by SARAH KEIGER, MSW
Being a kid today looks a lot different than it did when we were growing up. Parents now have instant online access to attendance and grades, and we’re bombarded with school emails and notifications about every upcoming event and test.
With all of that information at our fingertips, it’s easy to feel like we should always be one step ahead: checking in, anticipating the next hurdle, and sometimes clearing it before our kids even get there.
As school resumes this fall, your child will be entering a new classroom, perhaps even a brand-new school. With each new year comes fresh challenges and new expectations. This may show up as a challenging academic load, new social dynamics to navigate, or experiencing increasingly complex executive functioning demands. Did I remember to pack the homework I finished last night? Is today PE, and if so, where are my gym clothes?
Many parents today mentally juggle these challenges for their children in a way that our own parents simply did not do for us. When I was in eighth grade and forgot an important end-of-semester report at home, that was a hard lesson, but it was mine to learn. Today, there’s a phenomenon sometimes called “snowplow parenting” or “lawnmower parenting.”
You can picture it: the parent out front, clearing every obstacle from the path so there are no bumps, no falls, no missteps. But in clearing the path, we have taken away the risk of failure and in turn, we also clear away the opportunity to grow.
So, let’s ask the real question: what do our children lose when we pave the path for them?
It starts earlier than you might think. Like when your five-year-old insists on pouring her own milk. You have two choices: do it for her, or let her try and risk the spill. If she spills, she’ll feel the frustration, help clean it up, and maybe grip the cup differently next time. And if she can handle a spilled cup at five, she’ll be more able to handle the missteps that come at 10 or 15.
Photo courtesy of KATRIN BOLOVTSOVA from Pexels via canva.com
As Henry Ford once said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” Mistakes and failures are a part of life. If we try to predict each misstep, each forgotten piece of homework, and each spilled cup, how much do our children learn?
Consider this: a teacher announces a unit quiz next week, and your child promptly forgets about it. A few days later, you spot it in the weekly teacher email. You remind them, stay on top of their studying, and they pass. But what did they actually learn? Did they learn a better system for tracking assignments? Did they think critically about what went wrong? No. When we swoop in, we exercise our own executive functioning muscles but fail to build those in our child.
It’s worth pausing here to ask: does the idea of knowing about that quiz and not saying anything send you into a tailspin? Sometimes it’s important for us to recognize when it’s our own fear and anxiety that are driving our actions.
As parents, we want the best for our kids. We want them to be happy and successful. But there’s a difference between supporting our children and clearing every obstacle before they reach it. The better questions to sit with might be: What will my child learn if I step back here? What might happen if I let them make this mistake? And maybe most importantly: What might happen if my child grows up afraid to fail?
In the words of Robert F. Kennedy: “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
Sarah Keiger, MSW, is an education consultant and founder of Triangle School Consulting,
where she helps parents find the right educational setting for their child.
Learn more at triangleschoolconsulting.com.