Single parents want to do too much for their kids, more than married parents do. This is not because they are better parents but because — unlike the married parents — the single parents have a drawn-out string of fears and apprehensions about how their children will become in the future.
This string of anxieties stem from the many hardships that these single parents went through or are still going through. Thus, the single parents spoon-feed their children excessively. They want to make life easy for their kids not realizing that the over-protection they have shown is what will make the children become risk-averse when they become adults. Such kind of “protective covering” is what will make the kids turn out to become frightened adults, the kind who cannot make decisions because they are afraid of making a mistake.
“Spoon-feeding”
We usually use the term spoon-feeding in our daily conversations, but what does it really mean? In the field of education, spoon-feeding is any activity or attempt that could prevent possible mental development by doing for the learner what the learner could have done for himself/herself (Mohanan, 2000). In a 2009 paper entitled Does Spoon-feeding Impede Independent Learning?, the authors Samah, Jusoff and Silong presented a specific view on the spoon-feeding culture. They defined it as “stealing an opportunity from your student to think or act on their own.” This means that not only are you not offering anything of value by spoon-feeding but also depriving your students of something vital. In the area of parenting, a parent who spoon-feeds is definitely the parent who robs away children’s chance of seeing the world as it is and taking away from them the opportunity to figure out how to react and respond to the challenges they meet along the way in the course of their lives.
“Its because of me” mindset
But why are single parents more inclined to spoon-fed than married parents? A prevailing mindset which strongly influences a single parent’s behavior and decision-making is the “its because of me” mentality.
When a child of a single parent is bullied in school (or anywhere else), or a teenager gets pregnant or becomes addicted to alcohol/drugs, or perhaps, the young person gets into an untimely marriage, the single parent usually thinks it is because that child/teenager does not have a father (or father image) at home and she (single mom) is to be held accountable.
This is a destructive outlook. Single mothers should stop taking the blame on bad things that happen to their kids. Bullying, drug addiction, untimely pregnancy or marriage — are facts of life. These things can happen to anyone and having a single mom or a married mom is just incidental. While it is true that the situation of a mother is a factor when a child gets into trouble, it is not a strong determinant.
So instead of blaming one’s self, the single mom should bear in mind that for their children to grow up responsible and productive adults, they need to be caring but not “hovering,” authoritative but not authoritarian, supportive but not indulgent.
But what is a caring, authoritative, and supportive parent? This is the parent who takes away the “spoon” and allows the child to “feed on his/her own” but continues to watch over the child while she/he “struggles with the spoon.” What do I mean by this?
Many parents, most especially single mothers, hide their children from the realities of life. This is because they love their kids. However, this kind of love can be detrimental to the children’s intellectual, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
Life in this world is hard, we all know that, the very reason why we human beings struggle and strive. It’s not just to survive but to achieve what we think we deserve. Therefore, when children do not witness these struggles, when they are too sheltered, they will eventually have a different perspective of life — a life where hunger, poverty, illness, criminality, harassment, and inequality do not exist. As a result, they miss out on the processes of human existence. They are also deprived of the chance to be creative, to engage in critical thinking, and to use whatever talents and capabilities God has lent them.
Being too protective of our children, hiding them from problems, always on the rescue even when the difficulty involved is too elementary — these acts are sure ways of making our children become eternal parasites and frightened imbeciles.
Therefore, if you want your children to become productive citizens when they grow up, if you want them to become decisive and intelligent adults, if you want your kids to become courageous warriors in life who know how to bounce back from every failure — take away that spoon!
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