Every Sunday morning, I make pancakes for my family. From scratch.
A huge part of me wants to appear like the cliché Mom from magazines in the 50s, doing everything right & making everyone happy. This includes cutting up my children’s food. (forgive me)
For the past 2 weeks, this has been one of the things my children are trying to do: cut their own food. This sounds crazy, but I think that, as parents, we get used to our roles as caregivers and forget to help our children develop the skills they need to be independent.
We celebrated a new skill (& patience/determination displayed by my kids) at the breakfast table with a round of high-fives today.
How does this relate to our role as educators? Are we still ‘cutting up their food’? How much control are we willing to give up? Does it take more patience to allow students so much independence, because it’s easier to do certain things ourselves?
Northern Art Teacher 
Allowing our children, and our students, to learn from life’s challenges is messy, takes time, and courage. We all want what’s best and what’s best is not always perfection.
Erica, your comment feels like a blog post in itself. Absolutely beautiful.
Love this post. Remember the pancake cuttin up dilemma in out own home. Made me think. Thanks!