with the experiences through which they gained mastery over life’s challenges, they are often enough to send the rootless modern person into a mental institution.”4
The tendency of parents to hover over their children, trying to eliminate all danger, risk, and frustration from life, can be damaging. In an article titled “Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail,” teacher Jessica Lahey writes:
I have worked with quite a number of parents who are so overprotective of their children that the children do not learn to take responsibility (and the natural consequences) of their actions. The children may develop a sense of entitlement and the parents then find it difficult to work with the school in a trusting, cooperative, and solution-focused manner, which would benefit both child and school.
These are the parents who worry me the most – parents who won’t let their child learn. You see, teachers don’t just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. We teach responsibility, organization, manners, restraint, and foresight. These skills may not get assessed on standardized testing, but as children plot their journey into adulthood, they are, by far, the most important life skills I teach.5
There are wonderful things to be learned from trying, failing, and trying again. If a project is not up to standard, a good teacher can help a child think about improvement and inspire him to do better. But that lesson is lost if the parent has completed the project for the child. And what message does that communicate? At some point, the child will need to face a challenge without a parent at his side. Will he look around for someone to take over, or will he step up? If his parents praise his half-hearted efforts so as not to threaten his “self-esteem,” will he ever know the satisfaction of a difficult job well done?
This is where active and involved fathers can help. I still maintain that no one has as much influence for good in a child’s life as a mother. But a father’s role is different and just as important, as Naomi Schaefer Riley, columnist and mother of three, writes:
Dads are more likely to let their children take risks. It’s not just that they’ll actually let go when teaching kids how to ride a two-wheeler (something that I instinctively did not want to do when my kids were learning). . . .
As psychologist Daniel Paquette has observed, “Fathers tend to stand behind their children so the children face their social environment, whereas mothers tend to position themselves in front of their children, seeking to establish visual contact.”
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