The Summer of Building Independence

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Reena Ninan
Episode #222: The Summer of Building Independence

I am just done. I’m ready for summer. I’m ready for not being on schedule. I am ready. And you know, it’s only like, three weeks later I’ll be asking for routine.

Lisa Damour
Exactly like, whereas it’s chaos. What’s going on? I have to say, we know one of my favorite parts about my life is that my whole family remains very much on a school schedule. You know, my husband’s a teacher. My girls, one who’s now going to be a college senior in the fall, which is hard to believe, and one who’s going to be a high school freshman in the fall. So we are, like, into it. And then my work shifts in the summer. I do a lot of work for schools and so that quiets in the summer. So, for my whole life, I’m going to be on a summer schedule routine.

Reena Ninan
Well, I know you very, very well, my friend, and you are never a “put your feet up and just hang out for the whole summer” kind of gal. So you were working on some really interesting projects.

Lisa Damour
I am, I am, but it’s a changing of gears, at least.

Reena Ninan
I can understand that and appreciate that.

You know, at the end of every season, instead of taking a letter, we look for your guidance on what and how you think parents should look towards a summer. And over the years, we’ve come out of COVID and back into COVID. And this year, we thought we’d look at: How do you make kids at various ages independent? And you could still be in college and still be leaning on your parents a little bit. So I wanna kick off by asking you: Why do you think summer is the right time to help kids gain some skill sets and independence and be a little bit more self reliant?

Lisa Damour
So summer is perfect in so many ways. One reason that it becomes the perfect time to help our kids take on more ownership of their own needs in the world, managing responsibilities, is that we actually have time to do more teaching. Do you remember in the pandemic, when suddenly we were all home a lot more, I found myself finally slowing down and teaching my kids how to do things that had, up until that point, always just been faster for me to do it.

Reena Ninan
You made homemade paper. I would never make homemade–

Lisa Damour
Exactly, exactly. But then also, around-the-house things. I think at that point, we really taught my older daughter how to do laundry, because we had time to just stand by the machine and show her how it was done. I know there was more cooking going on, and spending more time teaching them cooking… But usually in the rush of family life, it truly is just faster to do it yourself, and so we don’t do it. The summer, I think for many of us, not for everybody, but for many adults, you get a little more time back. And so that opens up the possibility of having more time to do the teaching, to hand things off. So I think that’s one reason.

The other… And I’ll tell you, Reena, what inspired my wish to do this episode is that my younger daughter, who’s about to be a high school freshman, gets her hair cut where I get my hair cut, and it’s a 17 minute walk from our house, and it’s a safe walk. And a few weeks ago, she had a haircut, and I was like, “You know what? You can walk yourself there.” It was on a Saturday, I have a card on file, and I said, “I double-checked. Just tell them to use the card on file.” The fact that she could walk there is in part, because it’s nicer out. And we live in Cleveland. There’s days in February where you don’t even go outside. So I think a lot of promoting kids’ autonomy can include them getting themselves from place to place on their own, whether it’s walking, whether it’s riding their bike, whether it’s taking public transportation, and I think we’re more at ease with that if it’s not terrible weather.

Reena Ninan
There’s also a part of me that feels a little guilty. My Indian mom did my clothes all throughout high school. I never worried about any chores or anything. It was just “focus on the books.” And I don’t feel that way about my children, because I feel like there’s so many things going on in my life, I need to remove some of this responsibility.

Lisa Damour
100%.

Reena Ninan
Why do you think it’s important that we start teaching them how to be independent?

Lisa Damour
Okay, so there’s two things in there. So one is another reason why the summer is a good idea: If you have a high school junior who is hitting it hard all school year and has no extra minute, you’re not going to say to that kid during the school year, “You’re going to take over dinner one night a week.”

Reena Ninan
What a great point, because I tried that, and you’re right. That’s the reason it failed.

Lisa Damour
It’s impractical, right? Their schedules are so full sometimes. But in the summer, you could say to your rising high school senior, “You’re taking over dinner one night a week,” because they can usually manage that. So I think summer is just prime time.

