Yeah, the rub is, if you do your job right, in most cases, they won’t need your help at all.
I think about that a lot.
In some ways I think of my son as the project of a lifetime, that my husband and I are both in charge of. I naively told myself before I had kids, “I never want to be that parent whose identity is subsumed by their kid” but that totally happened, in part from necessity, and in part because I like doing hard things and parenting is really hard. I find this work genuinely engaging and puzzling and a fun learning experience, not much different intellectually than how I would tackle a difficult project at work, or put together a novel. IOW, I want to be doing this. So here we are, with this massive undertaking just underway. And fifteen to twenty years from now, depending on how things go, we’re just not going to have that project to work on any more.
I think a lot of parents have a hard time with that, and that’s where enabling comes from.
No children here but, to answer that question, I would have to decide where “helping” ends and “enabling” begins. There’s a big difference. For example, you have an adult child who has gone to school, gotten himself qualified for his career of choice, and gotten himself a good job. He gets married, has two kids but, suddenly, is brutally “down sized” and out of work. In that case, assistance is “helping”.
Your adult child has never been motivated or responsible from childhood into his adulthood. Other than temporarily working “starter jobs” like fast food lackey, he has never accomplished anything, seems to have no future and care even less, and lays around the house watching TV and playing on his phone. If I am the parent allowing him to do that, I am not “helping”, I am “enabling”. I am enabling my own child to accomplish nothing with his life.
You’d be surprised at how many parents don’t know or refuse to see the difference. When children become addicts, they not only deal with the addict, they counsel the parents and family. A big topic is “enabling” and how destructive it can be.
I’ve actually given a lot of thought to the difference between “helping” and “enabling” - and I think there’s a huge gray area in between. I’m not going to let my kids live on the street and I wouldn’t let one live at home for free indefinitely while working at a low-paying “dream job”. But there is something that people I know do that really isn’t either. They are delaying their own retirement or are still working at 75-80 , not because they want to but because of the “help” they gave their children. They went into debt to pay for their children to attend expensive colleges or to pay for expensive weddings or to help pay the mortgage so the kid doesn’t have to sell their house in a very expensive place and downsize. ( Median house value is about $3 million or so where he lives ). I’m not sure it’s enabling, but I think it goes beyond “help” - and I won’t do it. My kids graduated from college ( and one got a master’s) debt free - but they attended a university that I could afford without borrowing. I gave my daughter and son in law a substantial wedding gift - but I didn’t go into debt so they could have a $40K wedding. And that’s why neither my husband not I will have to work until 70.
I have major personal difficulty distinguishing between helping and enabling. My personal thought (as expressed around here often) is that the vast majority of people who present themselves as helpless are actually capable of doing considerably more if they were forced to, and if someone else weren’t supporting them. As a loved one, I acknowledge that it can be difficult to distinguish between the two.
Yes, there are those people who would let themselves starve to death, die of exposure, or commit suicide. But I personally think those are few compared to the number who feel that as long as mom and dad pay the bills, they’d rather hang on the couch, watch TV, mess with their phone, rather than doing an entry-level job, dealing with bosses/cow-orkers/work schedules…, or putting in the effort to get a better than entry-level job.
I’m often confounded by young people who claim they are incapable of doing ANY work, when there is no indication than they ever even tried. I’m much more empathetic towards someone who has tried and failed, than someone who has ever even tried.
I never used to understand parents who said things like, “My kid refuses to go to school.” I always thought, “My kid wound never have that choice.” But recently one of my best friends, who I respect tremendously, told me his eldest might not graduate HS, as she refused to go to school. I asked why he didn’t just kick her out of the house each morning, and he said, “That doesn’t work if she’s threatening to kill herself.”
So I acknowledge such situations exist. And I do my best not to judge. Mainly, I’m glad that whatever issues we experienced with our kids, they never got to that point.
One of the things my husband complains about the most often with his clients is that many of them are in incredibly enabling situations where they refuse to do anything to help themselves in any sphere of their lives. The irony is that if they started contributing to their households or doing something productive in their community, they would be suffering a lot less. But when you have a 20-something or a 40-something who has zero consequences for sitting around all day playing video games, they are going to continue the path of least resistance and they are going to be miserable. So he’s got these parents who are like, “Well he’s never getting any sleep because he’s always on his iPad late at night” and my husband is like, “Then take away the iPad,” and they parents just can’t imagine doing that because of the psychological distress their kid might feel. The parents for whatever reason seem to think their job is shielding their kid from unpleasant feelings and emotions rather than teaching them to cope with them.
Research shows that one of the best ways to combat mental illness is to accept its existence the way you would any other chronic condition and make choices to do things in line with your values, regardless of whether you feel like doing that or not. It’s not an easy skill to learn, and it’s even harder when there’s nothing external pushing you into living a meaningful life.
