Parents, We’re Doing Too Much Again

I remember when Sawyer, who is now a senior in high school, was in kindergarten. He was just learning to tie his shoes, so I bought him velcro shoes. I knew his kindergarten teacher didn’t want to spend all day putting his shoes on his feet. He had been wearing some pretty cool lace up tennis shoes all summer, so I was used to putting his shoes on him and tying them quickly, just to save time. In those days he moved at a snail’s pace in the mornings.

When kindergarten came around, his brand new velcro shoes were ready to try out. He could have easily put them on his own feet and been ready to go. But, for whatever reason, I continued to put his shoes on his feet every morning. He was tired, he was moving slowly, and it was just easy. Besides, I liked putting on his shoes. It was just a little way to help the kid out.

The really wild thing is that first grade started and I continued to put his shoes on his feet every morning. Then about halfway through second grade it dawned on me one morning that I was putting shoes on a 7 year old kid’s feet before school every day of his life. I had a revelation: I’m doing too much. I was keeping Sawyer from learning time management skills in the morning. He knew that when it was time to run out the door he just had to sit on the couch because his mom seemed to like putting his shoes on his feet. That very day I left the task up to him. Guess what? He was perfectly capable of putting his own shoes on, and he even figured out that a snail’s pace wasn’t fast enough to get to school on time. What a breakthrough!

I’m writing this post gently because clearly I am a mom who tends to do too much. So if you feel like I’m getting preachy, I am, but I’m talking to people I fully understand, because I am one of you.

We’re doing too much.

We’re too often in constant contact with our children. They don’t have any opportunities to learn critical thinking skills because they text us every question in their brains to get quick advice about what to say, which door to walk through, which paper to fill out, and on and on forever. Our kids need chances to assess situations for themselves, to reason through even very complicated scenarios, to rely on the Lord more than they rely on us. Kids need to have chances to make mistakes, to get embarrassed, to deal with drama, to learn that they can handle life.

The more our kids work through daily situations without our constant supervision, the more confidence they have that they can operate in this world, whether it’s a second grade birthday party or a college campus. Kids need enough freedom to let their developing brains practice making decisions. When we continually text them to see if they need us, we stunt their growth in so many areas, like learning social cues, dealing with conflict, accepting unfair situations, respecting authority, and gaining confidence in their own abilities.

We expect too little of our kids. We baby them for too long, working hard to keep them from experiencing hardship or heartache. We intervene too quickly with teachers and coaches and other kids because we don’t expect our children to learn how to communicate themselves, or we don’t think they have what it takes to resolve a situation on their own. Instead of talking through ways that they might address the issue or telling them that the wise thing would be to do nothing, we rush ahead with problem solving on their behalf, leaving them out of the process altogether. We fail to teach our kids Christian concepts like turning the other cheek, living in humility, or trusting God to fight battles for them because we don’t think they are capable of abiding by those ideals in childhood.

The more we show our kids that little is expected of them in hard times, the more they will believe that they are just victims, captives of their emotions with no power to change either the situation at hand or their own thinking about it. We think we’re helping, being their biggest cheerleaders, being mama bears, and all the things we like to tell ourselves about it. But if we dig deeper we’ll see that our own emotions often rule our reactions to what is happening in our kids’ lives. Are we being guided by the Holy Spirit, prayerfully considering the best ways to advise our kids, or are we just an exploding powder keg of every feeling we have when our kids are dealing with something unpleasant?

We act like our children are morally perfect. Despite the fact that we know that we ourselves are just one sin problem after another, we tend to operate as if our children would never say something mean, bully someone, do something dishonest. Instead of continually acknowledging to our children that we expect them to be sinners, since the Bible tells us that’s a fact, we send messages that we expect absolute perfection. We instantly bristle if our child is accused of wrongdoing, often speaking too quickly and without knowing the whole story, defending our kids as if they could never ever in a million years do that thing that you know you very likely did when you were a kid (and possibly did last week). It’s unrealistic, and it causes our kids to grow up to be defensive adults, justifying their bad behavior.

Our kids don’t need us to tell the world they’re perfect. It’s too much. They need us to express our unconditional love despite their many imperfections. They need us to pray for them and with them, to teach them the gospel, to show them that we all need Jesus. They don’t need a mama bear who will never admit that they have flaws–they need a tender, God-honoring disciplinarian who sympathizes and teaches in moments of failure.

The thing about being parents who do too much is that we’re trying to help, just like I was trying to help seven year old Sawyer out every morning with his shoes. But it’s really no excuse. Once we understand that our helping is hurting, we have to change the way we operate with our kids. As Christians, we have a God we can fully trust to show us how to equip our kids with a biblical worldview as they solve problems, live with problems that can’t be solved, and face hardships, including knowledge of their own shortcomings, without our constant intervention. If we want to raise human beings who are humble, reasonable, stable, confident, and caring, it starts with this: stop doing too much. We need to teach our kids reliance on God, not reliance on us. Then we need to trust Him to work for their good.