ARE WE MAKING OUR CHILD DEPENDENT or SELF DEPENDENT ??

First let me share a small story with you.
There was a Gardner..... He saw a small butterfly laying a few eggs in one of the flower pots in his garden. Since that day he looked at the egg with ever growing curiosity.
The egg started to move and shake a little. He was so excited to see a new life coming up right in front of his eyes. He spent hours watching the egg grow.
The egg started to expand and develop cracks. A tiny head and antennae started to come out ever so slowly.
The man's excitement knew no bounds. He got his magnifying glasses and sat to watch the life and body of a pupa coming out. He saw the struggle of the tender pupa and couldn't resist his urge to HELP.

He went and got a small needle to help the egg to break, a break here and there to help the struggling life.
And the pupa was out the man was very excited !
He waited now each day for the pupa to grow and fly like beautiful butterfly, but alas that never happened the larvae pupa had a oversized head and kept crawling along in the pot for the full 4 weeks and died.
Depressed the man went to his botanist friend and asked the reason.
His friend told him the struggle to break out of the egg helps the larvae to send blood to its wings and the head push helps the head to remain small so that the tender wings can support it through its 4 week life cycle, in the eagerness to help the man destroyed a beautiful life !

Struggles help all of us, that's why a wee bit of effort goes a long way to develop our strength to face life's difficulties!
As a parents , we sometimes go too far trying to help and protect our kids from life's harsh realities and disappointments. We don't want our kids to struggle like we did.

But Harvard Psychiatrist Dr. Dan Kindlon says "Over protected children are more likely to struggle in relationships and with challenges."
Clinical psychologist Dr. Wendy says "We are sending our kids the message that they are not capable of helping themselves."
As parents, many of us do things for our kids that we were able and expected to do for ourselves when we were children. Our parents didn’t often feel the need to negotiate with our sports coach, solve our every problem, or entertain us in our free time. A big difference from today, when all too often we are over-involved in many areas of our children’s lives. Sounds funny, I know. How can a parent be too involved or do too much for their child? Isn’t that just being a good parent? But when we don’t expect our kids to take responsibility for chores or their behavior, and we attempt to smooth away all the bumps and bruises that are a natural part of childhood, we aren’t doing our kids a favor. Instead, we’re bringing them up to avoid taking personal responsibility and to expect that others will take care of things for them – even when they are really able to take care of themselves. We’re teaching our kids that life is full of unmanageable problems, when what we want them to learn are the basic skills to manage those problems. Stepping back and taking on the role of coach and teacher instead of “do-er” and “fixer” was one of the hardest things I had to do as a parent. But it is also one of the best things you can do to help your child build their social and problem-solving skills and learn responsibility.

Moral: "It is our job to prepare our children for the road........ & Not to prepare the road for our children."