"Before the fact, they are providing Educational Preparation: "This is what you will need to learn to do and how to do it." During the fact, they are providing Training Oversight: "This will take our being there to watch while you practice." After the fact, they are providing Reflective Evaluation: "What was it like? What did you learn? And what do you need to learn to do better?""
"For example, at a bicycle-riding age, how far from home is the fifth-grader permitted to travel independently? It's very common for parents who grew up without much geographical constraint on where they rode to find themselves more restrictive with their daughter or son in what feels like a more dangerous world today. "Don't go beyond the street where we live, and be sure to wear a helmet," they instruct, even though they never did."
Parents often feel torn between two fears: holding on and stifling healthy growth through overprotection, or letting go and permitting potential harm through excessive permissiveness. Freedom requires assessment of a young person's experience, judgment, responsibility, and readiness to handle riskier choices. Parenting involves calculated risk-taking for a child's safety and development. Effective parenting functions as a handoff that includes educational preparation before new freedoms, supervised training while practicing, and reflective evaluation afterward to identify learnings and needed improvements. Practical examples include decisions about independent bicycle travel and preparing teenagers to use automobiles and the internet, both sources of powerful autonomy and risk.
Read at Psychology Today
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