How do you help a child be more independent?
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Hi Everyone. As you can see by my subject line, I'm wondering how to help a child be more independent. My step-son is 8 years old and only spends 4 days a month with my husband and I. Everything is done for him at his mom's place, she will dress him, wash him, dry him off when he gets out of the shower. You name it, she does it. I've been looking around online a bit for advice as to what his dad and I can do with the little amount of time we have him, to help him want to do more things on his own. I know a lot of it will have to do with his mom, but she's apparently trying to keep him dependent on her.
Any advice will be great, and no talking to her about this won't help and will only make things worse. Thanks all. 
Here's a good article on it:
Here's a good article on it: http://shrink4men.com/2012/10/02/why-some-borderline-narcissistic-and-hi...
Same thing here for all three skids. In my case the biomom (BM) IS a CHILD PROTECTIVE WORKER in her county!!! She has babied all three, never says no to them, and also acts like a 12 year old herself so she can be BFFs to her children.
It's disgusting. But then again their father went along with this plan of action for six years. Good for your DH to want to change things and stand up to her.
You might start by encouraging stepson to be a "big boy" and letting him do small tasks for himself. Then praise him when he takes the initiative. Who knows, he may just go back to mom's and say "no I can do it myself."
Of course the normal mother would be proud but the type of narcissistic, alienating BM that we see on these forums will be horrified and then will feel "usurped." So be on the look out for blow back. If you see the blow back then you'll know what you're dealing with.
Also research Dr. Craig Childress on youtube.
This: http://shrink4men.com/2
This:
http://shrink4men.com/2011/05/17/does-your-wife-or-ex-wife-have-a-golden...
..is BM to a 'T'. My husband showed me that site a few weeks ago.
We've tried letting him do things on his own, and he just doesn't seem to want to. He does a half-a$$ed job of things half the time. All we can do is encourage, encourage, encourage. DH definitely wants to change things, so that's a big plus, I'm just not sure where to start. DH and I stayed at my sister's this past weekend, she has 3 boys (a baby, 6 yo, and 11 yo), and I couldn't believe how much the 6 yo does for himself. He even makes his own toast and can use a microwave (of course with adult supervision)! My nieces have been doing things for themselves for a LONG time already, and they're about the same as as SS as well.
The back lash is one thing we're afraid of, but SS is really smart, I'm sure he'll see through the BM soon enough. Hoping he will any way.
You get a kid to be more
You get a kid to be more independent by having him be more independent. I don't think an 8 yr old even needs dad to watch him take a shower. He can figure it out.
Or you could say, "Make sure
Or you could say, "Make sure you wash your hair and arm pits." Honestly, the thought of watching an 8-yr-old bathe gives me the super creeps. Egh.
If BM is going to continue to
If BM is going to continue to do everything for him at her house, you're going to have to make it a situation where he doesn't want her to. I suggest talking to your husband to make sure he is on the same page, but this is what we did with my Skids who were being done the same way (but by the grandmother, because BM was out on the town) before DH & I got custody.
DH would ask Skids "Aren't you a little too old for your mother to be bathing/dressing you, don't you want to do it yourself?" If he/she said he didn't know how, then DH or I would step in an teach.
Next: "Aren't you afraid your friends will think you're still a baby?" That is what ended "mommy" or in our case "grandmommy" giving the baths & dressing them. Once they started thinking outside of the home, they didn't want to be babied anymore and became independent so that they couldn't continue to do those things which they were perfectly capable of.
I wouldn't mention BM by
I wouldn't mention BM by name, but I would think once an 8-yr-old gets that small sense of freedom and control, they will fight for it more and more (most of the time).
The problem is that he
The problem is that he doesn't want to do it himself, he just shrugs and is kind of lazy about it. He'll even go to the extreme to leave his pull-up on the floor in his room and I have to tell him to pick it up and put it in the garbage. Yes he's still in pull-ups, BM took him to the doctor and got a prescription for medication, and she didn't give it to him regularly. We can't wake him up in the night because he won't go back to sleep after, and we aren't entirely sure it's just that he's sleeping too heavy either because there was an incident when he said 'I thought I was wearing my pull-up so I just went'.
