Humble Parenting Lesson {one of many}

Life is so humbling sometimes. And such a good teacher too. As many of you know, Kate is getting an encore presentation of kindergarten this year.  As such, she is doing all the same projects she did in kindergarten last year.  At the beginning of the year, last year Kate had to make a "me" doll and an "all about me" poster.  Her teacher strongly encouraged these to be family projects with lots of help from Mom and Dad.  I took that as a sign to get involved.  Usually, I do not get involved at all with the boys' school work. I am big believer in letting them do it themselves.

Anyway, I probably did WAY too much of Kate's beginning of the year projects last year.  You can look at them here  (and you can tell I did a lot of the work). Sure, she did some cutting and painting but I assembled them to make sure they looked pretty.  BIG MISTAKE!

This weekend Kate was supposed to make her "me" doll for this year's classroom.  She started drawing on it the other day when I was cooking dinner and I told her to wait until I could help her.  She looked at me with complete innocence and said, "Mama, this year can I make my me doll?" GULP. Shame. Guilt. Embarrassment. Lesson learned.

I am constantly advising my clients and friends to let their kids make their own mistakes.  I am constantly coaching my clients to do less and less for their kids so their kids are more self reliant.  I am appalled when I read articles stating that over 43% of parents admit to having done their kids homework.  I have always excluded myself from that statistic as I never have done the boys' homework.  Yet, I did it too.  I sold my child short.

When we do these things for our kids we are sending them a very strong message that we don't think they are capable.  We don't think they can do the work themselves.  We are also telling them they are not good enough.  These are all very damaging messages to send to our kids.

Parents think they are helping but really they are hurting their kids by doing so much for them.

Truth is...last year I probably did not have the confidence that Kate would finish these projects. She was exhausted from all day kindergarten.  She struggles with multi-step projects. But I should have at least let her try. I should have given her the benefit of the doubt. I should have shown her that I believed in her.  I am not saying that I did any long term --gonna be telling a therapist some day that I did her "me" doll--kinda damage.

Anyway, Kate did her me doll 99% by herself this year.  I had to hot glue the hair because my gun is old and gets super hot (and I burned myself).  She was so creative though.  She made a bow out of a tissue. Apparently, she saw Minnie Mouse do this on TV and gave it a try.  She made a necklace with paper beads.  I have no clue how she did it but Harry taught her a while ago. She even wanted to put her monogram on the dress. That had been my idea last year but this year it was hers:)

It was so wonderful to see Kate proudly hand the "me" doll that she did on her own to her teacher this morning.  We both learned a lot from this assignment.  Maybe I needed the encore presentation of kindergarten just as much as she did.  

P.S.  Kate lost her second tooth last night (you can see in the photo above) and that darned tooth fairy forgot to show up last night.  Anyone else ever have that happen?  Sure hope she remembers tonight.

And another P.S.  If you missed the blog radio show last night you can listen to the archive here.  We talked about this very issue last night:

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