Teaching Your Children to Fly
A Plan for Independence
by Merrilee Boyack

Few parents of my acquaintance have an actual overall plan for raising their children. They have a vague idea that they will feed and clothe their children and watch them until they grow big enough that the government says it’s legal to send them out on their own. Perhaps somewhere along the line they might teach them a thing or two. But most parents simply approach parenting on a day-to-day basis.

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All our lives we’re taught to make plans and set goals and to write them down. We have a plan for our education, a plan for our career, a plan for our homes, and we have tons of plans for how to lose weight. You wouldn’t think of going on a family vacation without having at least some idea of where you were going and how long you were going to stay. And yet, most parents haven’t even thought about having a parenting plan, much less writing one down.

Being the rather obsessive-compulsive list maker that I am, I spent several months consulting with my husband on what we wanted to do with our children, and I actually wrote down The Plan. Over the past twenty-three years we have, of course, modifi ed and adjusted The Plan, and it has worked amazingly well.

I call it “The Fabulously Brilliant, Flexible, and Comprehensive Plan for Raising Independent Children Who Will Be Able to Take Care of Themselves as Adults and Have a Family Plan of Their Own.” But how about if we just call it “The Plan” for short?

To begin with The Plan, you need to start with the end in mind. Think back for a moment to when you first left home, perhaps for college or a mission or a job and apartment. When you moved out, what did you not know how to do? What came as a surprise to you? I can remember several things: I had never had a checking account, never taken care of a car, never made my own doctor’s appointments, and on and on. Spend a few minutes and come up with a list of things that you suddenly had to scramble to learn how to do.

Developing a Master Plan
Pull out a piece of paper and write, “How I Want My Children to Turn Out.” You’re probably going to want kids who can care for themselves, keep a job, have good professional and interpersonal skills, and so forth. Now, we all want our children to be rocket scientists with huge back accounts and fabulous families, but let’s be realistic. (I told my kids I needed one plastic surgeon, one mechanic, one dentist, and one travelindustry professional to make my retirement perfect. None of them are cooperating.)

So, write five realistic main goals or results. This part of The Plan is absolutely crucial. You will be spending many hours of many days doing things that seem trivial or pointless, and you have to have that end goal firmly in mind to get yourself through them. My husband and I made an incredibly long list of every task we could think of that our children needed to be able to do to get to the end goal of independence. You may start with ours, but don’t assume it covers everything. We are constantly adding to our list and modifying it. I had to add all kinds of girls things like “hair management” that hadn’t even occurred to me before. Then we took each of these tasks and assigned it to an age at which we thought the child would be capable of learning it. Keep in mind that every child is different. Some learn things faster and are more motivated. So this needs to be a fairly flexible plan.

Let’s start with three-year-olds. They should be able to begin learning to dress themselves, use the toilet by themselves, brush teeth, pick up toys, say prayers, and maybe clean glass tables. By seven, wash dishes, clean toilets, pull weeds, and have a savings account. At fourteen, be able to do some basic interior decorating, understand basics of food storage, and have social security card number memorized. You get the idea.

In addition to the necessities, remember to customize the details of the list to your family’s interests and needs. You may be big sports buffs or really into music, literary sponges or the outdoorsy types. Make the list fit who your children are.

Training
Have a separate list for each child that you can all refer to. And always remember, this is a training program, not just chores. So unlike a checklist, this approach will take some different strategies.

Introduce the task far in advance. For example, you can say, “Matthew, you get to learn how to make salads this year. Isn’t that exciting! I think we’ll work on that in about three months, so in June, we’ll begin.” This does a couple things. The first is that you can gauge the child’s reaction, so you’ll have a better idea how to go about the training. The second is that he’ll have the chance for an observational training period, which sounds fancy but really just means he’ll watch you make salads for the next three months and start helping a little.

Select the trainer. In other words, it doesn’t always have to be you. Dad, siblings, neighbors, grandparents, your friends, and their friends can all help. Don’t forget to tap into all your sources: school, church, Scouts, and so on. And don’t think you’re imposing. How wonderful would you feel if someone came to you and said, “Merrilee, you have such a wonderful reputation as a bread maker. Could you teach my daughter how to do that?” I would first ask if they were taking hallucinogens, but then I would be so flattered!

And there’s another advantage: There is no tool quite so wonderful for blasting through stereotypes as having a woman teach “guy” things and a man teach “chick” things. Who taught my boys how to make chocolate chip cookies? Their dad.

Hold several training sessions. It takes an average child seven or eight presentations to learn something. You’ll repeat a lot, but don’t let that tempt you to be lazy about it. Be specific in each of the instructions every time. Then go through each step and after each one ask, “Do you have any questions on how to do this or what this means?”

Remember these are training sessions; the kids aren’t going for Olympic gold in bedmaking. Don’t insist on perfection for a long time. Just keep training. When they mess up, you can reassure them, “We’re just in the training period. You’re supposed to mess up. That’s called learning. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it after you practice.”

