Well....
we do and we don't. Obviously, clear and present catastrophic danger isn't what they are talking about there. So no, I'm not handing my 10yo a $20 and telling her to "figure it out" if she wants to go to the downtown library, and I'm going to rescue a toddler who looks to be flirting with drowning by risking being knocked over in 45F surf.
I'm also going to offer COACHING from the sidelines when that seems appropriate. I also respect my child's decisions about things that don't really matter very much, or have such minor adverse risks that they are completely affordable. Like whether or not to play a particular sport, what to wear to an event, how to style her hair, how much (or how) to study for a midterm, that kind of thing. I've also let her LIVE WITH some bad decisions. I could have "fixed" some of them but did not. On purpose. So that she could learn what it is to have to live with a decision that you hadn't thought through very well.
She opted to be slow in the shower one morning on an international trip. It was BITTERLY cold, and she left herself too little time to locate SOCKS and put them on before meeting the bus at the appointed time. Too bad. She got to walk around Dublin in the BITTER cold all day with no socks. She now knows that the world won't always wait for her-- and that she MUST prioritize her own needs so that something like that doesn't happen again. She also learned in a hurry that complaining only made people LAUGH at her for being so disorganized. It was pretty gentle teasing, but it taught her something important. It wasn't MY job to make sure she had socks on at 13yo. It was her job, and she had been a flake about it... what did she expect? SYMPATHY? Hardly forthcoming. It was above freezing, she was in no real danger of anything but being uncomfortable. I thought it was a lovely lesson.
I'm like McGyvver crossed with a Swiss Army knife-- I had an extra pair of sock in my day pack. But I never said a word, and I certainly didn't offer them to her. I did offer her a band-aid the next morning, just in case she had any blisters. But she didn't.
In contrast, however, I went head to head with one VERY nasty gate agent just before boarding a trans-Atlantic flight so that she'd have some measure of safety during a flight that had 600 miles over nothing but open water. THAT was not a job for a 13yo with anaphylaxis history. KWIM?
