Playing teacher

Here’s the story…We were headed to the beach. My daughter (16 and with a learner’s permit) was driving and her best friend was in the passenger seat playing navigator. My daughter wasn’t sure if the road we were on, the entrance to a wildlife preserve, was the right road to get to the beach. I suggested we continue on the road and ask a worker where to go. First, they tried another road that turned out to be private. Then we went back to the original road and I made my suggestion again. After this second time, I kept my mouth shut. It was the road to the beach and soon we were parking the car and walking in sand.

The reason I kept my mouth shut was so that my daughter and her friend had to figure things out for themselves. If every time our children are going to fail, we step in or have a problem and we solve it, they will never learn to handle these things on their own.

It is parental instinct to want to help our children and keep them from failing or having problems, but doing so isn’t in the best interest of our children. The best way we can prepare them for the “real world” is to let them fail and learn and have to solve their own problems. At the very least we can help them learn and find solutions.

Watching my daughter and her friend bicker and then figure out what to do was a parental teaching moment, that will be a highlight of our vacation for me.