This is a big topic for parenting. As a mom, I asked myself in our daily activity whether I should empower her in this or that.
I come to realization that empowerment bring lots of benefit to children as early as 3 years old. I have started to empower EeRynn to walk up the stairs at 24 months. I have started to wean her from bottle to cup at 18 months and let her spill and coordinate her hand for cup feeding. I have empowered her to sense her urge to pass motion and not force her to sit on potty to form the toilet habit. I have empowered her to choose what she wants to do during her free time. Recently, I have empower her to choose not to have afternoon nap after school even I knew she's tired.
All these empowerment comes with joy and pain. Joy is seeing her enjoying as she gets what she wants. The benefit that comes along is her self esteem & self confident increased, ability to control her emotions in new environment, ability to learn to bear with the consequence that comes with her choices. I enjoyed seeing her growing as a confident 4 years old child.
The pain is when she fell and mommy has to bear the blame of allowing her to practice her coordination too early. The pain is when she spill the milk and I have to do the cleaning up. The pain is when she's constipated because she holds from going to toilet and chooses to play. The pain is to handle her crankiness when she's too tired to feed herself during dinner because no afternoon nap.
I realised the most important things as parents are to control our expression & emotions when our children are struggling with the consequence of their decision. As a mom, I have choose to explain to her when she's frustrated coping with the circumstances from her decision and help her to cope better like offering one or two solutions at 4 years old capacity.
For example, it took me a while to let her understand that if she holds her pooh pooh and continue to play, she will get constipated instead. It was painful when constipation happens to her but the reality discipline has made her understand the linkage between the 2. I make sure I am there to support her when she's in pain passing motion and to comfort her and subtly explain to her so she understand. Good news is she goes to toilet promptly when she needs to now.
My journey raising her has been meaningful and I hope God will continue to watch over us and we will be BFF.
