A few weeks ago we talked about how age-appropriate amount of autonomy is necessary for kid's well-being. It helps develop their competence, responsibility, and sense of identity. As a parent, however, letting go of control can be really difficult – even when you know it's good for your child. After all, we are hard-wired to protect and guide, and spent their early years making most of the decisions.
The good news is, with a bit of pre-planning you can mitigate many worries while still letting your child be more autonomous. And you can actually become more connected in the process.
Being a parent is an inherently risky situation: our kids are incredibly important to us, yet we have only – at most – partial control over their actions and what happens to them in the world. Being highly impacted by something outside our control is the recipe for stress. So that's a given.
But two other factors are conspiring to create even more anxiety in parents.
Increased fear messaging in media. Unfortunately, fear messaging does work to make people pay attention and act, and over the last 30 years or so, American media has become more and more saturated with fear-based messaging. Aside from social and political implications, this creates an atmosphere of anxiety for individuals and heightened belief that they are unsafe. The irony is that, over the same 30 year period, crime rates have actually plummeted across the United States.
Increased public judging of parents. Over roughly the same time, Americans have adopted a moral belief that children should be monitored by an adult at all times, and become increasingly activist about criticizing and even legally prosecuting parents. Research has shown that these judgements are moral, rather than safety based. Ie, people estimate danger to be higher when they judge the parent's reason as immoral.
In parallel, letting our kids be more autonomous is letting them grow up... and away from us. This can bring up feelings of rejection, regret, sadness, and more. But, remember when your baby was learning to crawl, and they'd go explore the room before coming back to you for safety? That same process is repeated over and over as they grow. After autonomy there's often a sweet, spontaneous reconnection with your child.
