’s also an author, a parenting teacher, and a Licensed Associate Counselor in the State of Arizona. Please visit Susie’s blog here to read more insightful parenting posts and tell her how much you benefitted from this article!
Susie writes:
It is official, my oldest leaves for college in three years. I am not sure how this happened and I am positive I don’t like it, but it is a reality and so is the fact that my goal of raising a self-sufficient human that can stand alone, without my help, is only three years away.
A few years ago I was taking a class in my counseling program and the lecture was about helping versus enabling. My instructor explained the difference: Helping is when you do something for someone who cannot do it himself and enabling is when you do something for someone who is very capable of doing it himself. The class was on addictions, but my thoughts immediately went to my children. Was I helping them or enabling them?
When my son was in kindergarten I helped him a lot and I loved it! If he needed help with his homework I was by his side, when he was hungry I made him a yummy snack, when his feelings were hurt at school I was the first one there comforting him. He was little, he needed my help and I was there for him. He was getting what he needed (help) and I was getting what I wanted (lots of love and appreciation).
Then came first-grade, second-grade, third-grade and before I knew it I had a middle schooler. The years were ticking by and I continued to be right there, helping with everything, but I was getting less love and less appreciation in return. While I am sure he enjoyed having everything done for him, developmentally he was looking for more responsibility, more independence, more freedom and I wasn’t giving that to him. I was holding on to what I was hoping for (love and appreciation) and not giving him what he needed (freedom to grow).
And so I began to change. In the beginning there was some pushback. He didn’t want to make his lunch, do his laundry or clean his dishes, but once he did, a maturity kicked in that was new and refreshing. I was there if he needed my help, but I was no longer doing everything for him. And while he was still very much a teenager, when he became more responsible we were able to give him more independence. When he had more independence he became more loving and appreciative. We had come full circle.
But while things had changed, it was important to look back and understand why I had done so much in the first place. It was clear I was initially looking for love and appreciation, but there was another layer; I was equating how much I did for my children with how much I loved them. And so are others. It is the ‘Keeping Up With the Joneses’ mentality of parenting. The more I do, the more I love, and the more I love, the better parent I am, but it is a backwards way of thinking. So I am here to debunk what has become a parenting norm: Doing everything for our children does not equate to love. Doing everything for our children equates to a generation of children who, as young adults, will be lost in this world. This is not love. This is a mess!
So as the new school year begins, I challenge you to stop doing everything for your children and start giving them the gift of responsibility. Challenge them to fix their own breakfast, challenge them to talk with their teacher when they don’t understand their homework, challenge them to fill out their lunch orders for school. These might seem like small or insignificant tasks to us, but responsibility leads to empowerment, empowerment leads to confidence and confidence is what takes us far in life. I only have three years until my first child will be on his way. My hope is that he will be standing on his own two feet ready to take on the world.
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What are your thoughts on this subject? Are there any ways in which your “helping” might have slid off a cliff into “enabling”? What steps are you taking to correct it? Have you felt better since putting more responsibility on your kids’ shoulders and less on yours? Comment below, or LIKE Jeannie Burlowski Author on Facebook and let’s talk about it there.
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Who is Jeannie Burlowski?
Jeannie Burlowski is a full-time consultant, author, and conference speaker. She helps parents set their kids up to graduate college debt-free and move directly into careers they excel at and love. Her book LAUNCH: How to Get Your Kids Through College Debt Free and Into Jobs They Love Afterward is due out within months. You can find Jeannie’s free, clear, step-by-step help for parents in the “WHAT TO DO WHEN” section on this website. Follow her on Twitter @JBurlowski.
“We only got around to doing a fraction of what Jeannie tells people to do in the free help on her website, and we saved well over $50,000 on college costs. Our daughter earned a four year degree from an excellent private university at age 20, and she’s now in California happily working her dream job at Disney. Get to one of Jeannie’s live classes if you can. Buy a plane ticket if you have to!” — Liz and Tim Weatherhead, parents, Bloomington, MN