"When I was fourteen, I watched my best friend struggle to decide what to wear to school. Not because she cared about fashion, but because her mother hadn't laid out her clothes the night before. At the time, I couldn't understand it. I'd been picking my own outfits since I was seven, packing my own lunches since nine, and managing my homework schedule without reminders for as long as I could remember."
"When I spent my allowance on candy and had no money left for the movie I wanted to see with friends, tough luck. No bailout was coming. Psychologist Wendy Mogel calls this "the blessing of a skinned knee." Our parents understood that failure wasn't the enemy. It was the teacher. They resisted the urge to cushion every fall, knowing that the small failures of childhood prepare us for the bigger challenges of adulthood."
Hands-off parenting encouraged children to take responsibility for daily tasks, experience consequences, and solve problems independently. Parents avoided hovering and did not rescue children from mistakes, allowing failures to teach practical lessons. Early responsibilities like choosing outfits, packing lunches, and managing homework built competence and confidence. Divorce increased the need for self-reliance, but the foundation for independence originated in childhood expectations. Conversations with psychologists and development experts reveal common parental approaches that prioritized learning through failure over constant protection. Those parenting patterns produced adults who cope with challenges, adapt, and learn from setbacks.
Read at Silicon Canals
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]