To your question of, “Why now?” You already gestured at one of the key things: We need to do less. We need to do less. We finally have time to teach. We need to do less. So Reena, when you look at the things that you could ask your kids to take over this summer, whether it’s for themselves or contributing to the family, what grade levels will they be in the fall?

Reena Ninan
They’ll be going into ninth grade, just like your daughter and eighth grade.

Lisa Damour
Okay, so they can do a lot of things. What kinds of things could you, with time to teach them how to do it, ask them to start doing or do at least during the summer that would make your life better?

Reena Ninan
You know what drives me nuts at the end of the day? Where I’ve cooked a dinner or done whatever, and I see all these dishes piled up that nobody just rinsed and loaded into the dishwasher.

Lisa Damour
100%. There’s no reason your kids can’t do that. Would you give it that to them this summer?

Reena Ninan
Yeah. I mean, I hadn’t even thought of it as this summer. And the reason why I have tried to do it and it’s failed is because they’re exhausted and it’s just too much for them.

Lisa Damour
Okay, but also, can I be honest?

Reena Ninan
Yeah.

Lisa Damour
I would have to teach my kids how I want things put in the dishwasher.

Reena Ninan
Because you have an order.

Lisa Damour
I do, I do.

Reena Ninan
I need a separate episode on that, because I’m the person who throws everything in and doesn’t know what the order is. What’s your order?

Lisa Damour
Well, I have a system, but I will tell you, Reena, I saw somewhere, and this really resonated me: In every family, there’s one person who loads a dish dishwasher like a Swedish architect, and somebody else who loads it like a raccoon on cocaine. [Laughter] But it also gets at something that we have to be honest about: Handing stuff off to kids in my house can be hard because I am a pretty controlling person, and I like it done a certain way. So sometimes the barrier to handing it off is me. And either I don’t feel like I have the time to teach them the way I want it done, or they’re not going to get it done the way I want it done. And the problem is me, and me needing to think about what is the minimum viable solution to this that I will accept so that it gets done and I let it go.

Reena Ninan
So walk me through this, Lisa. People listening have kids of different age groups. What should I have done right in the early years that I did not do with my children? And how do I assuage my guilt for my mom, who did everything and I didn’t have to do anything until I got out to college? Like, what’s age appropriate? Can we walk through the list?

Lisa Damour
We can, but before I do, actually, I want to get to something else that’s in that question, which is assuaging your guilt about having–

Reena Ninan
Having my kids do the things like, I feel a little guilty.

Lisa Damour
This is the other reason. One is, it’s good for us. We need fewer things to do, no question. The other is: It’s good for them. It is good for them to take responsibility for things that they can reasonably be expected to manage, and it’s good for them on two fronts. One is, they should learn how to do these things. It actually is important for kids to know how to do their own laundry, or to be able to make dinner one night a week, or to help with stripping the beds and remaking beds. I’ll come back to age by age, but those are just to get us started.

And the other thing, and we’ve talked about this before, but this is like, so big: Kids need to feel counted on.

Reena Ninan
Why is that so important?

Lisa Damour
We know that having a sense of purpose is important. We know that that’s a really valuable thing, to feel like, “I do things that are meaningful to me and meaningful to others,” and we know that’s very, very tightly associated with mental health and well being and all of these great things. The challenge with kids, and especially younger kids, big purpose is like, “How are you gonna save the world?” Which is not really doable or fair for a lot of kids. But what I love, love, love from my colleague, Andrew Fuligni, who’s at UCLA, who studies this. He’s like, “It’s not about purpose, like, change the world. It’s about feeling counted on.” That’s where we really see the value of of kids doing things that are meaningful to others.

Reena Ninan
And even if they complain and they hate it and they feel like they shouldn’t be doing it, you still believe that them feeling counted on is something important to feel?

Lisa Damour
It’s valuable. It is valuable. And I think we should be ready for kids to be like, “Oh, come on, really? Like, is she unloading the dishwasher?” And I think that the language we want to have on hand is to say, “Yes, you are an important member of this family. We are counting on you to keep this train on the tracks.”

Reena Ninan
What do you say to when one sibling says to the other, “Well, she’s not doing it. Why should I have to?” Or, “Dad’s not doing it, so why should I have to?”

