Am I Pushing My Child Too Much?
When a child seems to be moving at a different pace, it can be hard to know whether they need encouragement, more support, or simply more time. How do we meet children where they are without letting our own fears about their future take over?
There are moments in parenting when it's genuinely difficult to know whether a child needs encouragement or whether they need us to back off.
Maybe they're avoiding something that seems important. They're reluctant to try something new, hesitant to do something independently, or simply not interested in taking a step that other children their age seem to have taken already.
At first, we may be able to give them time.
Then the worry starts creeping in.
What if waiting makes it harder? What if they need a push and we're not giving it? What if respecting their pace now means they won't develop the confidence or skills they'll need later?
For homeschooling and unschooling parents, these fears can become particularly intense. Without school providing a timetable for what children should be doing and when, we're often left facing our own assumptions about development much more directly.
And that's not always comfortable.
Because even when we believe deeply in allowing children to develop in their own ways, it can be remarkably difficult to hold onto that belief when our own child is the one who seems to be taking longer.
Prefer listening? This article was inspired by Episode 75 of Radical Learning Talks, where Sari González and Becka Koritz explore what it means to meet young people where they are, how parental fear can turn into pressure, and how we can support children through difficult things without taking over.
When Someone Else's Child Becomes the Measuring Stick
Comparison has an extraordinary ability to turn something we weren't particularly worried about into a problem.
A child may be moving through life quite happily until we notice that another child their age is doing something they aren't.
They're reading fluently. Going places alone. Making their own appointments. Applying to college. Working. Driving.
Suddenly, what had simply been where our child is right now starts looking like evidence that something isn't happening quickly enough.
This can be especially powerful when the difference touches something we're already afraid of. Independence. Social confidence. Academic skills. Motivation. The ability to cope in the wider world.
The comparison doesn't necessarily tell us anything useful about our child. But it can change the way we look at them.
Instead of noticing what they're doing, what interests them, where they're growing, or what might be difficult for them, our attention gets pulled toward the gap.
And gaps have a way of making parents want to act.
Perhaps they need more encouragement. Perhaps we've made things too easy. Perhaps we've been too accommodating. Perhaps it's time to insist.
Before long, we're responding not only to our child, but to the fear created by someone else's timeline.
What Are We Afraid Will Happen If We Wait?
The urge to push often comes from looking at something our child is struggling with today and imagining what it could mean for their future. A child who isn't reading yet can quickly become, in our minds, an adult who will struggle to function in the world. When a teenager still needs considerable support, it's easy to wonder whether independence will ever come.
The distance between this is hard for my child right now and this will always be hard for them can become surprisingly short when we're worried. And once we're responding to that imagined future, it's much harder to see what the child in front of us actually needs.
That doesn't mean ignoring genuine concerns or assuming everything will simply work itself out. But children change enormously, and so do the circumstances around them. What feels impossible today may look completely different a few years from now, particularly when something becomes relevant or important to the young person themselves.
“What is important to us might not be what’s important to them.”
And there is another possibility that's often harder for parents to make room for: the future may not look the way we expected. The milestone we've been waiting for may happen much later, take a completely different form, or turn out not to be particularly important to the life our child creates.
Encouragement and Pressure Can Look Surprisingly Similar
This is where things become complicated, because children do sometimes need support to do difficult things.
Respecting a child's pace doesn't require us to stand at a distance and wait for them to figure out every challenge alone. Children ask for help. They borrow our confidence. They rely on our experience. Sometimes they need us to make something unfamiliar feel possible enough to attempt.
From the outside, encouragement and pressure can even look similar.
A parent might suggest trying again. Offer to help. Stay close. Break something into smaller pieces. Ask whether the child wants to practice first.
The difference may have less to do with the action itself and more to do with what the adult is responding to. Are we helping because the child wants to get somewhere and something is standing in their way? Or are we trying to move them because we have become uncomfortable with where they are?
That can be an uncomfortable question, particularly when the answer isn't obvious.
A child can want something and still resist the difficult steps involved in getting there. Parents sometimes do have information or perspective their children don't yet have. There isn't a formula that tells us exactly when to encourage, when to challenge, and when to leave something alone.
