Michele Cheplic another blogger in Parenting Advice asks Would You Let Your Teen Run for Governor? She says she wouldn’t… but I would.
When I talk about never setting limitations on teens, I do not mean not setting limits. There is a big difference. To set limits is to make rules, restrictions, and guidelines for their safety and based on their maturity level. Setting limitations, to me, means limiting the expectations of what you expect from them and what they can expect from themselves.
My parents unintentionally set limitations on me as a teen. I had a love for drawing and art and decided pretty early that I wanted to be an architect or artist. This made little sense to them and they told me that “black girls didn’t get hired as architects” (yes, I know that was ignorant), and “You had to be very lucky to make it as an artist”. Instead they insisted I focus on my serious endeavors such as law and legal assistant, paths I abandoned as soon as I was from under their reach. Who knows what I could have accomplished had they not set limitations in my mind on what I would be able to accomplish.
Back to letting a teen run for Govenor… well, that’s a bit of stretch. But looking at my passionate teenagers and their “Superman” mentalities, I have to wonder who am I to try to stop them from doing something that they are interested in. Even if there is just a snowball’s chance in Florida of achieving it, you have to at least let them try.
Many parents set limitations on their kids in order to protect them from the pain of failure, but there is even value in allowing them to fail. You will have the opportunity to teach them that it is not the failure that is important, but how you react to it and the lessons you learn. So if young Mr. Christiansen does not become Governor of Wisconsin, if he is well supported, it won’t be long before he is Mayor of his town or city.
If you liked this you should also read my other posts at the home blog, the homeschooling blog, the parents blog, and the frugal blog. You can read my recent posts here.
Also read:
Disciplining other People’s Teens
Are Your Teens Bracelets a Code for Sex?