Lisa Damour
So I think you can say, “First of all, everybody pitches in, and fair doesn’t necessarily mean equal. We’re going to ask different things of you at different ages. You have different skills, you have different available time.” We don’t have to be some perfect balance of everybody’s doing the exact same work for the exact same amount of time. There’s a lot of variables on the table. And I think we can also say, “We are counting on you. You’re a valuable member of this organization. That is why I’m going to ask you to do it.” And the key here, Reena, is utter neutral, matter-of-fact tone. When a kid brings the heat of, “Why are you asking me?” You’d be like, “Dude, it’s a Wednesday. This needs to get done. Thank you so much in advance, I really appreciate your help.” You can push back in a gentle way by not taking the bait that this is somehow a controversial request.

Reena Ninan
Can you walk us through how we do this with the different age groups?

Lisa Damour
Sure. Okay, so let me start with the older kids, because you can ask them a lot. So you can ask kids who drive to help with transporting younger siblings. You can ask them to run errands. You can ask them to be in charge of meals. Grocery shopping for a meal, making a meal at least one night a week. You can 100,000,000,000% have them be in charge of their laundry, no question.

Here’s a really good one, Reena, this is amazing. I am so impressed this person does this. I have a friend who has her college age students manage their college bills, deal with the portal where they need to pay. The parents are helping with paying, but she leaves it to her college age kids to actually log into the portal and deal with payment.

Reena Ninan
Wow. I love that. I cannot ever imagine my kids being at a point to be able to do that.

Lisa Damour
They don’t do it alone. There’s a lot of phone calls, there’s a lot of talking, there’s a lot of back and forth. I was so impressed, because first of all, it puts right in front of them how much this costs and what is at stake here financially to go to college. And it also just gets them used to the idea of, “This is your education. It’s getting paid for, or you’re helping pay for it, and you’re you need to learn how to work with these big, complicated portals on bills that need to be paid.”

Reena Ninan
One thing I think I’m hearing from you is that you have to make time if you want your kids to be independent. You actually have to stop and make time and teach them and be prepared it’s going to go a little bit slower and not as efficiently as you like.

Lisa Damour
That is the hard part, right? And that is where I will say, I shoot myself in my own foot on a regular basis. Like, “it’s just faster if I do it.” So we have to get past that. So making time, you know? So for older kids, those are some of the things I would say, you know, high school, middle school… What else do you think? You’ve got kids, high school, middle school, like, what do you think you could ask of them that you have not asked for?

Reena Ninan
Basic things like taking out the trash and the recycling on the day it’s supposed to go out. These are some basic things that we forget that adds a big stress on my life of trying to remember that I don’t want to take up the bandwidth in my head anymore, to have to remember this.

Lisa Damour
100% right? You could do caring for pets. You could do cleaning the bathrooms. You could do being responsible for gardening duties, right? I mean, gardening is a big job, and kids can perfectly well do gardening. Those are things you could absolutely ask of the middle grades, you know, late elementary.

Reena Ninan
At middle grades, late elementary and even high school, should they all have daily tasks? Like, whether it’s small or great, or do you think feeling the sense of accomplishment being counted on could be just doing it twice a week.

Lisa Damour
I think it depends. I don’t think it has to be like every single day you have to do a thing, but there are things like caring for pets that have to be done every single day. Surveying the landscape of what jobs need to be done to keep this household running, and which of these can our kids do?

And also, I will say, back to the high school, college age things: I have now said to my rising ninth grade daughter, “Going forward, you are in charge of your haircuts. You are in charge of making the appointment. You are in charge of giving them your text number so that they can remind you. I don’t want to get your reminders anymore.” And I said, “If you go, I pay for it. If you miss the appointment, you’re paying for it.”

Reena Ninan
Oh, wow.

Lisa Damour
It is not going to be fun if that happens. It’s not going to be fun for her. It’s not going to be fun for me. It’s where I get my hair cut too, so I don’t feel great about my kid ghosting them on appointments, if she does miss an appointment, which I don’t think she will, but it could happen. Think of the learning that she’s gonna get on why we don’t miss appointments.

Reena Ninan
And it’s interesting because you’ve actually explained the rules to her. So if she disappoints you, you have taken the time to explain, “these are the parameters. This is what you need to do to get get this done.”

