In this episode, Dr. Tim Thayne discusses how today's parenting trends are centered around smoothing the path for their child rather than preparing them for the inevitable bumps. He encourages parents to pause question their first instinct to prevent failure. He ends with practical advice to help your kids become more self-reliant, which means greater confidence and competence.
In this episode, Dr. Tim Thayne discusses how today's parenting trends are centered around smoothing the path for their child rather than preparing them for the inevitable bumps. He encourages parents to pause question their first instinct to prevent failure. He ends with practical advice to help your kids become more self-reliant, which means greater confidence and competence.
There are as many ways to parent as there are parents in this world. But there is one way to parent that wins every time. And that's doing it intentionally. This show is about helping things go right before they can go wrong. Each episode is chosen to help parents like you, who may be overwhelmed or uninspired, find the ideas and motivation to give their best efforts to the people and place that matters the most. I'm Dr. Tim, Thayne, author of the book and host of the podcast, not by chance, I believe that a family success and happiness is not by chance. So welcome to the podcast built especially for intentional families. Let's jump in. Today's podcast is about building self reliance in our kids. And as parents, and we think about that word self reliance, it makes us feel warm and fuzzy to imagine the day in the future, when our adolescent is self reliant, both physically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, because what that means, essentially, is that they are doing the things that they need to do autonomously independently, without a lot of input from us. And obviously, that means that our job as parent has been successful, and it's kind of changing to a new phase, where we're not stepping in to take on jobs that are our child needs to do for themselves eventually. So it marks a point in time in our relationship with them that we can celebrate, you know, and there's this release of pressure that comes as we see them take on those roles that they need to do themselves. So today, we're going to talk about the barriers to creating a self reliant child or an adolescent, what are the some of the common pitfalls that we have as parents that get in the way of this ultimate goal. We also want to talk about some specific solutions, things we can do to immediately start to improve this the patterns of developing self reliance and our kids. But I want to start out with the story if I can. A few weeks ago, I took the dog for a walk and I was walking down a couple blocks from our home, I saw a small boy with a cart, he had a low Clark cart that he was hauling logs on, they had cut down one of the trees in their yard. And that cut it up into fire sized or fireplace sized logs. And where he was maneuvering that from one side of the yard, kind of down this incline to the other side of the yard and stacking it neatly in a place where they could get to it for later use. as I got closer to him, I saw that he was maneuvering the very last log that was on the lawn and he had left the biggest one for last night was a large log. And as he came down this little incline the log rolled off the cart. And he exasperated look to heaven word and and and then put his hands in his face on his face and started to cry. And I was moved by this because I knew what kind of effort this little guy must have gone through to get that log on the cart in the first place, only to have it roll off. And and so as I didn't want to embarrass him, so I kept on moving. But I thought about that little boy. And as I got as we came back around and went past the house again, I saw that that log was was neatly stacked with the other logs. And it had been the job had been completed. So one of two things happened, the parents may have been watching him through the window. And when they saw the log roll off and saw him exasperated and sad and crying, they might have rushed out and helped him with that big log and finish the job for him. Or they might have just sat there and kind of restrained themselves and thought to themselves, all this is actually really good. He's gonna have to dig a little deeper right now. And in the process, they're thinking ahead to the day when he's he's drawing upon those reserves of grit, determination, belief that he can do it. And they were able to hold themselves back and let him finish the job and experience the joy of being able to actually complete a job that maybe even a larger kid would have struggled with. So let's talk about a few of the barriers. Now for most of us parents raising kids in a complex world today, where I think it's more difficult to raise a self reliant kid these days than it was maybe a generation ago. You know, our lives are different. They're much more complicated. When kids struggle, there could be more dire consequences for that. That's all possible. But I think it's also just part of our society to be much more emotionally tuned in to our kids than maybe were, we were a generation ago. attunements a great thing, there's, that's actually a wonderful thing that we are tuned with our kids. But we can take that too far, where it's not just, we're sort of tuned in and understand where they're at emotionally, but we might take it too far, and kind of plug our emotional thermometer inside our child so that we feel every little blip on the radar of the emotions that they're feeling. And if they're having intense emotions, it'd be super easy for us to have our own heart, melt, or feel worried or anxious for our child, and then we act out of that place instead of a healthy detachment. And when I throw out the word detachment, people might go, Oh, no, we don't want to be detached from our kids. I'm talking about a healthy detachment. We're still attuned with them. But we're detached enough that we're not writing every up and down that they are emotionally, we're able to think long term, let them struggle a bit, let them sweat it out, even