Let Your Kids Do Things On Their Own

Let Your Kids Do Things On Their Own

Let your kids do things on their own. I am not talking about something seriously dangerous. Don’t let your three-year-old walk across a busy street on their own. Don’t knowingly let your sixteen-year-old drink and drive. I am talking about the simple, common, not-so-dangerous things–tie their shoes, do their homework, and get into college. Recently, I learned of a doctor who called old colleagues so that their medical student child would be considered for a residency program that had already rejected them. This is not likely to come up in your life, but it is illustrative. The same concepts apply to an art project, a Boy Scouts Pinewood Derby car, or a daily homework assignment.

The most common argument for letting your kids do things on their own is that they won’t learn if you do it for them. Or, if they don’t do the algebra homework themselves, how can they be ready for the test? These statements are true, but they are not the most important reasons. When my son entered a Pinewood Derby contest, he did 95% of the work. He lost miserably. Many kids that beat him may have done the work themselves, but the winners clearly didn’t. You could hear the fathers bragging about how they used a lathe or some other machine that I don’t know anything about. Just looking at some of the cars, it was obvious that no seven-year-old made them.

I remember thinking that the parents were cheating and that they robbed other kids of victory. Of course, I mean kids other than my son since his car wouldn’t have beaten anyone’s, whether they did it on their own or not. While true, they did rob other kids of victory, that is not the worst part. They robbed their kids of the benefits of succeeding or failing on their own. The winning kids knew their parents did much or most of the work on the derby car. Kids who get an A on a paper their parents wrote know they didn’t deserve it. Doing poorly on your own has even more benefits. As Ryan Holiday wrote so well in The Obstacle Is the Way, it is our obstacles that teach us the most. Removing obstacles for your kids is the worst thing you can do. It tells them they cannot overcome obstacles on their own. Those celebrities who bribed teachers to get their kids better SAT scores robbed their kids of the satisfaction that comes with getting into a competitive college on their own and, worse, the learning experience of trying to overcome an obstacle. They are telling their kids they are not good enough. And maybe with the next obstacle, the kids won’t put in the effort necessary to overcome it.

I like thought experiments. I use one to prove that helping someone too much hurts them. Let’s say I have four kids, two girls and two boys. I tell the boys that if they get all As and Bs on their report cards, they can have a prize, something big, like a bike. I tell the girls that they get bikes if they get Cs and above. Won’t the girls think that I believe they’re not good enough to get As and Bs? That girls aren’t as good as boys? We know that’s nonsense, but does a ten-year-old? The doctor I mentioned above is telling his kid that he is not good enough to get a residency on his own, that he’s not good enough to be a good doctor or a success in life if he doesn’t get a good residency. He is allowing his kid to go through life knowing that Daddy got him into a residency and cheated some other student out of a place on the roster that he deserved. 

If you tie your kid’s shoes until they are nine, they won’t learn to tie their shoes until they are nine.