The Ways in Which You Think You Are Being Helpful but You Are Not

Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay 

I’m no stranger to being responsible and taking responsibility, perhaps because I’m the eldest in my family, or perhaps it’s just my nature or the way I was brought up. Regardless, if anything, I have an over developed sense of responsibility and often don’t even see the ways in which I am taking on responsibilities that might be better taken by others.

I did a brainstorming exercise with a stay-at-home parent who was feeling quite stuck, asking:

1. What responsibilities do you pick up within your family?
2. What do you do in the way of self care?
3. What lights you up?
4. What blocks you?

It was an interesting exercise, particularly because that first list was huge compared to the others and I recognised a lot of the things I do in there too. After listing all the stuff they had done just in the last day or so, then looking at which of those things they actually enjoy doing (which was a small proportion), it was evident as to why there was an overriding sense of feeling stuck.

It was also useful to start questioning whether:

• Are all the things you are doing necessary?
• Which of these things needs to be done by you?
• Which of these things would be better done by someone else in the family? Or outsourced?

One of the more challenging things I’ve found as a parent is the constant shifting capabilities and developmental needs of my kids. Frankly I’d be happier to just set boundaries as a one-time deal “This is the way we operate and this is what is expected of you” and never think about it again.

Of course that just doesn’t work because the ability of each child is always shifting through the ages and stages, just when I start to feel we have reached some solid ground there it goes shifting again.

I like to understand the broad principles of the way things work and, of all the useful resources I have ever read or heard on parenting, it was a talk on the ages and stages by a lady Mary Willow (who runs Plum Parenting) that has stuck with me.

Mary talked about the broad development categories of our kids:

• Ages 0-7 is about physical growth
• Ages 7-14 is about social/emotional development
• Ages 14-21 is about cognitive development

And she goes into the detail of what this looks like at each stage: the kinds of reasonable expectations we could have and the useful and healthy ways to parent our kids through all of it. Obviously none of these stages are exclusive, there are crossovers, but it’s broadly the age ranges where those capabilities take big growth spurts.

My own kids are in that middle band, still at an age where they need hands on managing and organising throughout their primary and intermediate years. Standing yelling at them from one end of the house to “tidy their room” or similar is as ineffectual as it is energy draining. It usually requires some hands on working alongside to begin, and calm, mindful face-to-face reminders as they get older.

Kids do gradually take more responsibility for planning, organising and logistics, but it requires active management by a parent until they are at least 14 or 15, and probably beyond for most teens today. This has become more noticeable to me as my kids are adjusting to a split living situation and they have to pack and plan ahead a lot more than they or I are used to. It’s a constant juggle of assessing:

• What they are capable of doing for themselves without prompting?
• What do I have to help them to do to help them towards independence?
• What do I just need to do for them at this stage?

That middle one is the challenge. With my tendencies towards over responsibility, perfectionism and efficacy, it can often seem easier just to “do it myself”. It certainly requires a lot of patience and persistence to help others in their independence. 

This isn’t exclusive to parenting though. I am reading Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, it examines – in a world where people are living a lot longer – what the quality of that life is like for those in their twilight years and whether the medical approach is working.

He also examines other circumstances, such as serious or terminal illness, where people become dependent on others. These conclusions, I feel, also apply to children:

• “Many of the things we want for those we care about are the things we would adamantly oppose for ourselves because they would infringe on our sense of self”
• “We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love. That remains the main paradox and problem for the frail”
• “Safety and protection are not all we seek in life, we seek a life with worth and purpose and yet are routinely denied the conditions that might make it possible”

And while I might consider myself very independent, able bodied and sound of mind at this point in my life – and thus author of my own story to a greater degree – there is no denying my interdependence on others.

I was talking to the kids about respectful communication this week, and asking the reasons why they would want to communicate respectfully. Of course, as children who attend school and have been brought up in a society that uses contrived punishments as commonplace, their first thoughts were about the people and ways in which they would get punished.

It took a while, and a lot of prompting, to get them to think through the natural consequences of being disrespectful. Our inherent interconnection and interdependence can be ruptured so easily without this basic respect.

What I have come to a deeper appreciation of is, while it might be easier to get a young child or a frail elderly person dressed by doing it for them (rather than helping them to do it themselves), or to make my children’s beds (rather than patiently helping and reminding them and managing the process until it is routine), my energy is better invested towards helping others be as autonomous as they are able.

Otherwise, as Annette Noontil says, “When you do for others what they can learn to do for themselves you are taking away their opportunity to learn and grow and it makes them weak. They become dependent on you or others and will resent it.”

Not only that, I realised, it’s all energy that I could be redirecting into my own growth and learning and doing the things I love doing.

So in which ways do you do things for others that you could better serve them by helping do things for themselves?
 
If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Ways to Reach for Growth Rather Than Reacting With Old Conditioned Constriction, Resentment, the Family Business. Are You Willing to Let It Go? Make the Invisible Visible - Celebrate the Gold in Your Emotional Reactions and Are You Overly Responsible? Actually Seeing Yourself Through Fresh Eyes. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.