When I was a primary school teacher, I believed I was responsible for everything in each of my student’s lives. If the student was not behaving, learning, loving school, or making friends, it was my job to fix it. While I believe that thinking came from a good place – I really wanted my students to flourish – the belief that I was solely responsible for each student’s growth and happiness was incredibly faulty. It put an unnecessary burden on myself and undermined the competence of both the student and their parents.

When you care about a child, it can be unclear when to step in and when to step back. My general guidelines are below:

• Focus on growing competence. This applies to both children and adults. I ask myself, “If I take responsibility, will I undermine their competence or encourage it?” As a simple example, if I tie an 8-year-old child’s shoelaces every day, they will not learn to do it. The more I take responsibility for shoelaces (or their room, their grades, their choices), the less opportunity they have to learn. And importantly, I will always be responsible.
• They are responsible for their choices. If a child is sad, disappointed, or has made a large mistake, it can be tempting to rush in and fix the problem. For example, you might pay the speeding fine, finish their work, or write an excuse for not finishing the assessment. When you take responsibility for their choices, they don’t learn how to carry that weight. The weight is their responsibility, and the carrying needs to be practiced.
• You are responsible for scaffolding. Scaffolding is the structure around something that provides support/strength. In teaching, this is good instruction, care for students, feedback, and differentiation (amongst other things). It is that scaffolding that helps students make good choices. At home you might scaffold by ensuring they have a place to study, being kind, not shaming them, and feeding them meals. You provide scaffolding so they can flourish and make good choices within those structures.
• School or parent? This is heavily debated in the news, with headlines stating that “teachers should be teaching (insert just about anything)” and “parents need to do better at (insert almost anything here too)”. Neither parent nor teacher is solely responsible for the child because we are a community. We should be working together within our own skill set and collaboratively. I see great change when both the school and the parents own their part.

Deciding what you are responsible for and what you are not is very important work. It helps make it clear when you should show up and when you should let others take over. It reduces your stress because you are only doing things that you should be doing, and it allows other people to grow in competence and confidence.