My wife is away at the moment and I am all too aware of the amount of work she actually does in the home especially caring for our two children. Sorry I am unfamiliar with all the abbreviations used on this site so please forgive the 'long hand'! Anyway, my wife is obviously a great mother but this has got me thinking..... is she too good? My 8 year old daughter told me this morning that "things work better when mummy is here!" I took this as feedback but also a clue to what constitutes good parenting. What my daughter really meant was that their mother, my wife, does everything for them and I need to get on message with this!
It is apparent that my wife organises them like a military operation, packing their bags, making sure they have everything they need, even putting their bags in the car, constantly thinking for 3 (includes my 10 year old son) and sometimes 4 (me) when going on a family trip / holiday!
Consequently, despite helping her pack this morning my daughter went to her friend’s house for the day without her swimming kit as it never made it from the house to the car. Luckily her friend's mum is a swimming instructor and has spare kit available! In my wisdom I assumed she would have taken responsibility for it and brought it with her when leaving the house.
Like most things in life there seems to be a 'spectrum' with a range from poor parenting to over parenting. I feel that my wife is on the upper end – super organising the little darlings so they effectively have a personal assistant who takes responsibility for their every need. Clearly it is better to be at this end of the 'spectrum' than the other, but in my view the consequences may be just as damaging.
One might say that in the context of modern lives it is more expedient to operate in this way as it takes full control of your child's life and there is little time to make errors. Running our children to their activities, cooking meals, organising play dates, running a business and getting ourselves to work etc. means huge time constraints. It is no wonder, therefore, that parents, perhaps unconsciously, remove independent learning opportunities from their children, favouring the 'do it for them' more expedient approach to life.
Passing rationality would propose that they will pick it up eventually by observation and turn out well rounded independent individuals in the long-run but with children not flying the nest until they're 25-30 years of age in some cases, is this really the most efficient and effective way to parent?
This brings me to the name of my title 'Goldie Locks', we all know the story of the porridge - it has to be just right - not too hot, not too cold! This has also been applied to planets in our solar system - it has to be just the right distance from the sun otherwise life cannot exist. I think we all need to apply this to parenting. The extremes in most walks of life are risky. The term 'helicopter parenting' is widely used and observed whereby parents hover over their children, immediately responding to their every whim and need - leading to problematic attachment styles. At the other end of the scale is neglect where children are left to their own devices and dangerous situations without the safety net parents must provide.
As my two are getting older and beginning to form more complex ideas and opinions of themselves, others and the world they live in, I fear that they are in a 'negative comfort zone' where they can almost sit back and hold the core belief that it is their mother's absolute duty to take care of everything. Their learned helplessness and reliance on others is growing as is their expectations and confidence in demanding, ordering, and being defiant. They are almost being trained to be objectionable and lazy teenagers, rather than empathetic and responsible young people.
So my plan to reverse this situation is for us both to become 'Goldie Locks' parents – which will inevitably be a change of family culture for us all. It is our role to promote and facilitate independence - walk alongside them not behind them picking everything up. Allow them to make but moreover learn from their mistakes, even if it this means short to medium term disruption to the 'military operation'. Hopefully in the long-run they will benefit and so will we!