How Raising Self-Sufficient KIDS Will Help YOU Grow

A few weeks ago, I happened to catch a story on the news, one where parents are accused of neglect just because they allow their kids a little freedom, like going to the park by themselves or walking the dog alone.

Every time I see a story like this, it leads me to wonder, what really is so bad about raising kids who are self-sufficient? Why shouldn’t we teach our kids how to fend for themselves, how to make their own way in life? Isn’t that sort of the point of parenting?

But what’s more, as an entrepreneur, I also see how raising my kids to be self-sufficient will one day help them to be successful both in business AND in life. Not only that, teaching them to be more independent has also taught ME!

In Episode 21 of the Do It Scared™ Podcast, I share some practical tips for daring to raise kids who can fend for themselves.

It is a topic that I am SO passionate about!

You see, my childhood didn’t involve a lot of parental supervision.

My youngest brother Joel and I were free to roam around the neighborhood, and roam we did. We pretty much came and went as we pleased. We were never bored. And our parents never worried.

After spending this summer back in my hometown, my girls got a taste of that freedom too.

The whole experiment was a pretty powerful lesson in learning to let go. We realized how much we had been doing for them, instead of just letting them figure it out. But it also reminded me of the kind of mindset that is necessary for entrepreneurship, and for building a strong business.

Read a quick recap of the three fundamental core beliefs that’ll help you cultivate a willingness to give your children the independence they crave and need–and to create a stronger sense of independence in your own business!

Freedom comes responsibility

Here’s the thing—we all want freedom. We want to be free to say what want and do what we want and watch what we like on TV, to wear the clothes that we want to wear, to have religious freedom and the freedom to make our own decisions about life.

And that’s why it is important for all of us, but ESPECIALLY for our kids, to understand that with freedom comes responsibility. You can’t have one without the other.

Before we tied in this responsibility piece the girls would run wild, the freedom just went straight to their heads. We knew freedom without some sense of responsibility was doing no one any good. So we decided that they had to prove to us that they could be responsible, or their freedom would be taken away. Thankfully, we weren’t too late to turn things around, and we had a MUCH better summer after that!

Because with freedom comes responsibility—that’s core belief number 1.

Money comes from work

This one is a core belief I’ve been driving into my kids for a very long time, and while I wish that I could take credit for it, I can’t—it comes from a guy named Dave Ramsey. You’ve maybe heard of him.

Dave truly believes that it is so important for kids to understand this one thing from an early age- that money does not grow on trees or come from the tooth fairy, or from some magic plastic card that you stick into the wall. Money comes from work. Click to Tweet

And that can be a hard concept for kids!

I make sure my kids understand that even if Mommy and Daddy are doing well, that has nothing to do with THEIR finances. They need to work really hard to make their own money to afford the type of lifestyle they want to have. There is no safety net to fall back on and it is not always going to be someone else’s job to take care of them. Their money should come solely from their own work.

Sometimes you have to fail

This one is the hardest one of all to follow through on. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about toddlers learning how to walk or feed themselves for the first time, or teenagers learning how to land their first jobs…

We have to let our kids figure out these challenges all on their own. We need to let them struggle a little bit, to have to push past obstacles and to overcome frustration and to realize that they might be capable of a more than they even knew.

We’ve got to let our kids fail, sometimes spectacularly so, so that they can also learn to rise again. Click to Tweet To get up, to dust themselves off, and to start over, as many times as it takes.