There are parents who exhaust themselves morally and those who manage to empower their children. An educator reveals the perfect formula to make them much more independent.
Making a responsible teenager is often the headache. The teenager is in full transition: he still counts a lot on his parents for the gestures of daily life, such as preparing his business, his laundry, his meals, managing his schedule, moving or keeping his school commitments. However, he aspires to gain independence and become independent. This step is essential for no longer having to monitor your child constantly, and not to repeat the things of tens of times. Making his responsible teenager prepares him above all to become an adult capable of solving his problems, organizing his life and interacting with the world with confidence, without waiting for someone to guide him at each stage.
Faced with this difficulty, Julie Lythcott-Hams, an American educator and the author of the book “How to raise an adult “ offers a surprisingly concise response. It highlights a formula in four words, which it describes as “key technique” to empower a teenager without overloading or sanctioning it. Indeed, it considers that responsibility is not transmitted by constraint, but by confidence and experience. In a video published on Instagram, she explains how to decode the meaning behind these four words which are: “mission, capacity, autonomy and responsibility“.
By “Mission”, she hears: “We expect you to do it, or we have agreed collectively that you will do it. “The second word,” capacity “, designates the way in which parents teach their adolescent to carry out the task, or approve their competence to do it themselves. Lythcot-haims adds:”We are still here if you need us. We are still there in an emergency, but we think you have the solution“Finally,” responsibility “means that the adolescent is carrying out the task, following what has been agreed, and that, once finished, the parent gives him a constructive return on his progress. This approach is based on mutual trust rather than permanent surveillance.
To anchor this method in everyday life, several simple gestures make it possible to take the plunge. First, clearly fix the mission: attribute precise tasks, explaining what they involve and ensuring that your teenager understands its importance. Second, test his capacity: initiate it gently, help him acquire the right reflexes, then drop ballast. Third, cultivate autonomy: tell him that you remain available, but that he must try alone, except urgency. Finally, value responsibility: when he accomplishes his mission, calmly exchange on what worked well and on what can be improved, without judgment. This journey, little by little, builds a teenager who assumes himself. The advantage? These skills (planning, self -confidence, sense of commitment) will be essential to him in adulthood, to succeed in his studies, work or entry into adult life.
