VIRTUOUS VICTORIOUS & VALUED MAGAZINE Issue 2 March 2015 | Page 11

"It's not your job to make sure they succeed."

their personal belongings shifts from us to them. Our responsibility changes from "one who does for them" to "one who equips them to do for themselves."

This has been a very hard lesson for me to learn. Rewind that. This is STILL a hard lesson for me to learn. I've been a mom for 13 years and I’m still working on it. But I am bound and determined to keep practicing because when we take on too much responsibility for the things that our children do wrong, we enable them into helplessness.

We all want our children to succeed. But it's not our job to make sure they succeed. It's natural to feel a twinge of guilt when they experience failure, but it's up to them to make the choices that will lead them down the path of success. One

One of the biggest mistakes we can make as parents is to take all the blows for our children.

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of the biggest mistakes we can make as parents is to take all the blows for our children when they make a costly mistake. We can’t shoulder all the blame when they make a bad decision or bail them out when they're given a consequence. The pain and disappointment that comes with a bad choice teaches them lessons that need to be learned to keep from making more bad choices. We have to let our children learn those lessons.

So when you’re tempted to make sure your children have dotted every “i” and crossed every “t,” resist the urge. They will be stronger and more resilient if you don’t.

by Angela Whitehead