Two very different kinds of parents in one airport line

At four thirty in the morning at San Francisco International Airport, Julie Lythcott-Haims stood with her twelve-year-old son, Sawyer, waiting to check in for a summer program in Canada, and noticed the other parents splitting into two distinct groups at the ticket counter. One group handled the entire check-in process while their child stood alongside, listening or not. The other group hung back and let their kids check themselves in, right there, while their parents stayed close enough to help if something went wrong.

Lythcott-Haims and her husband chose the second group on purpose, reasoning that if the process was going to be hard, better for Sawyer to struggle through it at his home airport, with them nearby, than for the first time alone in Vancouver. She describes feeling simultaneously terrified and proud watching her son walk toward security by himself. He came home twelve days later with more confidence and ninety-eight percent of his belongings.

She credits this deliberate handoff to a method she learned from a friend named Stacey Ashlund, whose son has both hearing and vision impairments and who built her parenting around techniques drawn from special needs research: first we do it for you, then we do it with you, then we watch you do it, and only then do you do it completely independently. Most overparenting, Lythcott-Haims argues, gets stuck permanently on the first two steps, doing things for a child or alongside them, and never reaches the third or fourth.

This lines up with what developmental psychologists call authoritative parenting, one of four recognized styles, distinct from the strict, unexplained rules of authoritarian parenting, the anything-goes accommodation of permissive parenting, and the disengagement of neglectful parenting. Authoritative parents hold high expectations and enforce real consequences, while also explaining their reasoning and treating a child as a capable, independent person. Research cited by journalist Amanda Ripley links this style to higher achievement and fewer behavioral problems than either of its more extreme alternatives. The method isn't about withdrawing love. It's about making sure the love eventually produces someone who can walk toward airport security, or anything else, without you standing at the gate.

Pick a single task you're currently doing entirely for your child, and move it deliberately to the next stage of Stacey Ashlund's four-step method: if you've been doing it for them, start doing it with them instead, narrating each part as you go. Once they've practiced that with you a few times, step back to just watching, staying close enough to help but resisting the urge to jump in or correct. When you notice yourself hovering during that watching stage, ask whether you're there for their sake or for your own comfort. Finally, let the task move completely out of your hands, done somewhere you can't see, and treat any mess or mistake as proof the method is working rather than a problem to fix.