In the name of God, the most Compassionate, the Wise
About two months ago, I had left the room for a few minutes and when I came back, I caught a beautiful sight of my dear son struggling with stacking the rings on the ring stacking toy. On the packaging it says the toy is meant for 18 months and older and our son wasn’t even 1 at the time. Prior to that day, he had been very content with taking the rings off, requesting us to put them back on and repeating this process as many times as we would cooperate for.
When I saw him working so hard to get those rings stacked, I was so proud of him and so happy to see him putting in such concentrated effort. He tried and tried. Despite being so excited for his independence and working on building a new skill, it was a little difficult for me not to try to step in and help him out. I had to remind myself of the montessori saying about don’t do for a child what they can do for themselves and when you do have to step in, do as little as necessary.
He was not able to get the rings on that day. Fast forward about a week though, he was able to do it when I held the peg still. Fast forward another few days and he’s able to put all the rings on completely independently, take them off, put them back on and repeat as many times as he finds fun! There have been many occasions similar to this one. Sitting back down after standing up on something, putting his spoon in his mouth to feed himself, pushing a button on his toy, unzipping his jacket, opening a container, getting off a small item that he has climbed into or on top of and the list of examples go on. Everyday our babies are learning and gaining new skills and it’s when we are able to withhold our help just a little bit longer, that they are really able to dive into their work.
It’s sometimes hard to remember that though they are tiny, they are very brilliant! Our babies are learning and growing through play and through observing our everyday activities. We have to allow them the space to learn how to do the things we just consider the mundane, plain-Jane sort of tasks. We also have to recognize the amount of work that is happening through playing for our children. It is quite normal to want to help your little one with an activity or do it for them. We have gotten used to doing certain things as well, such as taking off their clothing, feeding them, putting away their toys but as they are getting older, these are responsibilities we have to start gradually handing over to our child.
Once our babies reach a year old, especially when they start walking, it’s all about getting a grip on their autonomy. This is the age and stage where they start realizing that they are separate beings from their mom and dad. They start developing their understanding that you will be there for them and that it’s safe for them to go and explore a bit then return to you. This is when they start to test boundaries so that they can learn what is and is not acceptable and that they can be reminded of your unconditional love for them.
I have learned to love watching our baby boy work hard, struggle a little bit and though sometimes it can be very difficult to sit back and not help, I have gotten very good at reminding myself “only as much as necessary”. It’s important to remember that this is not about your baby not needing you anymore! Because that can be a hard thing for some of us moms too, as our baby grows more and more independent! Rather, it’s about adapting your care and guidance to your child’s needs. It’s important to remind yourself that you want your little one to grow into an independent and competent young person. You therefore must set the tone and prepare the environment for this.
This intention, knowing that we will have to gradually adapt our assisting and guiding to fit our child’s needs and that we are ultimately seeking to build our child up to be independent and competent, helps us choose how we interact with our baby, the toys we offer them, and the experiences we help them to engage in. It guides us in making the choices that are authentic to our goals as parents. It helps to continue building a positive and fruitful relationship with our child right from the start.
I get really excited about this topic and could go on-and-on but I want to go ahead and wrap this up. So I’m going to leave you all with 5 benefits of stepping back and allowing your child to struggle a bit:
1. It helps with nurturing our babies’ independence. Once our baby reaches about 8-9 months, they start to realize they are separate from us. They start gaining autonomy and usually it is around this time that babies will start to test their boundaries a bit. When we take a moment to step back even though our baby is struggling a bit and allow them to work at this new skill on their own, this builds up their sense of independence. They obviously will still need us for many things at this age but little by little, they will have more things they want to try by themselves.
2. It aids in concentration building. When someone is learning a new skill it requires concentration to be able to complete it. When we allow the space and time for our baby to struggle a bit and really pay attention to the task at hand, they are gradually building their capacity for concentration. This remains a necessary skill throughout life. You’ll need concentration for school, for reading, for listening, and for many other tasks.
3. It helps your baby develop self efficacy. Self efficacy is another skill that is crucial throughout life. This is believing in your ability to do certain tasks, generally based on prior success. It is the feeling of being competent in something. If you see your child working hard to zip a zipper and you allow them to work on it, they might not get it this time but they’ll keep trying. After some time, they will get it! And guess what?! Once they do, they will be so proud of themselves and so encouraged. They’ll know that if they put their mind to something and they keep putting in effort, they can complete a task – because they have seen evidence of this in their life. A good sense of self efficacy is one of the two very important pillars for having a good self-concept which remains important for one’s entire life.
4. It also helps your baby develop a healthy self esteem. A healthy self esteem indicates that you have a sense of respect and positive feelings toward yourself. This is the other key pillar of having a positive self-concept. Building independence and gaining competency in various areas of their lives, our babies are able to feel great about themselves. They succeed at what they set out to do and they feel happy to accomplish the task they were working so hard at, they feel proud, and they see how excited the people around them are which is the icing on the cake. They also learn that you trust them and that they can trust themselves. These are all fundamental in having a healthy self-esteem.
5. It helps your baby (and you) focus on the process more than the outcome. This is another lifelong skill that you are helping to instill in your baby. This one is also particularly helpful for parents. For us, it helps us to be more patient with our child going at their own pace and not comparing them to other children. We are able to stay excited with our baby as they develop more skills rather than being upset because they haven’t reached a certain goal or milestone we may have heard they should have reached by their current age. For our baby, through allowing them to be content on focusing on the process of developing new skills and holding the space for them to celebrate each small win toward the ultimate success, they are able to find intrinsic value in the process itself and have the accomplished goal or task as the icing! Being process-focused also provides the building blocks for being able to accept and learn from mistakes. It allows your baby to be content with progress and find joy in putting in the work.
These five crucial life skills can be developed by stepping back and refraining from helping your child with tasks that, although they may need to struggle a bit, they are able to handle on their own. It might take some practice on our part, as parents, to allow and facilitate this work to happen but the fruits will be delightful and forever enjoyed.
Question for the comments: Do you find it difficult not stepping in when your child is struggling? And… let’s celebrate together, what is the skill your little one has most recently mastered?
Thank you for stopping by ‘Nourishing Our Home’. Please be sure to pop in every Monday and Thursday for new posts. Also, if you found this to be relatable and beneficial, please help me out by sharing with your family and friends.