let them fail. Now, let me ask you a question. And I think you're going to know the answer to this. I want you to finish my sentence for me. We learn through blank and blank. I think you know, what those two blanks are, we learn through trial and error. You know, the interesting thing with us parents is we want them to learn, and we want them to maybe be stretched, we want to just help maybe eliminate the error part. If we could make that go away and let them learn without that. And maybe even without the trial, we would probably opt into that. The problem is, this is a true principle. It's why we all know the same we learn through trial and error. So we need to allow the errors to come along and to allow our kids to struggle through the outcomes or the consequences of that error, or have that goal not achieved or that challenge not succeeded in. And as they do that they're going to develop some internal competencies, that this self reliance that we're talking about is built on. Now when we have little children, obviously, we're doing everything for them. But because they're so cute, I mean, most of the time, we don't want to see them cry, we we just think it's tragic when they cry. The reality is, it's really not, it's again, going to take some healthy detachment for us to know, when do we step in and really help and when don't we, I talked about the the concept of smoothing the path before the child instead of preparing the child for the path in my book. And I think that's a really good metaphor for us to have in our minds. And every time we're feeling this urge to step in and do something for our son or daughter that they actually could do for themselves. So we're, we're doing all the smoothing ourselves, instead of letting the child kind of look at the path, say there are some obstacles, there are some rocks in the way, I need to be able to navigate through all of that and ultimately succeed. So, again, let's think about how do we prepare the child for the path because the path in this life is going to be difficult, and the quicker they can start to feel competent, and have this sense of efficacy, like what I do is successful, then their self esteem is going to come along, and they're going to be able to tackle bigger and bigger challenges that are in front of them. This Sunday on October 3, kay byutv will be showing a episode of series that they call family rules, where they interviewed me about a family that is out there doing a great job raising independent children. So I want to invite you to that so it's k BYU TV, one o'clock Mountain Time, this coming Sunday, October 3. Another big obstacle to raising self reliant children is being mismatched in our parenting styles as parents, where one might be overly triggered by the emotions of the child Mild, the other one might become super strict because they're trying to overcome the enmeshment of the other. And so there's this tug of war back and forth on, on how things should go. And so what usually happens is that we're inconsistent in a situation like that, at times, maybe requiring more than a child can do on one end, and other times, doing things for the child that they could do for themselves. So I've presented something has an obstacle, that I'm not going to give you too many solutions around this, this could take multiple podcasts around co parenting, there's just so much that goes into turning that around, but let me just give you some hope. If you can just improve your co parenting by just 10%. I can tell you that because co parenting and being in sync with one another is so essential to raising healthy, happy, self reliant kids, that even a 10% move in the right direction where you're you're getting a little bit better at that actually has a compound effect in terms of the outcome on the on the child or the team. So just know a little change goes a long way for this. And we'll we'll cover some things around that in the future. But you can do it, you can do 10%. And almost in any case, now there are a few exceptions. And you might be sitting there saying, I'm married to the exception, or Miko parent is the exception because of mental health or addiction or personality disorders or whatever it might be, you might think that you're, you're in a situation that can't be helped. That's rarely the case that you can't move the needle, even 10%. So whatever you do, don't give up on this. I know with a little effort, you got this, I want you to change, maybe the definition of success for a second, to give you a little bit of a solution. You might think that when your child struggles or fails, that that's a failure. If you understood the long term gains of the struggle that are going through, you would understand that you allowing these struggles to happen is a success. And so start to label that even in the moment saying look at we're being successful, our child's struggling, and they're they're hanging in there. Someday I want to write a book about my grandpa, because I think the pendulum has swung way too far to the side of enmeshment and doing more for our kids than we should. Now back in his generation. Obviously that was like two generations ago, three generations ago. He he had to be super independent, I could tell you some stories that you probably wouldn't believe about him. But it's all true fiber tell you the story about my grandpa, he's doing these superhuman things at a young age, like six or seven or eight. It's true. This is but but here's, here's the experience I had with him as my grandparent. And it may sound cold to you. But I actually knew my grandpa cared about me. I knew he loved me. Even though he really never said he loved me. I knew he did care about me. So one day my grandpa is sitting on his porch watching me try and break a horse. That's what we call it back then I didn't see it as training a horse I saw it as breaking because that was the old school method. And the horse had thrown me off a few times. The horse had learned that that she could rare up and I would get I would get scared. And she wouldn't have to go where I wanted her to go. And so as he's watching me, the horse does this rares up and almost went