Follow up with practice sessions. After many training sessions, allow the children to perform the task and then let you check it.

Incorporate the task into your lifestyle. Eventually the children will master the tasks, and when that happens, sit back and let them do it. The general rule: If they can do it, don’t do it for them.

You’re probably wondering how far to take this. Remember to keep balance. My kids can wash their own clothes, and during the summer they do just that. During the school year, they bring their clothes down and I run them through, then they take them back up to their rooms and put them away. They’re hanging on to the skills, and we’ve adapted the requirements to fit their time constraints.

One last note: Remember it’s also important to keep doing a few things as part of your nurturing. Ann had taught all her children to cook. But every morning she made them breakfast as an expression of her love. Roger knew his kids were capable of doing the dishes, but he would always do them on Sunday after the big family dinner to show his love.

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Merrilee Browne Boyack is a popular speaker at BYU Education Week and Time Out for Women events. She is the author of Strangling Your Husband is NOT an Option and 52 Weeks of Fun Family Service?, as well as talks on CD such as How Do I Change My Husband? and Teaching Your Children to Fly, from which this article is excerpted. Merrilee has been married for twenty-seven years and is the mother of four boys.

Deseret Book

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Goal Setting Works! Posted by Laura from Iowa Goal setting is amazing. My husband and I had been married for 10 years and had no children. Two years after we joined the LDS Church we had our one and only child. I remember the day she was born telling the nurse, "I'm afraid to raise a teenager!" She said, "Let's just get this baby born. You'll have plenty of time to figure that out." She was right. Somehow you do figure it out with or without a plan. We let her help us figure out how to raise her by allowing her to express her feelings with words. When she was in kindergarten the teacher said she was amazed that she would say, "I feel angry." instead of acting angry. We did a lot of compromising instead of battling with the wills. She learned self discipline instead of us having to discipline her. She graduated from college and married a returned missionary that she had known since we first moved to Iowa. None of that had been written in a goal, but what was written down actually did happen! I had learned about writing goals down so I thought it would be fun to try it shortly after she was born. She was born in New York and we moved to Iowa when she was six years old. I imagined we would raise her in the Midwest because both my husband and I were from North Dakota, so I wrote that when she graduated from high school we would go to New York to visit and then take a trip to Europe. I wrote that we would have a house and that was before we even knew we were going to leave our one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, New York and move to Iowa. The funny thing is, when she graduated from high school we went the opposite direction. We went to California instead of New York and then to China instead of Europe. Even though the direction was different we still met the goal of taking her to another country after she graduated from high school. One thing we all learned from that experience is how much we appreciate what we take for granted in our own country. With or without a plan life happens and you learn from experience. I was never much of a list maker, but I do know from experience what you write down can actually happen.
This is all true! Posted by Melanie from Duvall, WA I have one of Merrilee's books and I *LOVE* it. She has a great sense of humor and KNOWS what she is talking about! I love the information she gives and I refer to it as a reminder how to handle helping the kids learn what I need them to do. THANKS!
Teaching Children to Fly Posted by P from Virginia I was reading over this article with a snicker as I identified with Merrilee's obsessiveness. I thought back to my own growing up (?) (cut a bit short) and questioned rather smugly, if a formal 'list' is really necessary. --Personally, I didn't remember being formally 'taught' many of the tasks of daily living, yet I felt capable, since from my own perception, I thought I approached most tasks from an analytical, logical view and could reason out solutions as the need arose. In reality, now, do I really think that I or my own children just automatically develop and mature?? As I pondered and thought on it, I admired the many selfless hours my daughter and son-in-law spend with their boys teaching life skills, social ethics, and gospel principles, ...and all things in between. It caused me to reflect on yet another possible deficit in my own child-rearing, and wonder if the whole family and extended family might have benefited if I had had, and taught, a more comprehensive 'Life Skills Plan'. That realization makes me ever more grateful that my children survived the growing up process relatively intact. The Lord has intervened and compensated for my lack on a constant basis, both then and now, --for which I am eternally thankful. You young parents: initiate a plan and use it. Family life is the only true Eternal Joy. A Mother, Gr.Mother, Gr.Gr.Mother
thank you Posted by Stacy from Colorado thank you for your ideas for teching our children. I am now looking forward to a funner summer with my children. Teaching requires more practic then I sometimes allow so I was grateful to know how many times it takes to learn something. I am going to ask them what they want to learn as well as things I feel our important for them to learn. Again thank you, Stacy
A Great reminder for all parents. Posted by Ken from Australia "Teaching Your Children To Fly" is a very useful and inspiring article.
Thank you Posted by June from Australia I wish someone had given me this sort of advice when I was raising my four children. I hope my daughter will take this advice when I pass it on to her, to help plan her children's training.