Lisa Damour
“And you will face the natural consequences of dropping this ball if you do.” A lot of it also can be handing stuff off to kids to do their own thing.

Now, one thing I was thinking about Reena: If my kid couldn’t walk, and maybe if she were older… I think there’s another thing here around kids taking more public transportation to get into things, and being more independent. And I will tell you, every time I have asked my daughters to step up and do something more, they haven’t been like, “Yay! Thank you so much for asking me!” But you can see their pride in the autonomy. You can see that there’s pleasure in being like, “Oh yeah, I do that for myself now.”

Reena Ninan
So while they complain, you say deep down inside, when it’s achieved and accomplished, there is a sense of–

Lisa Damour
“I feel good.”

Okay, thinking about littler kids. I definitely did not ask as much of my kids when they were little as I could. But one thing we did that has always been one of my favorite things, is that when my younger daughter was four years old, she was in charge of restocking the toilet paper in the bathrooms. And we called it “Toilet Paper Santa,” because she would put the bag of toilet paper and go around the house, and she would distribute the toilet paper to the bathrooms. And so when it was time, we’d be like, “Hey, Toilet Paper Santa, you need to make a visit!” Younger kids can help with food preparation, you know, peeling string off beans. They can definitely help with pet stuff. Oh, they’re good at folding laundry. Actually, younger kids are very good at folding laundry. It’s a great thing. We dump all of our laundry onto our bed and my husband yells, “We’ve got foldies!” And it’s long time been my younger daughter’s job to fold our laundry.

Reena Ninan
How do you know if you’ve given them too much to try and do that it becomes overwhelming?

Lisa Damour
Yeah, I think one thing I would wonder is, if it becomes a real point of friction. I think there’s some friction to be expected, and we can use our cheery, matter-of-fact, “Of course you’re going to do this. Thanks so much for asking more questions!” But if it becomes a real point of friction, it may be too much for them.

There’s something I learned when I was in my training about toddlers and handing things over to them that actually applies at all ages. And it’s a stage-wide process by which you hand things over. So it’s not like you say to a kid, “Okay, you’re now in charge of this,” and you walk away. That may fail, right? They may not really know the steps. But Reena, when I was 29 we moved to Cleveland, and I was doing some training with this very, very esteemed psychoanalyst named Erna Furman. Her area was little children, toddlers. And what I learned from her is: When you’re handing a task over to a kid, there’s actually steps: There’s doing for, doing with, standing by to admire, and then letting them do it on their own, independent from you. So of course, here we’re talking about things like tying shoes, right? First you do it for them. Then, do you remember teaching your kids to tie their shoes?

Reena Ninan
Total pain in the butt! These are moments in parenting when it flashes back, you’re like, “Aghhh!”

Lisa Damour
Exactly.

Reena Ninan
It’s getting the shoes on and getting out the door. People have forgotten that period of life. It is hard.

Lisa Damour
It is hard. It is hard. And that was such a good example of, “Oh my gosh. So much faster to do it ourselves.” Or zipping their coats? So much faster to do it ourselves. So doing for and then doing with. Making time, carving out the time, whether it’s doing with teaching a kid how to make dinner, doing with getting on the public bus with your kid before they have to do it alone and you take the ride together. Of course, this really requires time. It could be doing with, “Let’s do a round of laundry.” Doing with, “Let’s load the dishwasher together, and I’ll show you how I like it.”

Okay, so there’s first doing for, then there’s doing with. Then there’s standing by to admire, where you just stand back and let them do it. They load the dishwasher, you cheer them on. They make dinner, you cheer them on. And then there’s the point where you say, “You know what, we need you to make dinner Wednesday night. We aren’t getting home til seven, so whatever you put on the table, we’re going to eat.” So it moves towards independence.

So to your question of how do you know if it’s too much? You’ll get feedback every step of the way. If the kid can’t tie their shoes still, it’s too early, it’s too much. If the kid is really struggling to figure out the bus while you’re just at the second bus ride, you’re just like, “All right, you lead, I’ll follow,” and they really don’t know what they’re doing? Yeah, then you walk it back. Doing for, doing with, standing by to admire, letting them do it entirely on their own, gives both the teaching that we have to do and also gives a little bit of room for maybe realizing that we’ve overshot in terms of what we’re asking of them.

