While playing with my kids at the park this week, I watched as my son climbed the jungle gym, struggled with the last step, and called for help. I walked over, but was pretty sure he could take the last step from the ladder to the platform at the top. I watched as he yelled at me to grab him, while simultaneously taking the step over to the platform. He was obviously scared, which is justifiable for a four-year old, but he beamed when he managed to get to the top without any help. I was close enough to catch him if he fell, so he wouldn’t get hurt, but it was better for him to struggle and accomplish than for me to rescue him. Sure, he could’ve wound up with a scrape, and he had to endure being afraid of falling, but I saw it as an important lesson opportunity. Kids need to learn how to struggle to achieve and occasionally how to fail. It’s not fun for them, and as a parent, I genuinely want to make my kids happy all the time, but sometimes their greater happiness in the long term means enduring difficult circumstances now. During my years as a youth pastor, I often watched as parents rescued their kids by doing school work for them or pulling them out of extracurricular activities when the work became uncomfortable. This sort of intervention can easily result in a young person never learning how to deal with and endure adversity. It’s important to understand that this is a lesson children need to learn. Buying things for our kids feels good because it makes them happy, but putting them in a position to learn how to earn money to buy their own things gives them happiness and character. Even failure yields important lessons. A child who fails at a task or loses a game, then works until they can accomplish it through hard work and dedication, will gain more from the experience than a child who struggles only to have a parent step in and do the work for them. Does this mean we should callously stand back as a child struggles? No, not necessarily. The real trick to teaching these lessons with wisdom based on what is in the best interest of our children, rather than what makes us feel good or what is easiest at the time. Strength is developed through adversity and facing difficulty. The trick to teaching the lesson of perseverance is to encourage, cheer, offer advice, and allow some struggle to take place. It’s also important to recognize when there is real danger present in their struggle verses the simple struggle and strain of hard work. Had my son fallen from the jungle gym, I would have caught him or he would’ve been scraped. This is very different from him dodging traffic in a parking lot, which is the sort of failure he wouldn’t recover from. Wisdom is knowing which type of challenge a child is facing at any given moment.
