I heard many years ago our ideal vision for our life is different from the real version of our life and we experience tension in that difference.
As a parent of two teenagers, I have noticed a tension over the past few years. I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on it. A recent study in the Journal of Extension put into words what I have been observing. The article is titled “Adults Taking Over.”
The case study looked at 4-H and FFA community service projects related to food security. The researchers specifically looked at different aspects of events youth were involved in. This included generating ideas, gathering resources, conducting the service and documenting participation. In short, they concluded youth often have power in the beginning stage to generate ideas, but adults usually begin to take over when it comes to execution.
I think this strikes a nerve in me, because I so strongly believe in youth leadership and the importance of safe environments for youth to practice this. In my ideal vision for life, it is our role as adults to create a place for them to brainstorm ideas, prioritize and choose an idea, plan steps to accomplish it, execute the plan and, finally, evaluate and reflect on their learning. And any failure is a part of learning.
As I visit ballfields and music rooms and club meetings and livestock rings, my heart breaks a little. More often than not, kids are not the ones leading youth activities. They are following instructions from adults. They are not encouraged to think for themselves.
When our church youth group prepared to go to Haiti four years ago, we read the book “Helping Without Hurting” by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. Sometimes short term mission projects end up making local communities dependent on outside help. Instead, it was our goal to support building skills and capacity of local people to accomplish their own goals for what they thought was best in their communities.
That way of thinking deeply affected me. Helping and serving is noble. Needed. But there is a fine line between helping and enabling. Between serving and stifling.
I see it happening for a whole generation of young people. Well-meaning adults are not encouraging them to develop into contributing adults. It is our job to teach young people to think, not to tell them how to do everything. I am finding one of the most difficult parts of parenting is to let my kids fail. To not rush in to save them when I am uncertain about the trajectory of their choices.
My plea to coaches, teachers, advisers, and mentors is to hand over some of the power and responsibility. It is not easy. It is often messy. And it certainly is not as efficient nor as effective as when we do it ourselves. But this is how life skills are learned. Allowing them to experience discomfort and confusion helps them to grow. And it is important to process failure with them to make different choices next time.
In all these different realms of youth development, from sports to music to academics and beyond, what is the goal? I believe in all these things, our ultimate goal to give our youth life skills. To stretch them to see beyond themselves.
Today, I’ll leave you with this quote from Ann Landers: “Maturity: Be able to stick with a job until it is finished. Be able to bear an injustice without having to get even. Be able to carry money without spending it. Do your duty without being supervised.”
Emily Marrison is the OSU Extension Family & Consumer Sciences Educator in Coshocton County and Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University. She may be reached at 740-622-2265 or marrison.12@osu.edu.
This article originally appeared on Coshocton Tribune: Emily Marrison: Allowing children to fail will help them grow and develop life skills
Reporting by Emily Marrison, Special to the Tribune / Coshocton Tribune
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