Parents want the best for their children. The problem is, sometimes parents make things too easy. Guidance counselor Christine Cramer says she would rather see children hit small roadblocks or barriers and learn to overcome them than encounter none at all.
It’s okay for parents to let their children explore, and even fail, in adolescent activities, she says. Teach them smart goal setting and then get out of their way.
Let them learn to manage money by giving them enough allowance to buy their own school clothes. If they dream of owning a restaurant, let them buy the groceries and make the meals for a day.
Better yet, suggest that they strike a deal with a local restaurant to volunteer for a week in exchange for the manager’s inside scoop on how to get ahead in the field. Better to give one week to find out it’s not really what he wants to do instead of years preparing for the job only to find out it’s a drag or that he could have gotten to a nicer position faster if he had known how the system worked. And if not, maybe the manager will later decide to hire him on and groom him for leadership.
Most decisions, even bad ones, aren’t going to ruin a child’s life if he's given the chance to learn from them, Cramer says. “And sometimes, a detour takes you to a place that’s better than where you wanted to go!”
William Rapai is a stay-at-home dad of two girls in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, who has also worked as an editor at the Detroit Free Press and the Boston Globe. With his youngest daughter starting kindergarten next year, he’s starting to think about his own career goals — again.