Ways to Recognize A Child's Struggle For Autonomy

There are different ways to recognize a child's struggle for autonomy. One of the ways to recognize it is to support a child in developing autonomy by providing training, resources, modeling and supervision as children develop autonomy. A parent provides training and resources for developing autonomy as a child tells the parent they want to learn how to cook brownies and the parent gets the ingredients and teaches them how to make brownies.

A parent models the development of autonomy as they learn new things and their children see them putting effort into learning new things. A parent provides supervision to children as they develop autonomy as they don't let children use the oven to make brownies until they are old enough to.

I recognized my child's struggle for autonomy and used these methods to develop her autonomy. For example, when she was about ten years old I was doing the laundry and she asked me how to do the laundry. So I taught her how to do the laundry. I explained what I had already done as far as sorting between colors and whites and putting them in the laundry machine. I then explained each step as I was doing it. When it was time to put the next load in she wanted to do it. I recognized my child's struggle for autonomy by recognizing she wanted to learn how to do the laundry and teaching her how to. I used supervision with this as well as the first few times she did the laundry by herself I supervised her doing it so that it was done correctly. I didn't do it for her I supervised it and walked her through how to do it.

I used modeling to teach my child how to be autonomous because she was still young when I put myself through school and she saw my apply myself to finish school. She also saw me try new recipes for cooking as I came up with different meals for us to eat.

It's important for a parent to understand that the reason for developing autonomy is so that the child will develop positive self-esteem and so that children learn the skills the activity will teach them (i.e. how to do the laundry). Children need to know they can succeed at activities they do instead of learning they are dependent on their parents. Therefore, it's important that parents are not telling children they can't do something and continue to do everything for them and not give them the chance and opportunity to develop the ability to do things for themselves.