I am going to be asking you to do something that you might not want to do: I’m going to be asking you to stop what you are doing and take a step back.

What I am really talking about here is something that’s quite difficult to describe in examples because this is really a state of mind. This is something that is going on in our psychology and it will manifest itself in different ways for different people. For example, let’s say that you have a young person in your life, be that your child or a child that you care for or teach in some way, and they have a habit of making a particular mistake and you have developed a habit of always saying to them that this is a problem.

This is a problem because what we’re doing in those moments, where we’re being superheroes solving the problems for them, is we are being selfish because we are preventing them from learning and we are preventing them from growing. The only reason you’re doing that is that it’s uncomfortable to stand back and watch the solo motion of them fudging it up or going through a painful experience.

It’s a horrible thing to have to do – to watch them nearly fail or completely fail. No one likes to do that. If you can swoop in and save the day then gosh why wouldn’t you! You shouldn’t do that because you are stopping them from learning and growing and that’s not fair, that is not okay, you cannot keep doing that. If you have a young person in your life who depends on you to help them when the going gets tough and you keep doing it and you keep giving them your time and your energy and your suggestions about how to resolve the situation but they don’t take those on board, they just keep repeating the same pattern and then you keep repeating the same pattern in response. What you are doing here is you are stunting their independence from developing.

I’m not telling you that this is an easy thing to do’ to stand back and watch the metaphorical car crash happening in slow motion before your very eyes. It’s not an easy thing for you to do – of course, it’s not – but you have to do it because if you don’t you will continue to selfishly prevent them from learning and growing and finding their own way. And their own way quite frankly might have been a better way than your way was. You may need to watch them make those mistakes more than one time before they get the learning – but they will never get the learning every time you swoop in and save them.

Every time you take control of that situation for them you hold them back for longer than was necessary. There are so many rewards and so much learning that comes from making mistakes. We’re going let them crack on and make those mistakes, we’re going to dust them off afterwards and say positive and encouraging things to set them back on the right track again and then we’re going to watch them screw it up all over again. What we’re not going to do is interfere with that because what they’re doing is they’re going through a process of learning how to be responsible and we want them to be responsible. We don’t want them to grow up and go into other relationships later on in their life where they become dependent on the other person they’re in the relationship with because that’s what they’ve got used to as a result of dealing with us.

Those are not the young people that we want to grow up. When they’re grown up we don’t want them expecting that everyone else is going to continue to sort things out for them in the future. That’s not how the world works! We want to know that they can go into the workplace and deal with the stresses that that’s going to have to offer them and that they know how to deal with that because we helped them to develop that resilience that they need. It’s a tough mindset to get into and when I work with parents and professionals in Hertfordshire on this topic it can take a while to have a breakthrough moment but it’s worthwhile sticking with. So this month I want you to step back and let young people make mistakes and learn through their failures. It’ll be worth it in the long run!

By Gemma Bailey
www.NLP4Kids.org/gemma-bailey