Our Capable Kids

I've seen a trend lately on blogs, Pinterest, and elsewhere on the web, which kind of cracks me up.  People are discovering - like a bright flash of sudden inspiration - that children are actually capable of doing things. Lots of things.  Lots of things that we didn't think they could do.  It cracks me up, because I'm pretty sure it's only recently that our children have been deemed totally INcapable of doing things for themselves, and yet we are having to rediscover that, "oh hey! I did those chores when I was a kid! And my grandmother knew how to button her own shirt when she was five years old!"


There are so many reasons that I think it's ridiculous for us to keep our children from doing things they are capable of doing.  We are not our children's servants, chefs, valets, chauffeurs... so let's not act like it.  YES we cook for our families, and we help younger children dress themselves, and of course we drive them where they need to go before they learn to drive.  But there is a big difference in my mind between acting like we are there to make sure our children never lift a finger and simply helping them learn to do things for themselves.  It's as simple as HOW you do the task.

For example, when I get Henry dressed, it would be so much easier to lay him on a changing table and dress him top to bottom myself (and I have seen people do this with two year olds!)  But I take the slightly less efficient (in the short-term) route of having Henry dress himself, with a lot of help from me.  I hold out the shirt so that he can easily get his head and arms into it properly.  He can pull on his own underwear and pants, but I help button his pants if needed (most are just elastic).  He can put on his own shoes most of the time.  And while I do most of the cooking around here, one of Sophia's chores is to make breakfast for herself and the other kids during the school year.  She can microwave oatmeal, make toast, fix cereal, reheat pancakes I made and froze, and even cook eggs on our electric griddle.  I have started pulling her into the kitchen a few times a week to help me cook dinner - she can chop some vegetables, and help me pour and stir.  She knows how to make a sandwich and fix chocolate milk for Amelia.  She can mash a banana or avocado and feed it to Wyatt while I'm cooking dinner.  These are all completely reasonable things for an almost-seven year old to do.

There has also been quite a bit of publicity around the so-called "free-range kids" movement.  While I actually have a problem with that whole "movement" and a lot of their rhetoric (because in their quest to make the world seem like a safer place than it is, they have almost completely ignored the high rate of sexual abuse that occurs in children's lives, and only focus on the extreme rarity of kidnappings... but anyway...)  I do agree that a lot of parents seem too over-protective of their kids these days.  Over-protective sounds like a weird word - I mean how can it POSSIBLY be bad to be as protective of our children as we can be?!  But the thing is, by keeping such constant watch of them, we forget, I think, to teach them how to be safe and confident away from us.  I let my girls to to public restrooms together without me.  At a large playground, I let them play away from me where I can't see them at every moment.  Why?  Because I have taught them what to do if someone wants them to go with them or bothers them.  I haven't taught them that all strangers are bad and the world is a terrifying place.  Instead, I have told them that there is a little voice inside of them that helps them know when a situation is dangerous, and they are empowered to do anything and everything they can to get out of that situation.  I have taught them how to spot safe people (police officers, other mothers, etc.) to go to if they are lost or need help.  I believe it's possible to empower our children instead of scaring them into believing that the world is so frightening that they can only be safe if mom or dad are holding their hand.

Similarly, I think it's demeaning to children to treat them like helpless little things.  How sad would it be to in kindergarten and not be able to properly dress yourself or eat your food without your mommy there to pull up your pants and cut up your food?! Both of my girls (ages 5 and almost-7) take care of their own personal hygiene - they bathe or shower, floss and brush their teeth, etc. Of course I inspect their teeth and let them know if they haven't rinsed all the shampoo from their hair, but for the most part they take care of these things without me.  Henry is now (since my last post on the subject!) going to the bathroom by himself, with only occasional reminders from me (especially if we are away from home) and of course my help in wiping and washing his hands.  He brushes his own teeth with a spinning toothbrush, and then I go in after him and brush again.  Henry can feed himself with normal dishes and silverware and drink from a regular glass.  I just think kids who are more self-sufficient at an earlier age are going to be more confident and independent in the long-run.

And finally, back to the whole servant issue, I just think it's so important for children to feel like they are part of a family, not that their parents are there to cater to them.  Our children have their own bedrooms, but they do not have a "playroom" or "their" bathroom, they don't have separate dishes, and our living room is filled with only normal furniture.  They can sit on The Family Couch and eat using The Family Dishes and pee in The Family Toilet.  Right?? They don't need all their "own" stuff.

And we expect them to take care of this house and help keep up with the things that must be taken care of - from setting the table to putting away the laundry to dusting the baseboards.   Just like anyone else.  That's how it was when I was growing up, and I think it was perfectly fine.  I certainly did not feel like I was the little princess who ran the house and had grown ups around to cater to my every whim.  I also didn't feel like a child-slave because I had to do chores.

Oh my gosh, I think I posted about this before, but have you seen the signs?  The NURSERY signs that say stuff like "Spoiled Princess" on cute little wooden plaques with pink swirls on them? Why?!  That WHY?! makes me think that some parents WANT spoiled, entitled, helpless kids (*ahem* Suri Cruise).  One of the things (a small thing, compared to much bigger issues) that told us it was time to change schools, was when Sophia came home and announced, "we need a housekeeper so I don't have to clean!"  Ugh.  I want my children to be HAPPY, I want them to feel like they had everything they needed growing up, I want them to feel loved and deserving.  And I want them to grow up knowing without a shadow of a doubt, that they do not need a housekeeper to be happy and that loved does not equal spoiled.

I want my children to be self-sufficient, confident, independent, hard-working, humble, and willing to help out.  And so, I will continue to make sure they are self-dressing, cooking, cleaning, lawn-mowing (I can't wait!), somewhat-but-not-quite-free-range kids.  If choosing between doing something for them or teaching them to do it for themselves, I am going to go with helping them do it themselves.  If wondering whether they are old enough to tackle a job, I am going to give it a shot and see if they can.  If choosing between making their lives easier and making them work hard, I am going to do with hard-working almost every time.  If choosing between a situation that is almost certainly safe because I am physically there with them and a situation that requires my (older) children to take some responsibility for their own safety, I am probably going to err on the side of sending them out into the world.

In this great experiment that we call parenting, I guess we won't know how it all turns out until it's all over.  Suri Cruise is about Sophia's age... we'll check back in with them in about twenty years.