You’re absolutely right, Scott. What you recommend is a crucial way for kids to learn how their choices lead to consequences.

“But I’ll be tardy!”
“Well, that’s what happens when you’re not ready to go on time.”

All you have to do is stay calm and deliver this message implacably a few times, and even the hard-headed tots will get it.

You’re so right – the more we do for our kids, the less they’ll learn to do for themselves. Not always a convenient concept, but important to remember, nonetheless… -B

When I ask my wife where I left my wallet when I am in a hurry to get to work in the morning I would be very upset with her if she said something about not telling me because I need to be taught to keep track of my own wallet. I would assume my kids would be equally upset if I would not help them with something because I want to teach them a lesson instead.

Kids do as we grownups do. If you teach them anything by the behavior described it is that it is not necessary to help other human beings if you can instead teach them a lesson.

If, on the other hand, you would have responed something like:
“Of course I will help you with your shoe/book/coat, could you please tell me where you put it/why it doesn’t work?” Then you are showing a helpful spirit yet the kids will have to think about the solution. and of course, if that doesn’t solve it for them you help them. As you would have helped any other human being who needed it. And as you would have expeceted from anyone else should you have needed any help.

Ahh, Mingus, come on: a grown man shouldn’t mislay his wallet / keys / etc., and your wife would be right to exercise this kind of discipline with you if you made any kind of regular habit of mislaying them. I’m reminded of the old saw that if a wife picks up her husband’s dirty socks off the floor once, she’ll be doing it for the rest of their lives.

All of Scott’s advice can be applied thoughtfully and kindly. Of COURSE there will be times — if you’re racing out the door to catch a flight — when your wife will shortcut the process and just hand you what you need. But Scott’s lesson is still apt for 99% of cases: don’t hand your kids the answer, but rather lead them to find the answer for themselves.

Thanks Tim. Troubling that some parents do not understand that it is our obligation to teach our children “lessons” (including respect, responsibility and self reliance) in order to prepare them for their lives as adults.

“The gods help them that help themselves.” – Aesop

@Tim, in the post the author was not leading, he was saying NO. In my response I was leading by helping the kid out by having him think about it.

The best we can do to our children is to act as rolemodels and being helpful when help is required is exactly that. Remember that it is not the kid that put him or herself in the position of having to get dressed at an exact time in the morning. It is most often you.

Kids are challenged every minute of every day. They are challenged to understand how to act with friends, how to eat the table, how to read and write, why mom and dad gets mad when they draw that nice landscape directly on the wall and so on. Helping out when they ask for it is not spoiling them, it gives them confidence in people. And it makes them understand that helping out is good.

Here is another example, what if you saw some other younger kid asked your kid to raise a bike that had fallen over and your kid responded something like: “you can do it yourself if try hard enough”. What would your thoughts be about your kid then? Was he being a good friend? Would you be proud that he followed your ways of helping out someone smaller in need?

@Mingus — I sympathize with your thoughts on helpfulness, and indeed I try to teach my kids to be helpful. But you’re making a simplistic distinction between “being helpful” and “saying No,” when sometimes they’re one and the same thing.

You say “in the post the author was not leading, he was saying NO.” Actually, Scott WAS leading BY THE ACT OF saying No. Look at what he wrote:

‘Sometimes, we must make the time to say, “No.” We must make our kids do things on their own – solve their own problems – even if that means we’ll be leaving the house five minutes later than usual.’

Note, first, that he says SOMETIMES we must say “No.” Beyond that, he’s LEADING his kids to develop their own strategies for solving their own problems. He’s teaching them to fish instead of giving them a fish, to use the old metaphor. Beyond that, he’s advocating that we do the harder thing when it’s the better thing to do; that’s part of good leadership, in my book.

You make a good point when you talk about “being helpful when help is required,” but I think that what Scott is getting at is that help ISN’T required every time my 7-year-old claims he “can’t” find his shoes. My wife and I get our kids up in *plenty* of time so that they can get out the door without rushing, in part because we know that sometimes they’ll act helpless — because they’re little kids — rather than acting resourceful and finding their own shoes. So we build in the time it takes to remind them to be resourceful, i.e. to find their shoes for themselves.

The analogy of the bicycle doesn’t work here, by the way, if you’re talking about a load that the smaller kid CAN’T lift. Of course we should help others when they literally CANNOT help themselves. I would’t ask my son to do his own grocery shopping or file his own taxes, because he’s not capable of those things yet. But he CAN find his own shoes — and he should — and it is good leadership from a parent to make the tough call to force him to do it for himself.

Additionally, this should apply to the skills a specific age can handled. When my son was 2 or 3, I’d help him put his shoes on, sometimes find them. He’s four and a half, he should be able to do it himself. When stalls and flops around saying he can’t I tell him he can’t go with us. When the 7 year old forgets to tell us about those forms needing to be filled out until we’re getting in the car, I tell her it’s too bad and it’ll have to wait till tomorrow and she should (as I tell her every day) to pull out her folder and show us all the things in it.

You have to gradually increase their responsibility, and you have to almost force them to take it. Otherwise you will end up with 25 year old “children” who won’t know how to take care of themselves because their parents did everything for them.

I’m proud that my daughter is more often then not awake before me and has her lunch packed and is eating breakfast by the time I’m downstairs. It shows huge initiative. Had I dressed her every day and made her lunch every day and not taken the time to say “You can do these things yourself” she wouldn’t be this independent. But there’s a difference between a child being unable and unwilling. When my kids throw down, I call them Little Protesters. They stall and go limp like their in a civil rights march. It’s another behavior we ignore. If they want to stall, they don’t go. Just like everything else, it has a consequence. I’m actually a bit shocked someone would disagree with this. Help when needed but teach constantly.

Scott makes great points here. I try to avoid the rush scenario by having my 5 year old gather her things for school the night before – she lays out an outfit, pairs up shoes, packs the bookbag, etc. I do help her a bit, but I call specific attention to bad habits she’s developing (not hanging up her coat, leaving shoes around) by reminding her that she’ll be responsible for locating them later on. She’s learning the lesson “A place for everything, and everything in its place” slowly but surely. 🙂

I guess this comes down to what we have seen working with our respective kids, none of us really have the right answer to what works for most kids. I can only say that leading by example has shown to work out very well with our kids and kids to families we know. This situation described here is not an issue in our family, it is very smooth.

The same strategy has worked really well for us when it comes to getting the kids to show manners. By always saying things like “thank you” when you are getting something, saying proper hellos and goodbyes and so on our kids see what we do and they do the same and then it becomes a habit more than a “taught lesson”.

I believe that you need to see this from the child’s perspective. By saying “no” in this case, what do you think the child is thinking? Seriously, do you think he or she thinks “it makes me mad now but in the long run it’s good for me”? I don’t think so, I think it’s more along the lines of “why doesn’t he help me? what did I do wrong?” and that may potentially harm his or hers confidence in you as a parent.

I need to emphasize that I am not saying that children should be shielded from challenges but being a child is so full of challenges anyway that their trust in us as parents is more important than anything else. And trust is best built by doing things to kids that they understand and can comprehend in the moment it is done.