You are going to have to make
You are going to have to make him do things for himself for a while. I promise you, after a little while he will want to shower on his own, even at BM's. Right now it isn't normal to him, but it will be in a couple of months. I understand it may be a medical issue, but if he has to clean his own sheets, he will probably have a lot less accidents. Take him out of the pull-up and help him learn on his own. And so what if he doesn't go back to sleep, he's 8, not 2. Tell him to stay in bed until a certain time even if he's not asleep. You don't have to stay up until he goes back to sleep. He'll survive.
You can't control what
You can't control what happens at BM's house. All you can do is set expectations at yours. So give him the freedom to do stuff on his own, to get it wrong, show him how to clean up if he makes a mess and encourage him that he is being a big boy and all grown up.
SD has been washing herself for quite a while but one of the small things that we did when we had her for weekends was to show her how to make her own bowl of cereal in the mornings and let her get up on her own and watch some cartoons. So we made sure everything was out for her and some milk was in a little jug in the fridge. Now she can get everything herself and will fix it all herself. It is a win all around because we get a longer lie in too!
That sounds like a great
That sounds like a great idea. He's not a cereal kid though, he likes his eggs and toast. I'm thinking of showing him how to pull out the step stool and make his own toast, and get his own juice. I just have to rearrange things in the kitchen so that he can reach things easier.
He's going to have to figure
He's going to have to figure out something easier to make. Toast for sure. Don't move things around to make it easier, he can move chairs and figure it out.
^^^THIS. hell, at the age of
^^^THIS. hell, at the age of FOUR i was making my own toast and cereal. and dad kept the damn toaster on top of the fridge!!! and i did not need a tutorial in how do to operate the toaster or pour a bowl of cereal, as i had seen dad do it thousands of times. i also knew how to pull the barstool over to access the top of the fridge. doesnt take a rocket scientist to come to logical conclusions.
this kid knows how to shower. he knows exactly what mommy does with the soap and the shampoo and the towel to dry off. he may need a bit of instruction on how not to get shampoo in his eye, but after a few times of that i'm sure he'd be able to figure it out.
If this kid has had
If this kid has had everything done for him for forever, then he's lacking skills. Expecting him to figure it out, or to want to do it himself, is setting the bar pretty high as he's aware he doesn't know how. And who knows what message his BM is verbalizing to him about why she's doing this stuff him?
I'd start out with telling him he's going to have some new responsibilities because DH and you see he's ready. Start by making a list of things he can already do and talk about those for a bit. Then talk about things that he might like doing (have 3-4 of your own, pre-selected, age-appropriate choices available if he's stuck or fixated on being a pilot).
Then choose one thing to work on that weekend. Break it down into a few steps and maybe do a chart or something about the different steps.
Spend the entire weekend noticing when he does things out of his own initiative and when he does something new/age-appropriate. Tell him you're proud of him, that you notice how much he can do, that you appreciate his help, that he's doing a great job, that he's showing great independence, that you think it's great that he tries even if he's not sure he'll succeed right away... whatever. 90% of parenting is making lemonade. The rest is being consistent. Well, and I guess a large part is having fun whenever you can. So my math may be off.
Make him do it all himself
Make him do it all himself when he is at your house. He will figure it out if you do not give him any choice.
Anything that we considered
Anything that we considered age-appropriate - we just told the kids to get on with it. They made a mistake once or twice, it was corrected kindly, and eventually they learned.
One SD did manage to microwave some cupcakes for 10 minutes instead of 10 seconds once (she was about 10 at the time and again her mother is of the overprotective - or suffocating - kind). She opened our door to say the microwave was belching smoke. Having grown up with an extremely, shall we say "inventive" sibling I was out of bed and had that thing off before my SO had even fully woken up. In any case we have smoke alarms.
We aired out the house, replaced the microwave and she has never made a similar mistake again (and the incident has now gone down in family folklore). She's actually gettin pretty good in the kitchen now, they both are (#proudofthem).