The importance of self-reliance and independence

Stimulating your child to be independent and self-reliance is very important. It is not desirable that you as a parent keep doing everything for your child. In this way, the child does not learn anything. By doing things themself, the child learns important skills. The early years are very important, everything becomes much easier to learn. With the newly acquired skills, the child can enter the world to discover. By learning to crawl or walk, the child can suddenly literally going everywhere in the house. Dress themself, making a puzzle by themself, ... The child learns both skills physically and cognitively.

For a child who 'can do things by themself' - if accompanied well by the parents - leads to success experiences. These success experiences ensure that the self-confidence and the self-image of the child being positively influenced.

Things that can be done such as: eating themself, drinking from a large glass, sitting on a regular chair, ... gives the child the idea that he can actually do quite a lot and that he is already big. This offers for children more sufficient incentive to learn and do more things and to discover.

Children who are positively encouraged to do things independently become also more active and enterprising. By the experiences that children gain are also the brain stimulated.
Up to the toddler and kindergarten age, independence usually goes on learn skills that children to do things themselves. In addition to learning practical skills, as you tie laces and wear your coat, it is also important that children have more complex tasks / assignments to be able to tackle independently. This is especially important for primary school children.

This is not just about making homework or learn lessons, but also to make something (example with Lego or with craft materials), to clean up, ... For these matters there is required more than one action. If you want to make a plane with Lego, you will have to go first looking at the plan how this looks. Then you will agree to think about how to start here. In which way can we do this? Is this successful or not? We fit our method better or not?

Children also need to familiarize themselves with these thinking steps later to be able to learn and work independently. It is about the general skill that we mention as problem-solving thinking.