Life matters
BEFORE being allowed to move out of home with friends with whom I attended university, my parents placed three conditions on my independence.
I had to be able to afford car insurance and registration for my little Daihatsu Charade, I had to agree to come home for lunch each Sunday — and help prepare it — and I had to be able to cook three different meals which had vegetables in them, presumably, to prevent me dying of university-related scurvy.
These conditions were not negotiable, and looking back, my parents set me up well, not only to live in a share house but to be able to claim my independence.
Independence is what truly defines being an adult.
Independence is, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, the ability to live your life without being helped or influenced by other people. It is freedom. It cannot be overrated. It must be desired, fought for and claimed.
Independence is not something that magically happens with age.
It is something that must be thought of in our parenting to assist our children to claim it for themselves.
The big question is how do we do that in a world where our children rarely take a step without hearing our helicopter blades above them and, at least in our house, with both parents working, to keep the house running and to keep our children safe, we drive them to and from sport practice and their myriad activities much more than our parents before us ever did.
One great friend who believes independence is the greatest thing her children can achieve has always championed “choices versus consequences” as her parenting mantra.
She sets clear expectations of behaviour with her children and if they don’t meet with those expectations there are consequences.
A great example is that she has always offered her children a lift to school even though they are within walking distance but they have to be packed and ready to walk out the door at 8.30am otherwise the car leaves without them.
As the story goes, in the middle of winter on a day of pouring rain and howling winds, her middle child was dawdling and was not ready when she was leaving at the designated time.
She didn’t yell at him when he wasn’t ready or nag at him in advance of the designated departure time, she simply left.
He was shocked, wet and cold by the time he got to school but, as she tells the story, from that day forward he set his alarm 15 minutes earlier.
In one life lesson he learnt that the world did not revolve around him and a step towards independence was taken.
Another mum who has raised multiple boys into responsible, kind and contributing young men says “chores and consequences” are her secret to building independence.
She had a list of chores that her boys were required to do from the age of four and the list was rotated weekly.
She said the chores were required to be done irrespective of what else they had going on and she refused to remind them to do them.
If they weren’t done, they didn’t get driven to whatever the next sporting match, training or game they had on.
They then would invariably have to explain to the coach and the team that as a result of their failure to contribute as part of the family they were also forbidden from contributing to their sporting team that week.
Each boy lived the experience of having to apologise to coach and team.
One apparently even missed a grand final because of the failure to do chores.
All of them understood the importance of their contribution to family and in turn were better equipped to claim their independence. Masterful.
We have long had a parenting goal to raise children that are respectful, decent humans who have a strong work ethic, a sense of community and do not have a sense of entitlement.
In short, we want them to be independent and if the experts are to be believed there are many years of chores and potentially some cold walks to school ahead of us if that is to be achieved.
Rachel Schutze is a principal lawyer at Gordon Legal, wife and mother of three. [Ed’s note: Ms Schutze is married to Corio MP Richard Marles.]