With teens, there’s no substitute for experience.
Would you agree that our job as parents is to prepare our children for life? Unfortunately, a great deal of focus is on the academic preparation for college… and to a lesser extent on the attitudes and skills that will get them through the challenges. Preparation for life involves letting them, encouraging them, pushing them, to experience life.
We are experiential learners: most of us learn best by doing. And it has more meaning for us when we do something ourselves. This also means that we learn more by experiencing the consequences of our actions. It’s the same for our kids. Experience, reflect, learn, apply. Repeat.
Are you ready to let them go? They are capable of accomplishing, and coping with, so much more than you may give them credit for. Ready, set… let them go!
Resource:
The Biggest Job We’ll Ever Have: the Hyde School Program for Character-Based Education and Parenting (Find the right balance between character and achievement for your child). Laura & Malcolm Gauld