If you look up the definition of enabling you’ll find that to enable is to supply with the means, knowledge, or opportunity to be or do something, in other words, to make something feasible or possible. In this sense, enabling behavior is our positive and natural instinct to reach out and help someone else.
However, in the real world, enabling behaviors often have the reverse effect of what was originally intended when we apply it to discipline problems like addiction, financial trouble, co-dependency and chronic depression. In those cases, enabling behavior is anything but positive and when applied to raising children successfully, enabling is more of a process of getting between the young people and their natural life experiences in order to minimize the consequences of their less-than-perfect choices. The result is that enabling behavior by parents often prevents children from growing naturally and learning from their mistakes.
Common Enabling Behaviors to Avoid:
Don’t do too much for the kids. Doing things for your kids that they could have done for themselves does not teach them anything except that you are their servant.
Don’t reward bad behavior. Bribing or rewarding your children to perform normal everyday tasks or to get them to do something you want will definitely encourage more of the same bad behavior.
Don’t give them too much. Giving your kids absolutely everything in life that they might want takes the enjoyment out of working toward a goal and devalues the rewards.
Don’t minimize the damage. If you rescue, patch and fix all of the problems your child creates in life, they won’t think twice about trampling other people’s rights and will expect you to clean up every mess they make.
Don’t lie to protect your kids from consequences. Don’t let your children see you lying to make problems go away or it will diminish the value of the truth in the future.
Don’t live in denial of the facts. If your child says or does bad things, you won’t help anything by denying the reality of the situation. Face the truth head on and you’ll solve far more problems than you will by hiding them under the rug.