In pursuit of self-sufficient children

A very wise friend of mine posted this on Facebook last night:

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole. Then it stopped, as if it couldn’t go any further. So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and carefully snipped the remaining bits of cocoon. The butterfly emerged easily but it had a swollen body and shriveled wings. The man continued to watch it, expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge and expand enough to support the body. Neither happened. In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around. It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste didn’t understand is that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required by the butterfly to get through the opening was a way of forcing the fluid from the body into the wings so that it would be ready for flight once that was achieved. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. Going through life with no obstacles would cripple us. Without challenges, we will never be as strong as we could have been and we will never fly.

My friend’s takeaway (which I think is spot on) was this: Our “kindness and haste” is really a mask for “control and impatience.” We don’t like to see those we love struggle, but our attempts to make things easy for them really just stunts their growth (maturity). Put down the scissors and pack up the cape. Let them beat their wings; then watch beauty emerge and take flight.

How beautiful and poignant is that?

Change the word “man” in the little parable above to “Mom” and the word “butterfly” to “child,” and you are talking about me.

When toys are “lost” in the house, I always say things to Cary and Dean like, “Children have to keep up with their own things.” But then 10 seconds later, after so much whining, I always stop what I’m doing and look for that thing they can’t find.

I tell them, “Sure, you can get down from the table after eating nothing I’ve fixed. But there will not be any snack before bed.” But then when they say they’re hungry later, I feel PHYSICALLY incapable of refusing them something to eat. I’m like a Mommy-zombie, headed for the kitchen. “Must. Feed. Offspring.”

I totally agree with this post about the best way to praise kids to teach them about commitment and sticking with challenges and not giving up when things get hard:

But when Dean says, “Look at my Lego tower, Mommy!” the first thing out of my mouth is, “That’s an amazing tower! What a great builder you are! Awesome job, Dean.” I  have a really hard time remembering that I’m supposed to be praising the effort, the process, the fact that he didn’t give up the three times the tower fell, but kept going until he was done.

(And I have an even harder time remembering to uphold the rule that THEY are supposed to be the ones on all fours picking up the Legos when they’re through.)

Today I read Laura C.’s great post about this book (which I plan to get and read cover-to-cover): "Cleaning House: A Mom's Twelve Month Experiment to Rid Her House of Youth Entitlement.” 

And I thought about how we do ask the boys to take their plates and utensils off the table after meals, but other than that small responsibility, they tear through the house like maniacs, making fantastic messes and emphatic demands, all, “I don’t LIKE these kind of waffles! I’m too TIRED to put my toys away. I want more milk!”- la–dee-dah-ain’t-life-grand?

Of course I know they’re 3-and-a-half. And this is the perfect time to be la-dee-dah’ing. Life only gets harder as they get older and I want them to be carefree and unburdened now, knowing that they can depend on Lester and me for the things they really need.

It’s the determining what the “things they really need” really are that’s the problem.

Remember my post from a few weeks back about me helicopter-momming my way into Cary getting a reward at school? Ugh. I still think about that from time to time and cringe. This is not the Mom I imagined I would be, folks. When thinking as early marrieds about what good things we wanted our future children to be, the adjective that came up most often was “self-sufficient.”

I told a co-worker that once and she said, “Well, I would think you’d want your children to be happy.” To which I said, “If we help them become self-sufficient, and at some point in their lives they find themselves unhappy (which is bound to happen), then they will know how to figure out what to do to make themselves happy.”

I felt really wise when I said that. Of course, I had zero children then. Wisdom is wasted on the young and well-rested. Hahaha!

But – as with most things – reading and internalizing and reading some more always makes a difference. I'm glad I keep getting reminders through Facebook posts, blogfriends and newspaper articles about this topic. 

I know we can get this right. With God's help, we will make these children self-sufficient if it’s the last thing we do.