Four Life Lessons From Parents of Kids With Special Needs Moms and dads whose children have special needs can teach all parents a thing or two about priorities and perspective. Part one of two

 Several years ago, I sat down for dinner with my husband and two kids and leaned over to cut my older child’s meat. He was 10, and I’d been mindlessly doing it for, well, forever. But something stopped me in my tracks that night. I was a dean at Stanford University at the time, and the previous evening I’d given my annual talk to parents of freshmen about “letting go”—resisting the urge to constantly check up on their kids or handle the daily tasks of college life for them and instead allow their kids, heck, even expect their kids to manage for themselves. And there I was, cutting my own son’s meat.
At that humbling moment, I made the connection between my behavior as a parent and the skills that I’ve seen too many young adults lacking these days. Over-helping children, albeit lovingly intended, can leave them standing helpless at the doorstep of adulthood. There are 18-year-olds who can’t fill out forms, make a meal, meet a deadline, do laundry, fill their own gas tank, or figure out what to do when their car breaks down. Believe it or not, there are even students whose mother calls them every morning to make sure they’re awake in time for class.
I also started thinking about my friend Stacey Ashlund, whose 17-year-old son is hearing-and vision-impaired. She knows that her son’s disability might limit his ability to lead an independent adult life, and she has worked to help him be as capable as possible. In fact, parents of kids with all kinds of special needs are proactive about teaching life skills—and may end up raising kids who are even better than their typically developing classmates at fending for themselves as adults. It’s a lovely irony, actually. Over time, I’ve discovered that there is a lot that we can all learn from parents of children who face such challenges.
Let Yourself Be Needed Less
For our kids’ sake and for the sake of society at large, we need to do a one eighty: Stop measuring parenting success by how much we do for our kids and start measuring it by how much we’ve taught them to do for themselves. It’s not our job to always make life easier for our kids; we need to prepare them to deal with the tough stuff. And in order for them to constantly grow and develop, they have to be out of their comfort zone sometimes.
When you’re teaching your child a new skill, whether it’s tying his shoes, crossing the street, using the stove, or getting out the door each morning, try the smart four-step method that Ashlund uses with her son as well as with her typically developing 14-year-old daughter:
1. Show your child how to do it.
2. Do it with him.
3. Watch him do it.
4. Let him do it independently.
Amanda Booth, the model on the cover of this issue, has taken a similar approach with her 2-year-old son, Micah. He has Down syndrome, which causes weak muscle tone that makes it harder to walk. “First we taught him to sit up, and then we taught him to go from a sitting to a standing position,” says Booth, who lives in Los Angeles and blogs at TheBeardAndBump.com. “Whenever I notice that he needs less of my help, I stand back and let him try and fail. That’s the only way he’s going to get comfortable with the idea that he can do something new. I don’t say, ‘Oh he can’t,’ or ‘He’ll hurt himself.’ He’ll need to practice and practice until he can do it on his own.”
Please follow the continuation of the article next month in the December issue.
Julie Lythcott-Haims is the author of How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success.