If you love your child – don’t do everything for him

Doing things for the person you love is the most natural way of expressing love. But if you love your child – don’t do everything for him.

As parents we love our children the most. And so – we express our love by doing things for our children.

When our children are newborns – we have no difficulty expressing our love to them because they are helpless little beings who cannot do anything for themselves. They allow us to do everything for them and we delightedly go ahead.

But as children grow – they want to do things for themselves. They want to feel capable and independent. They push us aside and fight with us to do things themselves.

However with their little hands and feet they are not able to do things as perfectly as we do. And since by this time we are so used to doing things perfectly for our children – we dislike this imperfection.

And so we try to prevent children from doing things themselves. We keep expressing our love by doing everything for them perfectly.

But expressing love by doing things for children that they are now capable of doing themselves – is a huge mistake.

Children need a chance to do things – even if they do them wrong.

They need a chance to discover their mistakes and correct them by understanding where they are going wrong.

If you are a parent – show your love by being there for your child at all times – but don’t do things for him.

Stand patiently and allow him to try. Trying is good exercise for the brain and the body.

Keep saying “Try it first. I will help you if you can’t do it yourself. But first try.”

Making mistakes and learning how to correct them is the best way to learn.