6 Strategies For Raising Independent Kids
Good news, bad news?
Bad News: Your teen's entitlement is probably your fault.
Good News: Raising independent kids is possible.
It starts when your son kicks off his training wheels and rides his bike around the block–alone. Then, a few years later, he's off to his first sleepover. The bar is raised when your teenage daughter goes on her first date. Then, before you know it, you're waving goodbye as she drives off to college. The pattern is familiar for all parents and never gets any easier.
Loving our children means letting them go.
We don't always remember this in the heat of things when our children are so dependent on us.
I mean, it's hard to imagine that little toddler in fire truck pajamas riding giving you advice. It's just as challenging to grasp that your daughter, once in a high chair flinging pasta around the kitchen, you are now walking down an aisle. But 10-20 years from now–if all goes according to plan–we'll have raised our children to be independent.
I have said for years that parenting is 18 years of gradually losing control. And that's the plan. So if you're still making airplane sounds with a spoon trying to convince your 15-year-old to eat his mashed potatoes, you might be behind the schedule on raising an independent human.
But what is the best way to impart independence? Which tools can we utilize now to help our kids one day succeed outside our domain?
Here are 6 strategies for raising independent kids (as hard as it will one day be to see them go).
1. Don't Do For Your Kids What They Can Do For Themselves
It begins by simply offering help. Maybe it's tying their shoes, pouring milk, or doing math homework. But, then, we keep helping. Before long, they either expect us to help or don't believe they can do it themselves.
To a large extent, assisting our kids is part of our job description. We're supposed to help toddlers zip up their coats and guide sleepy kids toward their beds. We're meant to place curfews on teenagers still learning to make wise choices. But a pattern of regularly doing for kids what they can do for themselves makes them further reliant on us.
According to Adlerian Psychology–the basis of positive parenting–our primary job as caregivers is to move our kids from complete dependence to complete independence. If we don't, we inhibit their progress (and make our lives harder).
It's so tempting to do things for our kids, either through generosity or even to get the task done faster. But the best advice I can give you is to resist this urge and encourage self-sufficiency.
"A dependent child is a demanding child. Children become irresponsible only when we fail to give them opportunities to take on responsibility." – Rudolf Dreikurs and Margaret Goldman.
Take Time for Training
Even still, you may be wondering, "If we aren't supposed to do things FOR our kids that they're perfectly capable of doing for themselves, how do we ensure things get done completely and efficiently?" Instead of unintentionally instilling a sense of helplessness by overly assisting our children, we can Take Time for Training and TEACH them they can do most things for themselves. Parents often underestimate this simple tool. It can feel burdensome because it does take time. It may even take several repetitions for kids to grasp something–like a teen keeping their room clean.
We don't always make time to interact with our kids face-to-face and calmly teach them what we know. But this is one of a parent's most crucial jobs. Besides providing for our children, we need to teach them to provide for themselves.
Kids as young as two or three can be encouraged to do as much as possible for themselves. This includes getting dressed, making their beds, and helping themselves to food in the refrigerator. And naturally, the older kids get, the greater the responsibilities.
The Take Time for Training tool gives our kids the confidence and encouragement to develop skills crucial for independence. It also replaces expectation and entitlement with a healthy dose of responsibility.
2. Focus on Family Contributions
Bill Belichick, head coach of the New England Patriots for the past 23 years and arguably one of the most successful coaches of all time, has a mantra to motivate his individual players for team success. DO YOUR JOB!
Every family member plays an essential role in a successfully running household (The family team).
If our goal is to raise independent kids, there are basic skills they'll need as a functioning adult. For example, learning how to clean a house, cook a meal, and manage a dollar now saves kids time and training later.
From folding their laundry to doing the dishes, when we expect kids to contribute in age-appropriate ways, they realize they are indispensable to the family team. This builds their confidence and encourages them to do even more to help out!
What also helps is to label these tasks as "Family Contributions"–because "chores" is a word more associated with boring, undesirable, and begrudging work. Plus, by switching up our language, we drive home the fact that our children's contributions have a greater purpose.
Once they're on their own, kids who are well-rehearsed in completing contributions will be experts in home economics. After all, cleaning a bathroom isn't something we just know how to do. Nor is cooking a healthy, unpackaged dinner. It's something that needs to be learned and practiced!
Plus, while we want our kids to be brilliant and great at their future jobs, let's face it–if their houses are a pig-sty and they can't cook a pancake, they are at a disadvantage.
The earlier kids share a portion of daily duties, the better for everyone.
3. Maintain a Decision-Rich Environment
Every single day is filled with hundreds of choices. Pizza or pasta? Red skirt or blue? Violin or cello? Four-year college or two?
Allowing our children to make age-appropriate choices throughout the day gives them a sense of control and dominion over their lives. And–you guessed it. Decisions also lead to independent thinking and independent actions.
Kids need to practice making choices and weighing the pros and cons. Plus, when making their own choices, they take ownership of those choices. They learn from their bad decisions and can't blame anyone else for them.
The key is to make decision-making a regular part of your family's routine and environment. This could mean anything from stocking a bin in the pantry with healthy snacks for your 4-year-old to letting your 12-year-old plan out her after-school routine.
It's not a free-for-all–you'll set up the choices and get the final say. But by purposefully building decision-making opportunities into each day, your kids will get used to the expectation that they'll be thinking for themselves–not only now, but once they're grown and flown.
