There are lots of jobs that are not yours when your child is in high school. The first part is the life skills part and the second part is more theoretical and is about life goals. When your child is now an adolescent, ask yourself what they will be required to do for themselves 5 years in the future and add all of those items to the NOT your job list.
Preparing for the Real World: Essential Life Skills
It is NOT your job to prepare all their meals, clean their toilet (or have someone else do it), wash and put away their clothes, or to pay for their never-ending social calendar and agenda. If you have the willingness to jump in on some of these things from time to time or are sick of the halfway successful version of toilet cleaning your child performed and you are having guests at your house, feel free. But, unless you intend to have your child live with you always or to move with them into their dorm or first apartment, it is your job to allow them to develop and master these essential skills.
Teaching, Not Doing: Giving Teens the Tools to Succeed
Showing a teen how to do something, maybe even more than once, may be needed, but being their maid, short-order cook, taxi driver, and open wallet through late middle school and into high school will ensure that they have little opportunity to learn to do these things for themselves. There is no magic process that happens at high school graduation that bestows these skills on your child; they are mastered through practice, which you should give them. It may seem like a crappy gift, but it is a gift, I promise. They can learn these skills and roles on their own once they are in the real world I guess, but wouldn’t you 1) rather be there to offer support while learning is happening and 2) have a chore helper at your house? I think most parents would answer yes to both.
Theoretical “Not Your Job”: Their Success
Finally, we get to the more theoretical not your job item. This is the part where we talk about how it is NOT your job to make sure that your child is successful. Yep, it’s true, kids actually require failure. Trying for something and not succeeding is an essential human experience and serves as the place where resiliency is built. If your kids never struggle they will have no context for the process of working through a problem. When kids aren’t allowed to try and fail, when something goes wrong they are often quick to push the responsibility onto someone else. As parents, success can be created in a number of ways, some good, and some very bad.
Helicopter Parenting: Why It’s Time to Let Go
Some parents will take an approach where they hover over their kids and serve as a constant source of feedback and reminders to get things done. This is called “helicopter parenting.” The first step to breaking this cycle is to recognize that kids are not miniature adults. They are constantly growing and changing, which means that they are always on a learning curve with something. They don’t do things as well as you and that is normal and expected. Although you can tell them what to do and remind them to get it done and correct all their mistakes before final submission, this is only making them LOOK capable. That’s because they have an adult brain wingman/wingwoman to create the appearance of competency and success. If you want your kids to actually BE successful, you have to be willing to stand with them in this learning process and be ok with substandard outcomes that will slowly improve over time. As is the case for all learning, it is not immediate, it requires a lot of practice, but can result in mastery and even talent when the learning process is allowed to play out. However, you have to be willing to switch from advisor/criticizer/drill sergeant in order for this process to happen and for growth and independence to occur.
Snowplow Parenting: Clearing the Path Isn’t the Answer
The final part of the failure conversation is for the other type of failure-averse parenting, the “snowplow parent.” Instead of standing by and providing constant feedback, the snowplow parent works hard to clear the way of obstacles and adversity for their child. They are always on the lookout for a way to give their child a leg up, eliminate competition, and to ensure that everyone gets to win. In the real world, everyone does not get to win. I can speak to these two methods myself as having unwittingly tried them with my own children. Being aware of the need for my children to try and fail in order to grow and master things did not make me immune to the parent drive to see them do well. I ran interference, made excuses, harped and reminded, yelled and worried, and finally sat straight up in bed one night in a cold sweat after replaying my day realizing that I had created my own worst parenting nightmare. I had a child that I was trying to make successful on my terms, not his, who was only getting things done because of my constant vigilance, effort, stress, and worry on his behalf. From that day on, I have worked very hard to mindfully and strategically shut down my inner mom voice that feels so much guilt, fear, and despair when my kids are struggling.
A Parent’s Real Job: Guiding, Not Controlling
I had to change my own mindset about what my job was. It was not to ensure success, it was to teach and guide them to their own version of success. Instead of constantly switching into problem-solving mode, I started sitting with my kids, guiding them to create their own solutions, and stepped completely back so that they could try and fail on their own. I did not abandon them to sink or swim, I was standing beside them and offering support, comfort, and love to help those dark moments feel a little lighter. I have two boys who are 100% responsible for their own homework and grades. Do they get the grades I did as a kid? Nope. Do they work as hard as I did as a student? Uh, no. Are they little clones of me? Also no. They are not me and their path is not mine and trying like crazy to force them onto my path and to function like I do is madness. They are their own person, finding their own way, and I am walking with them to make sure they know they are not alone. It can be so hard to sit back when I want to step in and fix and do things for them. However, I know that I am raising men and it is my job to help them find their way, not to create their path and force them to stay on it.
