"I Won't Always Be There to Save Your Little Butts."

So much of raising children is connecting the dots.  Making them see that if they can't learn to turn the light on in the closet when looking for a lost sneaker they will lack the problem solving skills to take an airplane flight alone across country to visit their cousins in California in the forthcoming summer.

Huh?

They're connected, and I will actually lay it out for them.  I will tell them, specifically, that they are connected and explain why but I wonder how much really gets through.  Looking for things is a skill.  A problem solving skill.  If they lack the executive functioning to know that in order to find something one must have proper lighting, how will they remember to make a mental note of their seat so they can find it on the way back from the bathroom on the airplane?  These are skills.  These are planning skills.  These are self-sufficiency skills.  Skills that one learns through life.  Through experience.  Through being allowed to fail sometimes.

My twins have had some special education assistance their entire lives.  They are now nearly eleven and a half in fifth grade.  They have had a hard start in life.  Challenges.  Big, big hearts and a willingness to please, to be sure.  They are really, really good kids, but we, her teachers and her parents are seeing what one teacher called "prompt dependence."

If it weren't for the assitance they have received, they would not be doing the grade level work they are doing, but I wonder how much of that help has robbed them of the skills necessary to survive.  How will they manage when no-one is there to save them from themselves?


This is my constant worry and concern.  It has been their entire lives.  It is just that lately I feel I have been pushing the rock uphill... against the very people who are there to help them and I am stricken by gulit that I should even feel this way about people who are demonstrably well-intended, generous, and smart.

I've been telling my girls, ever since they were old enough to understand, that my job is to make sure they know what they need to know to take care of themselves "Because I'm not always going to be there to save your little butt." And I haven't saved their butts, over and over again, and suffered their frustration and anguish and tears right along with them while life taught them whatever harsh lesson life needed to teach them at that moment, but what haven't they been allowed to fail at at school?  What have I missed?  How can I even ask without offending?