Child Independence Needs a Comeback

For the last couple years, an industrious mother of a middle schooler has shared in our Facebook parent group her well-organized Excel document designed to capture a student’s entire schedule on paper sized to fit their IDs. The gratitude and praise poured in as other parents (let’s be honest, mothers) clamored to use the template to help their own middle schooler feel prepared on the first day of school. I did not clamor. I thought to myself, “can’t our middle schoolers do this without us?”
 
I didn’t say a word about this to my sixth-grade daughter, yet she announced her plan to make an ID-sized schedule.
 
I do understand that especially in this age group of tween-to-teen transition, planning and organization skills widely vary. (My daughter may have zero short-term memory for turning off lights and bringing dishes down from her room, but the girl likes to organize.) However, in this sixth-grade schedule scenario, a parent could sit with their child while the child does it, and support as necessary (scaffolding).
 
Or—even more radical—let the new middle schoolers figure it out on the first day of school. What’s the worst that could happen if they get lost? Feeling stressed? That’s what might motivate these young teens to be more organized next time. Or they might ask a nice person for help and build confidence in their own abilities to improvise when stuck.
 
I’ve been hearing from parents everywhere that they have noticed even less independence in their children since the pandemic. My theory is that pandemic life fed the flames of intensive parenting due to the high stress and anxiety about our children’s welfare. In place of encouraging independence, the fear of all bad things happening to our children (including actual life and death fears) made us more protective.

As I discuss at length in my book about autonomy-supportive parenting, the problem is that our children are programmed to crave a sense of agency and our over-protection mixes up their brain wiring. With our most loving intentions, we have gotten in the way of our children’s natural impulse to seek mastery and competence. If we don’t trust in our children, they learn to not trust themselves.

If we want to raise autonomous children, we have to promote independence.

I see the urgency of child independence needing a comeback in several young adults I know. Bright, competent, well-resourced legal adults who continue to rely on their parents for shelter, food, laundry, life direction, and even a sense of self. They tell me they want to move out and be their own person, but they feel completely unequipped to do so. For the record, the parents I know of these aimless young ones are some of the loveliest, most caring people I have met who truly want the best for their child.

Lenore Skenazy’s Free-Range Kids gives a comprehensive history of how we have culturally shifted from children playing in the woods for hours on end with no adult in sight to adults not allowing their kids to leave their sight. Two big culprits are fear and misinformation. Razors in Halloween candy? A hoax. Kidnappings? An extreme rarity. You could leave your kid standing outside for something like 700 years before they get kidnapped according to the frequency statistics.

I worked for years in the child protection system so I know what true neglect looks like, yet the laws in most states could probably prosecute me for neglect. I want my children to cook with knives and fire, stay home alone, bike around the neighborhood without us, and walk our dogs. I have fortunately escaped police attention and my home state of Illinois just passed a “Reasonable Child Independence” law that now leaves me in the clear. I hope. 

With our fear-driven parenting culture and nonsense laws shaping how we approach child independence, we need to be more intentional than ever. And much of what I see parents doing for their children, like making middle school schedule spreadsheets fit onto an ID badge, has nothing to do with avoiding being charged with neglect. But it does have to do with the parent’s fear of their middle school child being uncomfortable and stressed. In fact, in that same Facebook group, parents asked where specific rooms were so they could tell their child. I yelled into the screen void, “Let them figure it out! Thousands of sixth graders before them have done it, your child can too.”

Take stock of what you see in your family. What are you doing for your child that they have the capability to do themselves? Or where does your child have potential capacity if you provided some teaching and then stepped back? I started to pose the question to myself, “what can’t they do?” I’m not suggesting we go back to the before-times of child labor and no legal requirement for education, but a group of kids could practically run a farm. We need to give credit where credit is due.

Now, think about how your controlling impulses may undermine your child’s independence. It’s okay, we all do it. I shoved shoes on my 3-year-old’s feet at every daycare pick-up despite the Montessori teachers’ strict instructions to “always let your child put on their shoes.” I carried him out the door even though they also strongly advised “never pick up your child when they can walk.” (I don’t believe in absolutes in parenting when I’m on a tight time crunch.) And now, I find my children asking me constantly for things they can do themselves, so I must still be doing more for them out of convenience instead of my parenting ambition to raise independent children.  

I have also seen and heard and lived examples that are higher stakes than pushing tiny feet into impossibly inflexible shoes. A big one is parent interference in pre-teen social lives. The tale of a father indignant about his daughter’s exclusion from a Starbucks outing who threatened to show up with his daughter at the said outing. (Daughter=mortified.) Parents texting other parents about social conflicts between older elementary-aged kids. This can devolve into a child navigating friend problems with “I’m gonna tell my parents to text your parents.” This is not promoting healthy child independence to master their friendships, their lives, and themselves.

Although I also have plenty of work to do on this front, my own children have complained, “everybody else’s parents make their lunches for them!” I believe them. And “none of my friends have chores!” According to the data, that is likely true.

Yet, as we prepare for a week away (so-called “vacation”), my 11-year-old packed her entire suitcase two days before departure. My older two switch off doing their laundry every week, make their own meals without being told, and generally run their day to day lives. My youngest has mastered riding his bike to camp alone this summer, which was maybe illegal until that law passed, but I don’t care. (By the by, the camp forces me to have an adult check him out at 3.)

My kids may not thank me yet, but my fierce independence fuels my parenting drive for their independence. Because the more they do for themselves, from the mundane daily tasks to coping with life’s problems, the more time and space I have. For me. The more time and space my husband and I have. For us. That one less load of weekly laundry to fold, a couple fewer suitcases to pack, and a morning to walk the dogs instead of my son, adds up. It doesn’t only add time to my overflowing schedule, it adds mental space to my overflowing brain. It’s possible that my selfishness took the wheel in commanding my children’s independence. But by the time they turn 18, they will have no doubt they can live without me. In fact, they frequently announce their plans to do so.

**You can pre-order my book Autonomy-Supportive Parenting: Reduce Parental Burnout and Raise Competent, Confident Children on Amazon and Bookshop.