Parent's Guide to Developing a Child's Independence

Children are naturally dependent upon their parents. From their first breath a baby is a squirming mass of dependence that needs his or her parents for food, warmth, safety and shelter. They can do nothing for themselves and require vigilant parenting to see them through their infancy and first toddling steps. What is difficult for parents to understand is that though a child becomes less physically dependent in a few short years, their emotional and mental dependence may cling much longer.

3 Steps to Independence

A certain amount of dependence is desirable, because parents want to feel needed. Parents need to be reminded that while their child will always need them, they need independence as well. Parents can help their child to develop independence through encouragement, allowance and support.

Children naturally want independence. It begins as early as holding up their heads and fighting for control of the bottle. They struggle with independence as they push themselves up into a sitting position and pull themselves up to stand. Children want to be grown up and they want to be grown up and independent yesterday.

Encouragement

Parents need to encourage that desire while at the same time guiding them through lessons that will help them be independent and cognizant at the same time. One method of doing this is chores. Chores for a small child may be as simple as helping to put their toys away. It is in an uncomplicated way to foster independence, responsibility and self-reliance. These chores can be modified and added to as a child grows. It's important for a child to feel like they are accomplishing something and that this accomplishment assists their parents.

Yes, there will come a time when they complain about their chores, but this is where responsibility and independence meet head on. Parents must stand firm when their child resists by encouraging them to be responsible.

Allowance

The next step after encouragement is allowance. When a child is learning to color, a parent may show them how to hold the crayon and how to stroke it onto the paper. They may even encourage them to color within the lines. But a crucial part of learning is independence. Parents need to allow their child to color in their own way and sometimes that means coloring outside the lines. It also means not hovering, particularly when a child is passed an age where they just as likely to eat the crayon as color with it.

Gradually, as children age, parents tend to let them work more and more by themselves. While children love having an audience, learning to work independently will help them adjust to future situations where you cannot be there to stand guard while they work (school, extracurricular activities).

Allowance also means that sometimes a parent must let their child fail. When a child fails, they may feel discouraged, but parents should feel comfortable with walking them through the process and then asking the child to repeat the task. It is through failure that a child learns how something doesn't work. It is through attempting again after failure that a child learns perseverance.

Support

It is okay for a child to fail and it is okay for a child to forget, but don't rush to do it for them. Their actions have consequences and if they forget to do their homework one night and must tell their teacher the next day, the experience will teach them far faster than any nagging that they must remember to do their chores, homework and other independent activities independently.

A parent encourages their child's independence, allows them their mistakes, their failures and their opportunities to work on their own and they support their choices through consequences and guidance. Developing independence in your child may take years, but his or her confidence when confronted with new challenges is the reward for that time and effort.