Also, that pasta tastes SO much better because they picked it!
Teaching Reward and Consequence
Another excellent way to flex children's decision-making muscles is to offer them the choice of Reward or Consequence.
On the Kapp Team, your cell phone was not your cell phone. I purchased it and financed monthly use, so for all intents and purposes, the phone was mine, on loan to you. (I know there is a lot of parental debate on the benefits and dangers of its use). So for this conversation, replace the object with anything you have invested into for your child's convenience.
All phones were plugged in on the kitchen counter at 10 pm in the Kapp home. The next morning you earned the reward of the use of the cell phone IF before walking out the door for school:
Your homework was complete.
Your room was clean.
In the last 24 hrs, you had spent some time in quietness or meditation and had done some form of physical exercise (the vagueness of "some time" and "some form" created an opportunity for choice/independence.
If you had not met these three standards, the phone stayed on the kitchen counter, and we could try again tomorrow. This simple tool was a Petri dish for developing independence in my children's life management. And a bonus was I wasn't the "bad guy" for taking the phone away; the standard was the officer that upheld an expectation.
4. Encourage Effort…and Celebrate Failure!
That perfection thing? It's overrated and causes kids a LOT of anxiety. Some kids are so locked into the fear of failure they don't even try.
Imagine how this might play out in the real world–the place where your child needs to take risks. Whether applying for college, interviewing for jobs, or bidding on their first home, they'll need to be prepared for disappointment and poised to learn from it.
To help kids overcome this when they're independent adults, focus on the quality of their EFFORTS while they're still under your roof.
If your son studied hard for his biology test and still got a C, it's the hard work he put in that counts.
We can also focus on efforts by encouraging kids to try new things, get out of their comfort zones, and be creative–all to foster their sense of independence without the pressure to succeed or be perfect.
Encouragement is never about the result. Instead, it embraces the process.
When we laser-focus on our kids' efforts and bravery–especially through their willingness to take risks–they'll be less intimidated to work hard and take chances in the future. Ideally, they'll learn not to fear failure at all because failure isn't even the point. The effort is what will keep them on their own two feet.
This is one of the reasons my kids, through high school, were required to participate in organized athletics. I understand that "sports" isn't everyone's thing. But hear me out on this philosophy behind the requirement. Organized sports provided a microcosm of life. You have a coach, someone telling you what to do, assessing and holding you accountable. You have teammates. People you have to learn how to work with. Trust others' strengths. Walk through difficulty with. You have competition, which teaches you to celebrate with humility and experience loss with dignity. I can think of some politicians who probably should have played more sports lol.
5. Promote Problem-Solving
It's SO hard to curb the parental instinct to jump in and fix our kids' problems. But when it comes to encouraging them to do things on their own, this includes problem-solving!
We can assist them, instead, by giving them a chance to find reasonable solutions. One way to inspire this is to ask our kids "How?" questions.
"How could you make your sister feel better (since you ruined her shirt)?"
"How will you make sure you get up in time to catch the bus?"
Just like in a Decision-Rich Environment, if we want kids to think for themselves one day, we can't provide all the answers. However, we can assure them we're available for suggestions or assistance but that it's best for them to reach their own conclusions.
Avoiding the tendency to jump in with our answers to their problems helps our kids feel confident in their abilities.
What we DO want to offer, however, is a safety-net that allows kids to problem-solve in a controlled environment. With this structure and support in place, bad solutions won't face serious consequences.
For example:
Let's say your 15-year-old left his backpack at his friend's house after school. If his solution is to walk across the neighborhood at 9 pm to retrieve it, you can respond with, "I appreciate your plan to walk over there, but it's late and probably pretty close to your friend's bedtime. So let's wait until morning when it isn't dark, and your friend is up."
This way, less-than-ideal solutions can become learning opportunities. Before long, your child's problem-solving skills will be prepped and ready for long-term, real-life action.
6. Foster Your Child's "Spirit"
It can be shocking how early our kids' personalities shine through. I have three adult children. It became evident very early how different all three of them were. Unique, beautiful, challenging, and different.
One of the best things we can do for our kids' independence–especially if we want them to be confident in their abilities and comfortable in their own skin–is to work with these unique strengths and characteristics. This includes being pliable with any preconceived notions of what we think our kids are like or what we want them to become.
Extroverted parents might have an introverted child that likes to be alone and would rather not talk to others. When he refuses to talk to friends and extended family, you can still train manners without the expectation that they will or want to be the center of attention.
Find ways to identify strengths, celebrate those strengths and train them how to leverage those strengths for the betterment of all.
Final Thoughts
As parents, it feels good–great even–when our kids need us. We love it when they turn to us for guidance or affection.
Don't worry; your kids will always need you in one way or another. I recently returned from Paris, France, where my youngest is attending college. I carried all her earthly possessions into her new apartment….on the 5th floor of a building with no elevator. They will always need you.
However, we must remind ourselves that our long-term parenting goal is to guide our kids from being totally dependent on us into becoming independent thinkers, doers, and contributors.
And that's no overnight task.
Raising kids to take a proactive role in their everyday lives might be a little scary at first. But believe me, encouraging your kids' independence is a gift that will keep on giving.
I can't promise you won't crumble after sending your recruit off to boot camp or cry buckets when your daughter chooses an out-of-country college. You will lose part of your heart when you send your children into the "real world."
But knowing that you've raised them to be independent will give you the confidence and strength to let them go…and conquer.
