The biggest disservice we can do to our children is by helping them. There are 2 major fallacies with this approach.
- Skipping all the activations
- Outcome more important than the process
Activations
When you rush to help your child, you are robbing the child of all the activations that he would experience in what we call the “struggle”. Children totally relish all the figuring out that happens. If you don’t believe me, ask your child this one question before rushing to help – “Do you need help” And predominantly the answer that i have got with almost all children is a huge resounding ‘NO’. Very rarely when the child has tried everything she could they may agree for any external help.
Like in this instance of child trying to use the hand wash, I could see multiple activations – eye hand coordination, gross motor skills, use of strength, experimentation by trying different hands.
Outcome more important than process
The second grave fallacy is we are subtly reinforcing all the time that the outcome is more important. We are in a rush to download all the information and knowledge we have onto the child. Again, an extremely passive experience for the child. We are constantly asking the child to depend on us for all their needs and later, when they grow up we complain their constant dependence.
It isn’t to say that we are not supposed to help the child at all. Especially if the situation demands so from time or safety perspective, of course we intervene. But next time, you jump to help the child, pause, reflect and if you are still not sure, you can always ask the child!