Parents love their kids and want the best for them. Yet, How often do you spend time thinking about how to do this? In the long run our goal is to get move our children from a place of helpless infancy and independent adulthood. Yet, little attention is given to the details of how best to accomplishing this goal.

Independence gradually grows as our children get older. We want to build skills like: making sound decisions, caring for one’s own needs, taking action to meet goals, being responsible for one’s own actions, and seeking out the information we need to guide choices.So lets be intentional as parents for this will never happen on its own. Children need a range of experiences, from simple to complex, in order to learn these skills. Let’s take a quick look at each of these areas.

The ability to make wise decisions, like most of these skills, begins in small ways. We wouldn’t dream of turning our young adults loose with out training or instruction in how to weigh alternatives, but many of us neglect the beginnings of the process. Small children need to be allowed to make decisions as soon as they are capable of choosing between two things. This can begin in such simple ways as “Do you want your red or your blue shirt today?” and “It’s your turn to choose whether we have corn or green beans for supper.” Help the child to see the differences, advantages and disadvantages of each choice, and then allow the kid to choose. Be sure to only offer acceptable choices (or at least ones that you are willing to live with!) so that the child has no chance of making “the wrong choice.” As the young one grows, you can allow more and more freedom on increasingly important choices.

Children learn to care for their own needs by experience and practice. It’s a common trap for parents to do things for their children long after the youngster has the ability to accomplish the same tasks, simply because it’s quicker or easier. However, time spent while kids are young to teach them how to do personal and household tasks is well-spent. Most young children are very motivated to be more mature, and will try very hard to learn these skills. Plus, when the child does finally become proficient, you will have eased your own burden in many ways.

So whats next? Children’s Summer Camp can help you in raising responsible children. Camp challenges your child to become responsible for their stuff and actions. As Directors of Swift Nature Camp,we are often told by parents that the benefit of camp was not all the fun their child had but how mature and self reliant their child has grown to be.

If you are looking at finding aSummer Camp that is intentional in developing your child visit SummerCampAdvice.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.