Parenting With Love and Logic: Teaching Children Responsibility

we shouldn’t be: in the middle of their problems. Parents who take on
their kids’ problems do them a great disservice. They rob their children
of the chance to grow in responsibility, and they actually foster further
irresponsible behavior.
The greatest gift we can give our children is the knowledge that with
God’s help, they can always look first to themselves for the answers to
their problems. Kids who develop an attitude that says, I can probably
find my own solutions, become survivors. They have an edge in learning,
relating to others, and making their way in the world. That’s because the
best solution to any problem lies within the skin of the person who owns
the problem.
When we solve problems for our kids — the ones they could handle on
their own — they’re never quite satisfied. Our solution is never quite
good enough. When we tell our kids what to do, deep down they say, I
can think for myself, so oftentimes they do the exact opposite of what we
want them to do.
Our anger doesn’t help either. Certainly, it galls us to no end when our
kids mess up something in their own lives. When they lose schoolbooks
or bring home failing grades, it’s only natural for us to explode in a
living, breathing Fourth-of-July display. But anytime we explode at
children for something they do to themselves, we only make the problem
worse. We give kids the message that the actual, logical consequence of
messing up is making adults mad. The children get swept away in the
power of their anger rather than learn a lesson from the consequences of
their mistake.
When we intrude into our children’s problems with anger or a rescue
mission, we make their problems our problems. And children don’t worry
about problems they know are the concern of their parents. This can be
explained partly by the “No sense in both of us worrying about it”
syndrome.
Before Jim met his wife, Shirley, he harbored a great dislike for going
to the gas station, simply because he hated to part with the money. The
only thing that forced him to visit the pumps was a near-empty reading