Children need to gain experience - even if it hurts

For this reason, parents should hold back and leave their children the freedom they need to make their own experiences - even if that often costs a lot to overcome.

Children learn through experience - not with the mind

Until elementary age children learn almost exclusively through experience, the mind is still relatively little involved. They solve problems or new situations not by thinking, but by trying out. No wonder, then, that verbose explanations and admonitions from parents are of little use. The child wants to feel, touch, try, act and get to know the world. The more experiences a child makes at this age, the more positive it will have on his or her development as well as on physical and mental maturity.

Trust makes you courageous

The father did not pay attention for just a moment - already one and a half year old Lasse climbs up the ladder towards the gutter. What is there for possibilities? Lasse's father thinks feverishly: climb behind and pick off the little one and save or just stand under it if he falls and trust him. He decides to go for the second option, if only because it could be dangerous on the ladder if Luke defends himself or tries to escape. When the little guy got back to earth safely, they both learned something: the father, how good it is to trust his child and how proud you feel when you've made it. Lukas is proud of everything else, he has learned that he can trust his body and himself, he has tackled something self-contained and ended it. And he has learned that his daddy trusts him. Unanimously, the two go to the kitchen to tell Mama about the great thing.

We all know this situation in a variety of variations, and all too often we make the mistake of prematurely stopping our child out of fear that something might happen to him. However, this protective instinct has a decisive catch.

Dad will take care!

Children who are overprotected, with their parents at their feet at the slightest difficulty and danger, lose an important instinct: they lose their innate caution because mum or dad will be careful. The end of the song is that particularly unpleasant mishaps happen to children who are overprotected. The fact that they do not have their own experiences - this includes, for example, coping with a difficult situation - can also develop their self-esteem inadequate: they are unsure and no longer trust themselves.

Help me to do it myself

This principle from the Montessori pedagogy also applies when it comes to children's experiences. Because, of course, you can not let your child run blind in any danger and hope that it somehow comes to nothing. It is best if the parents stand by and are just there when they are needed. So Lasse's father is under the ladder to catch his son when he falls. And if the little one wants to balance on the beam in the yard, which hangs in the air at a height of one meter, Lasse's father walks beside his son, but without holding on to him. He's just there to shake hands with his son when he dies - a good feeling for both father and son.

We love our children and we want to protect them. We give them the best protection, if we make them ready for the world and equip them with self-confidence and the right assessment in their own abilities.