Why Fixing Things For Your Child Doesn’t Help

In order for children to learn how to do hard things, you have to let them go through hard times. There is no way to truly master something without experiencing it.

Over the years, I’ve talked with countless parents who “fixed” things for their children—cleaning their rooms, picking up left-behind messes around the house, apologizing for their kids, easing their disappointments, or even typing their teen’s school papers because they could “type faster.” I recall talking to a mother who would stop what she was doing (which sometimes meant getting out of bed at night) to prepare elaborate snacks for her adolescent son when he was hungry, even though he was more than capable of making his own food.

These are “responsive” ways of fixing things, which happen after your child has already encountered a problem. There are also parents who try to prevent problems before they happen, so-called “Snow Plow Parents”—much like the two parents I saw on the Steve Harvey Show recently. These two parents monitored their teens’ text messages, voicemails, phone calls, emails, Facebook pages, driving speed, and used state-of-the-art GPS systems to establish “geo-fences” around their child’s school and home. (When the child leaves the “geo-fence,” the parent gets a text.) And keep in mind these were “good” kids that really didn’t get into trouble—the parents were simply trying to “fix” the system so that trouble would be minimally possible in every way. These are helicopter parents to the extreme.

So why is this happening?

[Keep reading.. there's lots of good advice here.]