Reena Ninan
I like that: Doing for, doing with, and then standing by to admire. And I guess the first step would actually be, you got to make time in your schedule to do this, to have the patience, which is hard.

The comment that I get often in my home when I ask something to be done is, “Okay, your slave reporting for duty, Mom.”

Lisa Damour
Interesting.

Reena Ninan
That’s how they view it, that I am the task master here, you know? So if you get pushback from your kids, how do you approach that?

Lisa Damour
Oh, man, well, okay, for that comment, there’s a few different things. You could be like, “Oh, would you like to learn more about slavery? We can do some reading about what that really involved.” You could be like, “That is not something you throw around.” So you could do that. And I think you could be like, “Yep, this is how we’re gonna do it here.” “Well, other kids don’t have to do this!” “Well, their families may not have the kind of high expectations I have of you.” This is one of those things where we are so within our rights. It is so important and valuable to ask kids to do more for themselves, to ask them to do more for the family. We’re not asking ridiculous things. We are asking in a kind way.

I’m thinking about our recent episode with Gabor Maté and Gordon Neufeld. We don’t tell our friends, “Hey, set the table.” We say to our kid, “Hey, it’s time for you to set the table.” You can be really gentle about it. And so then any pushback doesn’t really even warrant much engagement. The pushback is so reflexive in a kid, natural in a kid, it’s their job. But by the time you’re having a negotiation with your kid about whether or not it’s fair for you to ask them to set the table, you’re already on the wrong track.

Reena Ninan
This is my problem. Everything’s a negotiation. I’ve got to learn to shut it down, Lisa!

Lisa Damour
Yeah, and you could just be like, “Yep, that’s the expectation. I know you can do it. Thanks, kid.”

Reena Ninan
That is a great response. Where were you five years ago? [Laughter]

Lisa Damour
Just stay down the line. And you can do it with a twinkle in your eye, and also reassure yourself your kid’s gonna feel good about it.

Reena Ninan
I like that. And I like the teachable moments when they throw things in that they think are funny or offhanded, that it can be education, learning.

Lisa Damour
Absolutely, absolutely.

Reena Ninan
Not to waste that opportunity.

Wow. Well, there is just a lot here. I am so excited. Summer is here. I also want to ask you: What advice do you have for parents when everything goes off the rails in three weeks, and we’re like, “When does school begin?”

Lisa Damour
Well, you know there’s no one who likes routines more than I do. Also, I was thinking back to a previous episode we did about how much structure should kids have in the summer. And our guidance there was: A few unstructured weeks are fine, but then it’s actually pretty reasonable to start to reestablish routines. So it may be that two or three weeks of cereal at midnight and lounging around. And then you find a rhythm that is a little bit more productive than that.

Reena Ninan
So what do you have for us for a Summer Parenting to Go?

Lisa Damour
One piece of advice I have is: If you think you’re going to run into resistance, you might bring choice into the matter. So you might survey all of the things that your kid could reasonably take over and then say to them, “Here are the things I would like for you to start doing this summer: You might handle dinner one night a week. You take charge of your dentist appointments…” And say, “I’d like for you to pick two or three of these that you’re going to take over. You don’t have to do them all. Or you can propose things that I’m not thinking of that would make sense for you to take over.” Sometimes that works especially well with teenagers who don’t really like to be told, but to say, “We’ve come to the place where you can do much more for yourself. But I want you to want you to decide what it is you’re going to take over this summer.” That can actually move the ball forward more comfortably than just saying, “I’ve decided from now on, laundry is yours.” That may or may not work with your kid. And if you know it’s not going to go over as well as you wish it would, this is another option.

Reena Ninan
Well, Lisa, I am so excited to get this insight, and I’m going to try it. I am going to try this at my home and see where it goes. I’m going to take you up on this about the summer of independence and how we can find ways. But I’m realizing I’ve got to find time in my schedule if I want to do this.

Lisa Damour
And that is the challenge.

Reena Ninan
I’ll see you next week.

Lisa Damour
I’ll see you next week.