Holding Her Back

I occurred to me today that we have not once attempted to teach Olivia to tie her shoes.

She’s eight years old.

Are we holding her back?

Do we, subconsciously, want to keep her helpless and dependent on us?

I want to scream, “No!” in answer to that question but I’m not so sure.

She’s our baby. She likes being the baby and we like having her as the baby.

But are we being fair to her? To us? Probably not.

That makes me sad. I want so much for Olivia. Most of all, I want her to be and do all that she’s capable of being and doing.

And I firmly believe she’s perfectly capable of tying her shoes. Which means we’re holding her back because we haven’t bothered to even try to teach her.

And let’s not even talk about her feeding herself. She’s able to do this. She even actually does it on occasion. But it can take forever for her to eat a meal when she feeds herself and so for the sake of time and less mess, Tom or I tend to feed her more often than not.

This is not helping Olivia develop life skills. It’s not leading to independence. She needs for us to let go, even just a little and let her be eight. Yes, I’m preaching to myself here.

I’m going to try. Tonight we’ll have our first lesson of shoe-tying. It ought to be great fun for all.