“A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.”
(Dorothy Canfield Fisher)
“Any non-life-threatening steps your child takes toward independence are wonderful. …Parenthood is all about inspiring and equipping the members of the next generation so we can pass the baton. It’s never too early to start.” ( Barbara Curtis, The Mommy Survival Guide)
Kids will be just about as resourceful as we will let them be.
Resourceful: capable of acting effectively or imaginatively, esp. in difficult situations. (The American Heritage Dictionary, 2nd College Edition)
Concept 1: Liberty given is different than freedom demanded.
A child must have some measure of independence to act creatively and become resourceful; if a child is completely controlled, there’s simply no opportunity for the mental wiggle room needed to become resourceful. However, this does not mean that you should respond to a child’s defiance or demands with more freedom, in order to give him the opportunity. Liberty given by the parent to a child who has earned it by consistent obedience is what creates plenty of room for resourcefulness. But freedom demanded by the child, and arbitrarily (passively or otherwise) granted by the parent simply encourages rebellion.
Before you think about teaching your child how to be resourceful, teach your child how to obey and respect your authority. Do so by being consistent, day in and day out, and by earning that respect with your loving, clear, and consistent instruction and discipline.
Concept 2: Ask direct questions (and expect answers) to help them think resourcefully.
Because our children come to us as completely helpless infants, we get in the habit of doing everything for them. We have to! But as children mature and develop both mentally and physically, they will automatically reach out for more independence of their own. The baby who had to have his head supported now holds it up and looks around. The baby who had to be carried learns to scoot, then crawl, then walk and run. The child whose baby-babble had to be interpreted and guessed at becomes a vocal master who won’t shush. Children naturally grow toward more autonomy, and that’s the way it should be.
We can help them learn how to be resourceful by asking specific questions when they run into difficulties. Instead of doing it for them, ask them questions to get them thinking about how to do it themselves. This is sometimes as easy as a simple questions (“Where have you looked for your shoes?”) and sometimes requires a little bit more of a process.
For example: my daughter can’t reach the light switch, so I show her how to get the stool, place it on the floor, stand on it and reach the switch. Now, the next time she asks me to turn on the light I do not tell her what to do, I ask her a direct question:
“What could you use to help you reach the light switch?”
Why ask instead of tell? So they learn to think! So they remember! So they work the process out in their own minds instead of just responding like robots to our instructions.
There are already so many things that we have to tell, instruct, and teach in; we should seize the ones that allow them to do the telling and thinking.
You can wait for opportunities to arise, like the example above. There will be many. You can also take it a step further by asking your children to teach you something (of course you already know; just pretend!).
“Mara, how did you paint that flower to be so pretty?”
Mara answers with a step-by-step tutorial on making the big circle in the middle, and the little circles around the outside for petals… Mara is repeating back to me the same instruction I gave her a few days ago when she asked me how to paint the flower. But now she’s teaching, and I’m listening. I ask another question, now…
“Hmmm… I wonder how we could paint the sun?”
I don’t tell her how; I haven’t ever given her instruction. But she will think and come up with a way and tell me about it. “We do a big circle like a flower and then little lines out like this and it’s a sun!”
Concept 3: Teach over their heads and on every level beneath to help them learn about their resources.
A few nights ago the kids were cuddling in bed with us while Daddy drew pictures for them on the laptop’s drawing program. Daddy decided to teach them about rocket science. (Mommy just giggled.) So off he goes, as Mommy cuddled the baby, to explain to a 2 and a 3 year old about rocket ships and blasts and launches and astronauts and planets and the moon and orbits and the sun (which is just a mass of incandescent gas, after all…) and all manner of things related. (This is just another reason why we love Daddy so… Mommy doesn’t have to teach science and math and all the other hard stuff.)
The next day Robbie and I drew a rocket ship with FIRE! coming out of the blasters (is that what they’re called?) and hung it on the window to show Daddy. (Mara did balloons, and we hung that up, too. It’s related. They were helium-filled balloons…).
So, rocket science and toddlers. Of course they don’t get it all (neither do I), but they’ve got a whole new vocabulary and a little more understanding of what’s out there in our world and beyond our world.
Never forego an opportunity to teach just because they won’t get it yet.
Teach, talk, share, explain, show, tell, on and on. Explain what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and then tell them everything related you can think about. When I let the kids help me cook, we talk about what we’re cooking.
“This is cilantro. It’s an herb. We’re going to mince it up and sprinkle it on top of our fajitas. Cilantro is used a lot in Mexican cooking, which is what we’re doing tonight, and it’s in Chinese food, too. You remember Chinese food? Like egg rolls and crab rangoon. You guys liked the crab rangoon. And Mommy likes to grow cilantro in the garden, and we’ll plant some…”
And so on.
Teaching like this – offering information – is helpful on many levels but specifically, as regards teaching resourcefulness, you are creating an awareness and understanding of the many possibilities in the world. You’re opening their eyes to all the concepts one little herb can represent. I like to talk about how different families and cultures do things in different ways, just so they get the concept that there’s not always a “right” way. This kind of talking and thinking is the precursor to them seeing more than the obvious, relating disparate things to one another, connecting the dots, so to speak. And those abilities of analysis and creativity, coming together to make different parts into a cohesive whole, is foundational for resourceful living.