over backwards. And my grandpa said hey, Tim, you can't let that happen. You need to get off the horse right now pick up a stick and the next time she rares up you need to hit over the head of the stick to help her understand that this is not okay. And when he told me that I kind of knew what was going to happen probably if I followed through, but my grandpa kind of expected me to do it and so I got off the horse picked up a little stick and and was kind of petrified to get back on but as I did. I'm riding around and sure enough she got to this point where she reared up and I thought okay, here's my moment. I've got to be braced for this. I came down over the head, her head with this stick hit her on top of the head with it. And she kind of froze like what just happened And a split second later she exploded and barked, and I went flying off the horse. And I landed on my back between some of the sagebrush there. And I'm like, Oh, did I break a rib? You know, am I okay? The first thing I did is I rolled over to look at my grandpa, because I wanted to see if he was going to come and help me. Grandpa just sat there and smiled. And he said, Come here, and I'll pick you up. He wasn't going to come pick me up, he knew that I could get up on my own power. I might have even had a broken bone and he would be okay with me walking over limping over whatever, and seeing if I could do it. And what a contrast, isn't it from maybe the natural instinct most of us would have would be to run to them? Are you okay? I'm so sorry, I probably shouldn't have asked you to hit the horse over the head of the stick. You know, I'm I'm sure that we would be kind of taking on ourselves maybe the the blame for this accident that just happened. But my grandpa could see that I was going to be okay. And he didn't want to make a big fuss about it. Because I think he really wanted me to know that I was tough. He wanted me to know that I could handle hard things. And I know grandpa would you know, his parenting would not be touted as great parenting today. But I believe the pendulum needs to swing back that way a little bit, where we are little bit more detached emotionally. And we're looking long term at what will this do for our, our children, to go through some hard things, and successfully pick ourselves back up. And from his parenting, he raised my dad who had the same kind of philosophy, who instilled in me, that I was tough, that I had grit, I could be determined, I could go through hard things. And I'm really grateful for that. Maybe not at the time. But I'm really truly grateful for that today, let me share with you just a few ideas to that you can act on that might help you out with this raising children that are self reliant. Number one, make this the primary focus of your parenting. Understand that that's ultimately what we're trying to do is as parents is to raise children who can rely on themselves, because that's when they can decide they can, they can realize in their own life, that their happiness is actually something that they can bring about on their own their success. Ours is really in their hands. You know, these are the kinds of things that we hope our children will get from our experiences with them. So make that the primary goal is actually to raise independent self reliant kids. If that's the goal, we will get there. Another thing you're going to need to do is you're going to need to buck some of the societal trends that are going on today. Instead of thinking that every difficult thing is trauma, you might have to see it as a blessing or a good thing. Now there is such a thing as trauma. And and it doesn't need to be treated, it does need to be helped. But in some cases, our reaction to a difficult situation can either help it heal or become a long term wound that they have to heal from. A lot of it has to do with how to what kind of meaning do we place over difficult life events. And if we can help our kids see things as not traumatic, but as something that they can succeed in, I think we're going to help them prevent the need for maybe tons and tons of therapy in their life. So buck the societal trends to think that everything is trauma. And then to go back to something I said earlier, we need to develop a healthy detachment with our kids, we can still love them just as much. But stop the spoiling the coddling trying to smooth the path for the child. Let them do that and watch their confidence grow. I mentioned this as well, but improve the CO parenting so that we're both have as our goals is to develop self reliant children. And if we can align, at least at the philosophical level, a lot of other things will start to fall in place. If that's our priority together. There's a lot more that that we will just naturally align with. In the end, be a parent that teaches them gives them the skills, lets them try some things, potentially fail some things. Let them make choices for themselves but hold them accountable for those choices. You know, it's not just a let them choose and then fix it. If things don't go well. Let them feel The consequences of those choices, and then give them another shot at it. set clear expectations, and then hold them accountable for those expectations. And then lastly, be consistent over time. So it's not enough to do this every other day of the week. Try to be as consistent as you can. And if this requires getting a little extra support and help, consistency is usually the Achilles heel. In our parenting, we may have all the philosophies, right, we might really have the ability, we might have all the philosophies, right, we might understand the parenting principles that makes all the difference. We might have our vision of a, an independent, self reliant kid and the right, you know, position is that our that's our priority. But because of fatigue, because of our emotions, whatever it might be, we become inconsistent. Parents, your time is valuable, and I'm grateful you spent some of it with us. What you're intentionally doing in your home life is inspiring and unmatched in its importance and long term effects. Ask yourself, what am I going to do because of what I've learned today.