Cut the apron strings off…

By now, most of you will have watched the excerpt of  Simon Sinek speaking about millennials in the workplace. I 100% agree with him.

I was born and raised in Zimbabwe, and moved to Ireland when I was 21. My husband is Irish but most of my parenting style is firmly rooted in the culture I was brought up in with a healthy dash of Irish culture. My work colleagues were gobsmacked when I told them my 9 year old daughter and 7 year old son make their own lunches for school. In my opinion, they are old enough and well able to handle this responsibility. How do we expect them to be responsible, if we do not allow them to be responsible?  I have heard of mothers accompanying their 20something old children to job interviews?????? Like seriously, cut the apron strings off! How do you expect their work colleagues to take them seriously, accompanied by their mother.

My upbringing was text book Zimbabwean. Children were seen and not heard, and my parents were firm believers of “spare the rod, spoil the child.”  When I reflect on my childhood, I realise that I grew up to be a well adjusted adult, able to handle rejection, distress and whatever else life throws at me. Some people look back on their childhood and comment on how they disliked the way they were brought up and proclaim they don’t want their children to feel the same emotional distress. But we forget distress tolerance is a life skill.

We want our children to feel good about themselves all the time. We go to our children’s school and fight for Johnny to have the staring role in the school play. The reality is,  Johnny was not good enough for that role at that time. Handling the distress of that rejection will make them psychologically stronger. We as parents need to accept that there are things our children are not good at. If they want something, it is them who need to put in the hard work to get what they want. Our role is not to fight their battles but to give them the skills to fight their own battles.

I am not saying I am the perfect parent and my children are perfect. All I can do is allow my children to gain life skills to help them adjust to adulthood and their careers. I cannot shelter them from every negative feeling, and I sure as hell am not going to give them everything they want. I will give them what they need. In a nutshell, I have basically turned into my own mother…..