Recognising Independence

Through working with the 2 – 4 age group, I’ve seen that so often little ones love to do things for themselves. They are highly motivated by praise and the thought of doing something just like the adults around them.

This week, our little one (age 3) wanted to proudly show me how he could get himself completely undressed and then dressed into his pyjamas ready for bed. With each item of clothing, he had a proud smile on his face and at various points commented ‘you proud of me mummy?’ to which I agreed that I was and praised him along the way.

In reality he is fiercely independent – while needing a little help, he has been very capable of getting himself dressed and undressed since his adoption and arrival with us shortly after he was three. This week, however, he clearly wanted to make sure I knew that this was important to him.

When considering this next to my experience of parenting my birth children, I realise that building independence is quite a difficult thing to manage. With our birth children we made sure to support them as we felt they were ready. I definitely fell into the trap of sometimes doing things for them because it was quicker or easier for me, but we also took time to teach and show them new skills to promote their own independence, building on what we knew they could already do.

With our adopted son, we have been trying to recognise the skills others have encouraged and taught him before us. As I have mentioned in my post - being three; his foster carer gave us a thorough handover, but you can’t hand over every day to day detail. It has therefore been up to us to notice skills our little one has learnt so we can continue to support him to develop them.

When exploring his independence, we have needed to consider three main elements; observing and enabling, unintentionally discouraging and care giving. These three hang in a fine balance, often overlapping:

Firstly as we slowly started to build that initial relationship, we needed to ensure we were learning about him from observing and spending time with him. We had learnt a lot from his foster carer, but we now needed to learn directly from him. What was he able to do; what did he find difficult; where did he need encouragement or support. We learnt that he like to wash his hands himself, but didn’t like to be in the downstairs toilet on his own. That he could put his shoes on and take them off but would often put them on the wrong feet. We were constantly observing what he was able to do himself, while also managing the elements surrounding this that may be barriers for him.

Next, we needed to ensure we weren’t unintentionally discouraging him, as I said, I know I fell into the trap of sometimes doing things for my older boys because it had suited our timings and meant we got out of the house quicker when heading out! We had to be really mindful to make sure we were tuning in to what he could and couldn’t do for himself. It wouldn’t be useful for him to have to relearn skills, such putting his clothes on when he was already capable of doing it himself. It wouldn’t build his self esteem or further develop the skill.

Which leads me on to the last but most important of the three – care giving. Our little one needed to know that we were there to be his Mummy and Daddy and a big role in that is showing him we were there to take care of him. We needed to start straight away by showing him that he could rely on us for help when he needed it and that we would be there alongside him to support him. We chose to do this by making sure we were present with him. Once we knew he could do something we would give him verbal encouragement or support to keep trying. If we could see he was having a difficult day, or was tired, we would suggest we shared the task, or if needed we would of course do it for him, but knowing we would encourage him to try again himself next time. We could build in a sense of care giving by supporting and encouraging.

These three things need to work together and its been really interesting to see how much time we have needed to build on this; setting aside time and making opportunities to spend time with him to explore these has really helped.  

I think its important to recognise that what one child can do at 2, another will be able at 4 or be older still. So many elements can impact on how children learn, understand and develop skills. The motivation behind building independence shouldn't be to encourage your child to do things quicker than others, but to build their individual self esteem and skill set. I think it’s important to really sit and observe your child, see what they can do for themselves and support them to build on it. Try to allow time, and perhaps focus on specific elements of independence rather than many areas at once. I didn’t have the same need to really stop and observe my birth children to see what they could achieve, although I’m sure it would have been helpful at times if I had and its been an interesting and thought provoking experience having the opportunity to do so with our adopted little one.

So however you have arrived at your parenting journey, perhaps just take a moment to step back, really look at how amazing your child is, what they can achieve by themselves and how you can help them grow.