Concept 4: Make it possible for them to succeed.
Children live in an adult-sized world. Barbara Curtis describes it like this, in her book The Mommy Survival Guide: “Imagine living in a home where all the pictures hang three feet above your eye level, where kitchen counters are mysterious surfaces where you just know all kinds of exciting things are going on that you can never see. Imagine having to climb onto a chair whose seat is 54 inches off the groud and feeling lost in the bigness, perched at the edge with your feet dangling in midair” (26).
In order to be resourceful, children need to be able to deal with the over-sized objects around them. They can’t be self-sufficient enough to switch off the lights if they can’t reach the light switch – unless you provide a handy little step stool. They can’t get their own dish and spoon unless you put them in a cabinet they can access. They can’t get down toys unless they’re reachable. They can’t hang clothes on a clothing rod 3 feet above their heads.
Give your children tools and helps to enable them to navigate their way, and show them how to use those tools. Teach them where you keep things, so they can go get what they need (after they ask you). And give them some areas, toys, and other materials that they can use anytime. Set up play spots, art spots, reading spots, and the like. Let them know what they are free to use at any time. Of course, the older they get and the more they prove themselves trustworthy, the more access and freedom they should be granted.
Concept 5: Remove the detriments to resourcefulness.
I’m going to share a few bad habits I’ve noticed in myself that hinder resourcefulness. I slip up in these often, still, and I have a feeling it’s a common thing… See if any of these sound like you.
Jumping in to do it for them.
If they can’t open a door, reach a tissue, find a toy… it’s easier and faster to just do it for them. Nothing is more detrimental to learning resourcefulness than to have someone constantly stepping in to take over when things get the teensiest bit difficult. A child treated this way will come to expect it, will resist any challenge, and will certainly struggle with feeling resentful when life demands a certain amount of initiative. Don’t make that your child!
Take the time to train. Take the time to ask questions. Give a 2-minute lesson in how to work that tricky doorknob. Take 3 minutes to show your 3-year-old how to tear off one paper towel at a time. Take 5 minutes to ask enough questions to get them searching the right spots until they find the toy.
Letting them revert to baby-like behavior when circumstances aren’t good…
…(or for any other reason). Once a child has demonstrated his ability to do something for himself, you shouldn’t let him go back to needing your help for it. Oh, I have made this mistake! And I have regretted it! Mara was in love with getting herself dressed, thrilled with the newness and her own ability… until one day I needed her to get dressed a little faster. So I helped. The newness had worn off just enough that she liked how much easier it was with Mommy doing it. Now I have to continually remind her to do it herself, to keep trying until she gets it. My fault. I trained her… Now I have to untrain her!
And this is so tempting when the kids are sick or overly tired, or you’ve been running errands all day and they’ve been so good, or your schedule has been crazy, or you have company. I’m just saying, from experience, don’t lose the ground you’ve gained just to gain a couple of minutes on a busy morning. Don’t do it for them. Don’t let them revert. Encourage! Explain! Remind! Ask questions! Instruct! Praise! But don’t do it for them. Help if help is really and sincerely needed. Otherwise, give some encouragement and direction and back off. Give them time. They’ll figure it out.
Teaching them there’s a one-and-only right way for doing things.
Of course, in some matters there is only a right and wrong. Those are called moral choices, and we need to stick to absolutes and be very clear about them. But for anything that’s not a moral issue, “right” and “wrong” really shouldn’t come into the conversation. There might be good/better, or fast/slow, or easy/hard, or other signifiers that help them decide how to do things.
There are lots of different ways to do the same things, and there are also lots of different uses for those common objects we adults get a little too specific with. Kids are the best at figuring out every possible use for random household objects. Let them! That is natural resourcefulness at its finest.
Giving them lots of ready-made, plastic-perfect toys for “imaginative” play.
I’ve been slowly weeding out all the plastic food that came with Mara’s play kitchen. Why? Well, first, because they end up everywhere and it’s irritating to pick them up. Two, because I just don’t like plastic toys much. And third, because I love what Mara comes up with when she doesn’t have a perfect replica on hand. She makes soup out of gravel and ice cream from bark and the main dish might be a pine cone or some sprigs of wheatgrass. Whatever it is, I love that she is coming up with her own materials. That is the essence of imaginative play.
Some things are great, sure, for a child to have to work with and build upon. The play kitchen itself, for instance, and there’s nothing wrong with fake food at all. But it isn’t necessary. (And you know, if she didn’t have the play kitchen, she’d make one out of a box or a table…). You have to watch out for this when you go toy shopping. Too much perfection, too much stuff that is already finished… it can cut out room for the imagination, and that’s an essential part of being resourceful. I try to buy toys that are multi-purpose, raw materials that can be shaped to any sort of use, things that are basic and sturdy and high-quality and full of possibility.
How do you teach resourcefulness to your child?
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Image by Kamal H. on Flickr.