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Inculcate autonomy - foster children autonomy
It is normal for us as parents to take on tasks that are our child's responsibility, because we feel that our experience and training gives us a considerable advantage that can be useful to our child's interests. In a way, helping our child with his or her homework is not a bad thing. The truly harmful attitude is to overshadow our child's autonomy and create a permanent dependency on us.
It is clear that there are things that should always be done with the help of the parents, until the child is older, but this does not mean that, as a general rule, parents tend to hinder their child's development by not allowing him/her to develop his/her own abilities and test him/her in less controlled scenarios. Autonomy is a value and a basic skill to instill in our children.
During the development of this guide, we will be addressing some of the most important general aspects related to the role that autonomy plays in the personal growth of the child.
We must know how to find a balance between giving our children sufficient autonomy for their personal development, and neglecting to supervise them or not supporting them in their development. This point of balance is what is known as supervised autonomy, which is nothing more than providing enough freedom for our child to test his own abilities, while we remain in the background as an observer, to enter only in cases where it is really necessary.
Thanks to supervised autonomy, we can continue to contribute our experience without hindering our child, allowing him to make his own progress at his own pace and putting his skills into play. In case of any inconvenience for the child, during the development of the activity, we will make the right effort to help him/her to continue, without us being the ones to solve the problem. The idea is that we understand that our position is in the background, always being our child the main actor in the solution of his conflicts.
Within the family, there are shared responsibilities and others that must be assigned to each individual. Make sure that your child also has his own responsibilities and that he is the only one in charge of executing them and assuming the consequences for the results. Your child must learn to solve conflicts by attending to his or her own resources and abilities.
As in any area of life, development also involves learning to deal with failure and adversity. The mistakes our child makes will be his best tool to learn and perfect his actions, finding new ways to perform and achieve the expected results.
Developing a skill involves stepping out of the comfort zone to explore new, more complex and demanding terrain. By nature, we tend to stay in our comfort zone and protect ourselves from suffering by repeating actions with which we feel safe and which do not represent a big problem. That is why you, in your role as a parent, must be the one to help your child leave his comfort zone and begin to develop his skills and talents.
You must be able to identify which are the basic aspects that you can begin to develop in your child, in order for him/her to grow personally. Develop tasks and responsibilities that are in line with these goals. These tasks or responsibilities should have a progressive increase in their degree of complexity, so you can measure the results and adjust these tasks.
