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Stop rescuing your kids

By Leslie Wilson

Published: Friday, October 5, 2012 4:37 PM CDT

Adolescence offers great opportunities for growth.

The most obvious of these opportunities would be physical growth. We see this phenomenon when the scrawniest kid on the football sideline morphs into a hulking beast of a lineman in less than a year or when the pudgy girl sheds her baby fat over the course of one summer and returns to school as a head-turning knockout.

But emotional growth -- aka maturity -- can boast growth spurts as well. Not long ago, I penned a column about how I ditched a class, my first time ever, and got caught the very same day. The repercussions from my mistake prompted tremendous growth that day. In a single day, I learned a lot about myself, my parents, the consequences of my choices, and life in general.

And the truth is, most of us can pinpoint similar circumstances that caused an emotional growth spurt in our own lives. When are these periods of growth most likely to occur? Not when life goes well. Because most of us grow the most during times of adversity. When everything goes our way, when we have smooth sailing, when we're not undergoing trials, life isn't much of a challenge. We don't stretch and flex to meet challenges and deal with consequences, which means we don't grow. Nothing more is required of us than was required of us the day before. We don't have to work any harder or be any smarter. All this means we don't experience growth.

But when life presses in from all sides, when we struggle to maintain relationships or keep up with work and family, that's when we develop and strengthen our emotional muscles.

I remember vividly three times in the lives of my own children when this occurred. Two involved not making a spot on a team, and one involved an injury.

When my children didn't make the teams they had tried out for, I struggled as much (if not more) than they did. I felt disillusioned. What will we/they do now? I was angry with coaches. What were they thinking when they didn't select my child? I wanted to do something like make an appeal on their behalf.

But my children asked me not to.

They knew, apparently better than I did, that things like this happen. They understood that life wouldn't always be handed to them. They chose to direct their time and energy to other pursuits -- ones that proved far better and more interesting for them in the long run.

However, at the time, I didn't have the benefit of that future knowledge. My tunnel vision, fueled by disappointment, led only to anger.

My kids had let it go. Why couldn't I?

Because the Mama Bear inside me rose up to protect, to defend, to conquer anyone or anything that had hurt my child. Yep, I had to stifle Mama Bear. I had to tell her to sit down, shut her mouth and leave things alone.

My kids were growing up. As teenagers, they were learning to deal with life on their own terms. Ready to fight their own battles, they needed opportunities to handle the situations on their own. Would I hinder their growth?

Oh, I struggled with this. I wanted to rescue. I longed to lash out at those who had hurt my children, make them see the damage they'd caused. But my kids didn't want or need me to do that. They needed to prove how much they'd grown up. And they needed me out of their way to effectively do that.

They realized they were ready to handle age-appropriate disappointments. (An experience they needed as teenagers so they'd be prepared to handle age-appropriate disappointments as adults.) They just needed to convince their mother that they were ready for that.

And they did.

Leslie co-authored A Scrapbook of Motherhood Firsts, which released April 10 -- just in time for Mother's Day. Visit her website and blog at www.lesliewilson.com.

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