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Thought and Opinion|Reading Time: < 1

Letting Children Fail Is Not A Dereliction Of Duty

In Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail, Teacher Jessica Lahey reminds parents that the educational benefits of consequences are a gift, not a dereliction of duty.

The stories teachers exchange these days reveal a whole new level of overprotectiveness: parents who raise their children in a state of helplessness and powerlessness, children destined to an anxious adulthood, lacking the emotional resources they will need to cope with inevitable setback and failure.

Overparenting is the new parenting.

The problem with overparenting is that it ruins confidence and undermines independence. The worst manifestation of overparenting is high responsiveness and low demandingness. This means parents who are highly responsive to their kid’s needs AND solve their problems for them. In elementary school, this is the parent who runs to school when their kid forgets their lunch or an assignment. In high school, it’s the parent that helps their kids too much with their assignment.

parents guilty of this kind of overparenting “take their child’s perception as truth, regardless of the facts,” and are “quick to believe their child over the adult and deny the possibility that their child was at fault or would even do something of that nature.”

These parents worry me the most — parents who won’t let their child learn.

You see, teachers don’t just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. We teach responsibility, organization, manners, restraint, and foresight. These skills may not get assessed on standardized testing, but as children plot their journey into adulthood, they are, by far, the most important life skills I teach.

It’s okay to let kids have a bad day. And no, they likely don’t need therapy to deal with the world’s stress.

While it might feel good to solve their problems for them, it undermines their long-term success.

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