christine

If I asked an easy question and my dad would tell me to think about it figure it out myself. He would get annoyed if I asked too much because “I wasn’t using my head”. It was assumed I was smart and capable.

One time I got frustrated while doing a math problem and my dad stopped and addressed my attitude— that fundamentally our mindset towards learning was fun and stemmed from curiosity towards problem solving

My mom, somewhat out of necessity, gave my sister and I ample freedom to take care of ourselves, such as biking between locations, spending hours in the library waiting for her to to pick us up, etc

I think this one was key— my mom had a positive reaction when I brought up my own ideas or things I wanted to do. I expressed interest in something? Cool! She was encouraging & set me up to be able to explore that interest.

Hand in hand with the above, sometimes I wanted to do mildly risky things, like scramble on rocks & climb trees, and later on travel solo. I'm sure my mom was nervous but she would mostly let me do the thing.

Sometimes I had a larger project I wanted to tackle that required money from my parents. Then, I had to make my case. Tell my dad the pros and cons and show that I had thought through it all— then I got approval.

I think these types of things showed me— I can manage risks, I can think for myself and weigh decisions, I can figure things out and make things happen

My dad was always telling me to use my head lol. And he had all these tricksy games and jokes to show ways that you can break the "rules" or think differently because you have more freedom than you realize

curious to hear from others!!! because i would like to be good at this if I am parent

It was clear I would not be rescued sometimes (usually a situation that seemed big to me but was not). And it was up to me to pick myself up and get it together This built my confidence in myself and my ability to do that.