It’s Important to Know Why Lazy Parents Have Self-Motivated Children
While it’s a hard pill to swallow, the facts are the facts. Lazy parents often have children with more self-motivation than parents who are extremely conscientious about their parental involvement.
This. Is. Not. Fair. But as the saying goes, life is not fair. Parents are more likely to get rewarded for doing the bare minimum for their child and parents who do everything for their child are more likely to get punished.
The reason for this is simple. There is one word to sum up this contradiction and it’s a word every parent loves: RESPONSIBILITY.
Lazy Parents Teach Their Children to be Responsible
I’m not here to glamorize lazy parenting. However, a parent who knows how to use a touch of lazy parenting to their advantage is wise. Unquestionably, an extremely conscientious parents who is willing to do everything and anything to help their children succeed will handicap their children. These parents don’t provide their children independence, and without independence there is no responsibility, and without responsibility there is no self-motivation.
To be responsible is to have a job or duty to make something happen on your own. This implies independence. Therefore, the only way you can teach a child to be responsible is to let them do things without parental intervention. This is why lazy parents are rewarded. A child of a parent who doesn’t go over and beyond to help them will either sink or swim. As long as that child is in a good environment, most children will innately figure out how to swim.
On the other hand, extremely conscientious parents tend to use two parenting styles that keep their children depending on the parent’s life raft.
1) Helicopter Parents
By now, almost everyone knows what a helicopter parent is. A helicopter parent is a parent that lives vicariously through their child. The parent’s dreams are the child’s dreams. What’s more, the parent takes full responsibility of the child’s experiences, friends, extra-curricular activities, and successes. Helicopter parents are always there and simply won’t let their child grow independent in an age-appropriate timeframe.
2) Snowplow Parents
Snowplow parenting is a relatively new term to define a style of parenting. A snowplow parent is a parent who plows every obstacle out of their child’s path. They don’t have to place blame for a child’s failure on anyone, because failure is not an option for snowplow parents. Snowplow parents are willing to do homework for their kids, lie about their age to get them an advantage, bribe coaches, teachers, and administrators, as well as partake in other unscrupulous behavior to guarantee their child’s success. The living example of snowplow parenting are those parents involved in the widely reported 2019 college admissions bribery scandal.
Every Bad Choice Your Child Survives Is A Gift from the Future
The advantage lazy parents have over these two types of extremely conscientious parents is that their children get to make bad choices. While it’s true that all parents fear that a child may make a bad choice that will ruin their life, the truth is holding on to this fear does more harm than good. It’s one thing to raise a kid who is safe and secure from the world around them. It’s another thing to raise a kid who is ready to take on the world as an independent and functional adult.
At the end of the day, it’s a parent’s responsibility to prepare their children for a world full of bad choices and problems. Moreover, the only way to do that is to allow a child to make bad choices and deal with problems when they’re young and the consequences are not as impactful. This is why every bad choice your child survives is a gift from the future. It’s in these bad choices where the lessons that prepare them for adulthood sink in.
Children who rarely experience bouncing back from bad choices, failure, loss, ridicule, embarrassment, or even bullying while young are in for a rude awakening as adults. That is why parents would be wise to accept these gifts and be grateful for each lesson their child gets. Furthermore, this is why all parents would be wise to learn how to use a touch of lazy parenting to their advantage.