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You’ll never stop loving your kid, no matter what, but it may be time to stop parenting.
This world can be tough. Whether your kid is eighteen and joining the army to fight the bad guys or twenty-eight and unable to find a career, you still love him. Even when you don’t like what he’s doing (or not doing), you love him.
That doesn’t mean that your child needs you to keep bailing him out financially or calling her boss to say she’s sick when she’s hung over. Stop ‘helping.’ Now, this is one huge gray area. The challenges facing your daughter may seem overwhelming and not her fault. In that event, you may find it natural to dip into your savings account and pay for the operation. Help sometimes makes sense, but when you are consistently jumping in to rescue your child, you’re not really helping.
Knowing when to stop offering assistance can be the most difficult decision you’ll face. You want the best for your child. You want him to have all the good things in life, but he’s going to feel better about himself if he earns those perks himself. In order to build a strong self-esteem, he needs to overcome his own obstacles and cope with his own crises. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t help. But you need to be very careful what you offer.
Rule #1
Never offer to give your kid something that’ll leave you in a bind. Give only what you can afford to give. Be very, very careful about getting credit for her and committing your home as security against her debts. When you risk yourself to help your child, you may very well be hanging a major guilt-trip over her head.
Rule #2
Never do for him what he can do for himself. Yes, you love him and it gives you joy to do things for him, but he needs to feel strong enough to do things for himself. This is really important. It’s more loving to let him find his way out of difficulties, than to step in and be the hero. Your motives may be the purest, but you need to let him work out his problems.
Rule #3
Don't clean up his messes. He needs to feel the result of his own choices.
The hardest, most loving thing you can do is to let your child face the consequences of her own choices. This is how we learn. It’s the only real way to learn. Getting too much, too easily robs kids of the opportunity to believe in themselves. Facing challenge is like weight living for the character. It builds strength. Your child needs to know he’s strong. He can only realize this when he deals with his own messes and faces his trouble without parental intervention.
Resist the urge to rescue. Refrain from giving too much. You can be helpful, but you need to carefully examine whether your actions would actually benefit her or whether you’ll be helping make her weak.