Case in point, I did not have a child because I wanted to be happier, but I am much happier as a parent than I was before I had a child (“Happier” in terms of overall life satisfaction, not “hedonistic pleasure.”) I am happier because I don’t have time to be unhappy. November has historically been a difficult month for me, and in the past I would have to take some days off work to deal with all the feelings coming up. This year I was so fucking busy between work and parenting, it was barely a blip on my radar. I didn’t even have a regular therapist through this period because of schedule issues, and I was fine.
If you had told me what my life was going to be like with a child, I would have been convinced it was too much for me, that I couldn’t do it, and I definitely wouldn’t have believed that I could be happy while doing it. Well, you do what you have to do.
There are always going to be people who are never put in a situation where they have to, as Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Do the thing you think you cannot do.” Everybody should have that, I think. Whether they are perfectly able-bodied or suffering from a wide range of disabilities, everyone should have the satisfaction of having their limits tested and finding out they can do more than they imagined. Parents should not deny their children this experience.
Slightly off topic, but there is a school of parenting that subscribes to cutting off your children at some arbitrary point in life (“for their own good”) as some sort of virtue. I think it’s a Boomer thing. Bootstraps?
But there are also people who have their limits tested and find that no, they can’t do what they apparently needed to do at that point. Sometimes that failure seriously damages them. Sometimes it seriously damages other people. (Sometimes, of course, both.)
The trick is figuring out which category somebody’s in. Which is not always obvious.
Children, and applicably adults, should have the experience of having their limits tested while there is a safety net available, in situations in which their families and/or the wider society are able to provide one. I agree that there are few cases if any in which the safety net needs to supply iPads. But suppose you hadn’t been one of the people who, when necessity drives, did turn out to be capable of taking care of a child. Kind of hard on the kids of people who can’t, isn’t it, if the general attitude is ‘everybody who isn’t obviously physically entirely incapable can do this if they just try?’
I have two daughters, 9 and 7, so I have a lot of challenges ahead. I can’t imagine not wanting to help my kids ever, but I also am careful not to enable. Even now, I stress their independence. When they ask me to do something they can do for themselves, I let them know and have them do it themselves. When I see they could use some help, I give them help. I don’t do things as a matter of course for them when they’re perfectly able-bodied or intelligent enough to do it themselves. I’d like to say that’s it’s completely because I’m trying to teach them life lessons, but it’s also because I’m lazy or have other things I’m trying to work on. So far, it seems to be going fine. When I see they are actually becoming frustrated with a task and not just being lazy themselves, then, yes, I step in, of course, and help. In return, I give them a lot of autonomy. Like I don’t remember the last time my 9-year-old asked me for help with her homework. She does it. She plays with her iPad most of the day. She gets good grades. (On the other hand, that was my childhood, too. I don’t remember either of my parents helping me with homework from when I have memories of doing homework. I played on my computer, did my homework, got straight As.)
Hopefully this ends up with them being self-sufficient in their adult years, but of course I will help them when they need it, as long as I feel it’s not enabling bad behaviors (though I can see being a softie enough that I may feed into that kind of a behavior for a short while.)
Well, I’m not suggesting that people who think they can’t do it should have kids. I’m generally a fan of erring on the side of caution in those cases, because the wrong judgment can be catastrophic for the family.
Ideally a parent would teach a kid to test their own limits, in small, consistent ways, so that testing one’s limits became a regular practice, just a part of life, and they could adequately gauge what’s too big a risk vs. what feels scary but has relatively low stakes in reality.
I put my child in a swim class. He has motor issues, he’s very distractible, he often doesn’t want to do things he thinks he can’t do, and he’s learning to swim. Not by just throwing him into the deep end and making him figure it out before he drowns, but through providing that safety net (a one on one instructor) repetition and practice of gradually testing his limits and taking risks. The last couple of times he’s gone, he has become a lot more independent, insisting on doing some of the skills himself. My hope is that he learns from this experience, that actually if he sticks to something difficult, he can probably learn to do it. As he gets older, he’s going to start adding some nuance to that. Some things you can try for a long time and learn that you can’t actually do them. Wisdom is starting to know the difference.
Some great comments here in the last few posts. There’s a tremendous difference between the role of a parent of a 3yo and of a 30yo.
As I said upthread, I have no kids. One of my multi-decade best friends is now about 75. His two daughters are 40ish with littles of their own. Both of these women are astonishingly capable people. I’ve known them since they were kindergartners.
I once asked him their secret and he and his wife / the kid’s Mom explained. Distilling a lot of conversations:
Every day remember you are not raising children. You are raising adults. We wince any time we hear fellow parents talking about raising children. Because the outcome from that is usually an 18-year old child, not an 18-year old adult.
