Raising Independent Children

Tanya Byron states that we are bringing up a nation of young adults who are unprepared for life. She states as we micromanage our children’s lives we have lost perspective and the children have lost the opportunity to become hard working, independent, self reliant resilient adults.

During the feature things jumped out at me which I strongly believe in, statements such as “along with developing the children’s IQ we need to give them developmental opportunities that would give them grit and determination these qualities define the most successful”.

Tanya then quoted Danial Goleman the psychologist, that in research IQ alone does not determine a successful career it has to be balanced with emotional intelligence.

A favourite line of mine is when she writes of the Friend – Parent relationship she states such children are swaddled, protected, and essentially regressed for fear of upsetting them, I am sad to say I know children like that.

The next sentence went onto the issue of pocket money, she states it used to be earned but today children often treat parents as a 24/7 cash machines, that is very true.

To say I enjoyed reading this article would be true yet at the same time she is writing about parenting as I knew it years ago. We do have to protect our children from different things these days, we have to monitor far more than 30 years ago, and at the same time we should be teaching respect. I always earned my pocket money, just as my father earned his salary, I was still given treats but pocket money was to be earned, and I valued my money. A lot of children today do expect things handed to them, she states in the article that is the reason so many young adults are returning home, not just that it is difficult to get jobs or mortgages but because Mum and Dad are quite willing to support them. My own parents would have been horrified and seen themselves as failures if I had such an attitude.

My own upbringing was surround with love and security but also with structure and I was expected to have my role within the family. I had parents that would listen if I needed to talk and always ready to offer advice, yet from an early age we all had jobs to do, some were just little things like collecting the newspaper but it was still a valued role.

I raised my own daughter with much the same values that I grew up with, she learnt respect and value from an early age, small things like please and thank you, was the first lesson. She now has six children of her own and I see all the values that I passed onto her been passed along to her children. My Daughter is now chairing a local charity she has a strong place in her local community and people look to her for leadership, along with that she is the most compassionate person I know, so I at least feel I have raised an independent adult. It would be interesting to have input from other people to compare how we see today’s parenting skills. I must add I do love being around teenagers and I was a foster parent for a few years, I believe give them love and guidance and generally you will get a lot of fun and love in return.

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