21/09/2026
As our children and young people start the new school year and go off to face new challenges like uni I wanted to share a comment I saw made by a psychologist when my own children were younger. He said that when we solve all our children’s problems for them we build our own self esteem and rob them of theirs. We need to encourage them to be problem solvers not dependents. How can we expect them to have self belief and self-esteem, if by our words and actions we allow them to feel that we are worried about them, fear they cannot manage, need to intervene on their behalf in case they can't solve things, need to hear about any and every friendship issue because they won't be able to fix it without mum's input? It's infantilising and it doesn't allow them to grow and develop. If the expectation is that you run every conflict, every normal existential doubt past mum to get a solution, how can you gain any sense of ownership and agency in your own life, and more importantly, how can you see your own worth? They need to sit with discomfort, decide on their own solution, develop their own resilience and grow their own self esteem. Obviously as parents we walk beside them and support them if needed but they need to decide on the solution and take their own actions not us. Our kids are amazing. They are as bright as we were, with ambition, empathy and tolerance. They just need to be able to sit with some discomfort make their own decisions and develop a bit more resilience, which we can only give them by letting go a bit, and then they fly.
