Hi - Sue Blaney here with your Parenting Tip from Parenting Teens Info.com

My tip this week is Allow Your Teen to Fail >>Listen

This is the third tip from my free downloadable e-book titled “Secrets to Success in Parenting Your Teen.”

Think back in your life to a time you failed, a time where you really made a mistake. I’ll bet you learned a lesson you haven’t forgotten. We learn a lot by our mistakes, don’t we? It is difficult as a parent to watch your child fail, or to see him or her experience pain. But this is part of life…no getting around it. And you need to make sure your teen isn’t too fragile to handle it.

There is a lot of talk today about what we now call helicopter parenting. This refers to parents who hover too much. Helicopter parenting isn’t always easy to distinguish; my husband and I still wonder if we’re hovering too much at times.  But, if you overdo your support to the point that your teen has no experience with failure, you are doing your teen a serious disservice.

The kind of anxious, over-protective parenting that makes sure kids never mess up actually undermines and diminishes a child’s sense of self, confidence, competence. What happens is kids become fragile, afraid to step outside of their comfort zone. Afraid to try new things because they don’t want to fail. Also, you should know that helicopter parenting is actually beginning to be linked with increased teen depression, anxiety and even substance abuse.

As a generation of parents we’ve managed and orchestrated our kids lives, soccer games, play dates, music lessons, community service, and more…and some of you need to learn how to step back a bit. Knowing when to intervene and when to hang back is a judgment call and you won’t always get it right. But you need to try hard to achieve a balance so that your kids can develop the skills and resilience that they will need so they can survive life’s ups and downs. Allowing your teen to “fail” may actually be doing him or her a favor.

We’ll continue with another secret in next week’s 2 minute tip. And feel free to share this free e-book with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for subscribing to my Two-Minute Tips for Parenting Teens……. ‘Til next time…I'm Sue Blaney