The Best Way To Teach Children: Don't Rescue Them

Another excellent piece from Stephanie Dowrick in the Inner Life column of Good Weekend. This time, on why you should trust your children to do things for themselves and let them accept the consequences - even when things might go wrong.

She shares about being impressed by a book, Liberated Parents, Liberated Children, that suggested the best way to teach children how to be responsible was to give up rescuing them.

Thus, if your child refuses to get dressed in time for school - you take them to school in their pyjamas.

Your child hasn't done her homework - don't do it for her.

Your (older) child forgets his lunch? He goes hungry.

Taking for granted that something will be done by children is part of the "no rescues" strategy.

So is standing back from doing things for children that they can easily do themselves. Surrendering age-appropriate responsibility to your children is an expression of trust, confidence and love.

How you encourage and praise is key. In teaching responsibility or anything else, we can praise too much. If you give responsibilities to children that are manageable and appropriate, you don't need to act astounded each time they achieve those goals. Judicious descriptive praise works best. Such as: "I really like the way you have rearranged your shelves to make it easy to find things."

It is also wonderful to children to know that their actions are helpful for the family as a whole unit: that what they are doing benefits everyone in their world.