Reply to Doing for your kids vs. Kids doing for themselves

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[quote=Anonymous]
Oprah shared a story of when she and Gail were chatting somewhere in the house and Gail tried to excuse herself to go upstairs to run the bath for her children. Her younger child was maybe 8 years old. Oprah balked and said if a child is old enough to do something for themselves, don't do it for them. I think that's how she introduced a whole episode on child autonomy and parenting. It made sense at the time, even pre-baby. Silly that a woman without children felt comfortable chastising a mother, but that's another topic.

Evidently, I picked up the idea. I don't put a value on the practice--someone's not good or bad whichever way they go (doing for your kids vs. kids doing for themselves). It just makes sense for us.

My children are younger than tween-age, but I still hold back from helping them with the things they can accomplish on their own. God help me, it may take DD four minutes to zip her coat. I do my best to wait it out, despite the morning rush. Same with shoes, moving dishes to back to the kitchen after dinner, etc. DS learned how to hang up his laundry, so that's the expectation now. He's six. He has been in charge of bedtime stories for the last few weeks, now that his reading level allows for it. I lie down on the bed with them to listen. They unload the dishwasher. I load the dirty dishes. Yes, there are step stools involved, but that's how we do it. They play sweep while I actually sweep the floor. We all take the trash out together. They lotion themselves after their bath. DS and DD love it when DS is the one to wash DD's hair. I brush and manage it though. I don't imagine she'll be able to do her own hair for a very, very long time, so I do that for her happily and probably will until she's old enough to go to the salon herself. We're AA, so it's a lot more complicated. What else? I dunno, but I think you see where I'm going with all this.

They seem so proud of themselves when they do these things. It's fun for them. It's certainly helpful to me. I think I drew them into these activities once I started to feel like I had a couple of permanent houseguests. I couldn't bear the thought of "oh you wait right here on the sofa while I get lunch ready" for the rest of my life.[/quote]

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