When they’re 2, or 5, or 15, they suck at adulting. Your job is to stretch them a little every day towards capable confident adulting, so they suck less than yesterday, and make it safe for them to try new and exciting and dangerous things. Catch them not before they fall, but before they get injured (much) from falling. Metaphorically, a few skinned knees are fine, a broken neck is not. Whether it’s classes, activities, or climbing a tree, get them going and ensure you’re a reliable safety net, not a hammock.
There is some real wisdom there, and the results speak for themselves.
Nice way to look at it. Seems like a great plan that worked.
I feel like my young adults go through periods where they’re more needy and sometimes not as much.
As long as they’re not in a criminal lifestyle, of any kind I’ll help.
Drug and alcohol addiction enabling has got to be the worst. I feel for any parent battling this. Addiction affects the whole family.
I’ll say this, and I’ve said it to my kids, I will never visit them in a prison. Ever.
I might visit the county lock up to find out the facts and make a determination about how I feel about it. Because whatever they’re locked up for they will be bailing themselves out or working out the grievance they’ve committed. I’m not gonna bail them out. Ever.
Man, that is REALLY good. I think it should be handed to every set of parents as they leave the delivery room, enroll in pre school, and at the start of every school year.
Yesterday my sister told me of Thanksgiving dinner at her son’s house. Of their 2 grandchildren, the younger - 6 yr old boy - has a tendency to be (IMO) a bit of a whiner. So he starts fussing during dinner, and his dad says, “If you are going to cry, go into the other room.” Which my sister thought the exactly correct response. But the mother said, “Oh, he needs to be cuddled.” Which she proceeded to do at the table, while he continued to fuss, thereby detracting from 2 sets of grandparents and his father being able to enjoy the rest of the dinner. For the life of me, I can’t imagine what desirable lesson the mother thinks she is imparting.
Remember, I take no credit for any of that; I’m just the secretary; they did all the figuring that out and all the doing of it for two kids times 20+ years. Both with doctorates now.
Yeah.
These are the same kinds of people who have nasty ill-mannered dogs they refuse to manage also.
If somebody is gonna be that weak & manipulatable, maybe they should only raise goldfish or plants; you know, something with less will and thought-energy than the supposed parent.
OK. Um … I guess I don’t see any problem with that. I’m like the dad, and would jsut send the kids off to the other room in such a situation, but if mom wants to cuddle them, I really don’t see a problem. And, yes, plenty of 6-year-olds can’t sit through dinner. We pissed off to our own table or wherever to do our own stuff at that age, and I had what I thought were pretty strict blue-collar Eastern European parents who were not strangers to physical discipline.
What I found as a parent and an observer of parents is that people confuse what makes them feel better with skillful parenting. Maybe that kid did need a cuddle right then, but adults find whining so annoying that it makes them feel good to punish it or banish it. I know this: punishing can alter behavior that you don’t like, but it always and I mean always costs something of your relationship. You may be emotionally distant enough from childhood – your own, and that of your child – to not be able to register this. Empathy and compassion are very difficult to maintain, especially when you also must consciously negotiate between your needs and those of your children. Children want to become adults, by nature. If they can’t manage it, there are reasons that the shame of not doing so is still not as bad as getting out there.
I’ve never been very distant from the emotions of childhood. It is part of what makes me talented with animals, who, like children, are emotional without filter or control.
I am only the parent of one adult child, who has never had an easy life of it but has yet managed to become happily married, have a satisfying career, and be financially independent, on a fairly normal timeline. She is also a great friend and more than a friend. I’d do anything at all for her. I also know that I am lucky. I know many people with sour relationships with their adult children. I don’t really know how that happens, but from my own relationship with my parents, I can see that part of it is simply being so different from each other that there can be no understanding. That’s, I guess, bad luck.
The way I heard the same concept phrased, decades ago, was:
The role of a parent is to teach your children to shoulder ever-increasing amounts of responsibility in preparation for competent adulthood.
I love the concept, generally. My Family Nurse Practitioner wife periodically asks me to remind her of my phrasing in order that she might share it with some of her patients.
Like your friends’ take on the same thing, I view it as among the most wisdom-dense pieces of parenting advice I’ve ever heard.
I’d like to think it belongs in this thread, but I’d also like to be clear that I recognize that every situation is dramatically different, and we all too often have to deal with what’s left to be done, and not what’s done.
She could’ve took the child out of the room, had a little talk about table manners. Gentle as you please. Cuddled and brought back to the table with a new attitude.
Banishment was not correct either.
Whining at age 6 is not a good thing. Saying what the problem is what he should have done. He should’ve been told that. They missed a teaching moment.
ETA: you have to repeat these table manners, for what seems like forever, for it to take. But most adults know how to eat at a table, eventually.