Building Independence In Your Children

By Author: Wildfire Marketing Group Content Distribution Team
Total Articles: 49
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A crucial detail for most all children is that eventually they grow older. But, unfortunately, not all grow up. If an individual is to have a hope of a happy life, a large amount of independence is necessary.

Independence, here, does not mean never needing other people, nor creating every thing that one needs - physical, intellectual and emotional - without any input from others. Life alone on a desert island would be harsh and boring. But it does entail a significant amount of independence in the traditional sense. It means thinking and choosing for oneself, without undue influence or consideration of the opinions of others.

Why is that important?

Life presents everyone with choices, often challenging and sometimes unpleasant. When faced with such choices, each one of us has a fundamental alternative - to think for ourselves and do what that tells us is best, or to be (somewhat) mentally passive and simply do what others do or think we should do.

But to nurture one's own thinking ability, to exercise individual choice is to practice the basic skill that allows determining what is best. You can not ...
... become an athlete by watching others run, you must get on the road and use your own feet.

Sometimes that process will go astray. Sometimes heeding the advice of wiser or more knowledgeable and experienced people - parents, in some cases - would have indeed produced the best result. But as children matures, the process of individuation is critical if the results are to be a well-adjusted person, not just a passive robot lucky enough to have good advisers.

Guidance from others can be enormously helpful to any person at any age. But at a certain point in the process, the decision to do this rather than that is presented to everyone. And, just like the athlete who never trains, performance in that task is affected by whether the person has done any independent exercise, or just floated along.

It's easy to make a misstep when you don't give enough weight to the opinions of others, particularly those more experienced and thoughtful. But you retain the ability to correct your mistakes much more readily if you've made a practice of thinking for yourself.

Parents find it difficult to know when to let a maturing child make mistakes that they - with greater insight - could see will turn out badly. The desire to protect them is understandable and the frustration from being ignored even more so. But the most critical job facing any parent is to promote the healthy development of their children.

Before we realize it, that individual will be faced with the necessity of making decisions that are much more important. The practice they get exercising their faculties is essential to meeting those challenges.
Nurturing Independence in Your Child and other great parenting articles, such as Playmats, Indestructible Fun are available on Tips on Parenting.