Sometimes the most loving thing for you to do as a parent is

counterintuitive and that is to let your child fail. I'm John Fuller along with Dr. Danny Werta.

He's a professional counselor and leads our parenting department here at Focus and

we're going to hear about the pain of a young child struggling to launch and allowing some failure.

Allison Baki spoke with Jim Daly and me about helping your kids without enabling poor behavior.

Let's go ahead and listen.

Allison, let's get that definition of enabling versus helping.

I mean, I think with parents that's where that tough line is and I don't even know if there's

a clear distinction, but what would you suggest to parents to understand what is

is helpful help and what is enabling or counterproductive help.

I've always said that helping is doing something for someone that they can't do for themselves.

So you help them. Enabling is doing something for someone that they can and frankly

should be doing for themselves.

Right.

I often use the example of a young child learning to tie their shoes.

You're helping them by tying it for them and showing them how to do this this but if they're 10 12 years old and just

don't want to tie their shoes and you're bending down to tie their shoes for

them something is wrong with this picture right so they you know they can do it on

their own.

So it's really looking at what they are capable of doing.

And this is a big issue.

We don't really know what our kids are capable of doing

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