Which is why knowing the child matters more than anything else.
Support Looks Different for Different Children
There is no universal amount of help that counts as healthy.
One child may walk confidently into a new situation with almost no preparation. Another may need to know exactly what will happen, who will be there, how long it will last, and what they can do if they become overwhelmed. One isn't necessarily more capable than the other. They may simply need different conditions in order to access what they're capable of.
This becomes particularly important with neurodivergent children, whose support needs are often judged against what other children of the same age can do independently.
Sometimes the assumption is that removing support will create independence. But needing support and developing independence aren't opposites.
The right support can be precisely what allows a young person to attempt something that would otherwise be inaccessible. And as they gain experience, the support may change naturally. They may need less of it, different kinds of it, or continue needing help in one area while becoming remarkably independent in another.
Meeting children where they are means taking their reality seriously. It's easy to look at who they might become, where other children are, or what we thought they would be doing by now. But none of that tells us what this particular child needs from us today.
When the Reason Belongs to Them
Something changes when a young person has their own reason for doing something difficult.
The challenge itself may not become easier. They may still feel anxious, frustrated, overwhelmed, or wish there were another way around it. But now there is something on the other side that matters to them.
This is where intrinsic motivation becomes particularly important.
Adults often worry that if children aren't made to do difficult things, they'll simply choose the easiest path. Yet most of us know from our own lives that we're capable of doing extraordinarily difficult things when we care enough about where they lead.
Young people aren't so different.
The timing, however, may be different from the one we would choose for them. Something that seems obviously important to an adult may have very little relevance to a child right now. We can explain why we think it matters, offer opportunities, and make support available, but we can't manufacture the personal reason that makes someone want to move through a challenge.
Sometimes that reason comes later.
And sometimes it never comes, because the life they build doesn't require the thing we assumed it would.
Do Children Need Us to Challenge Them?
There is a familiar argument that children need to be pushed because the world won't always accommodate them… Life is hard. They need to develop resilience. They need to learn that sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do.
There is truth in that last part. All of us encounter responsibilities we'd rather avoid and situations we can't control. But life is remarkably good at providing those experiences without parents having to create them.
A child who wants something will eventually encounter frustration. Learning brings its own challenges. Relationships ask things of us. Other people have boundaries and needs that won't always align with ours. The wider world is full of systems, limitations, expectations, and consequences that no parent can remove.
The role of the adult doesn't have to be making those experiences harder so that a child learns how to cope. It can be helping them build a relationship with difficulty that doesn't depend on being forced through it.
There will be moments when encouragement is welcome and others when a child wants us to leave them alone. Sometimes they'll ask for practical help; at other times they may simply need someone who believes they can figure it out. Knowing which is needed requires attention to the person, rather than following a rule about how much challenge children supposedly need.
Supporting Isn't the Same as Shielding
The fear of pushing too much has another side. Parents can become so concerned about respecting a child's limits that they begin wondering whether they're making life too easy. Are we supporting them, or protecting them from experiences they need to have?
It's a worthwhile question, particularly when a child finds certain parts of life genuinely difficult. But support doesn't remove reality.
We can make an unfamiliar situation more predictable without guaranteeing that it will feel comfortable. We can help a child prepare for something without doing it on their behalf. We can stay available while allowing them to experience frustration, uncertainty, disappointment, or the consequences that naturally come with their choices.
For neurodivergent young people in particular, this can require letting go of the idea that independence is measured by needing less help.
A person may be entirely capable of making their own decisions while needing considerable practical support to carry them out. They may know exactly what they want and still need help navigating an environment that wasn't designed with their nervous system, communication style, or processing needs in mind.
Providing that support doesn't diminish what they are doing for themselves. Sometimes it's what makes doing it for themselves possible.
Progress Can Distract Us From the Process
Progress and process sound remarkably similar, but they can lead us to look at a child in very different ways.
When we're focused on progress, we're often searching for evidence that something is moving in the direction we hoped. Is this getting easier? Can they do more than they could six months ago? Are they becoming more independent?
Process asks for a different kind of attention. Development doesn't always move forward in ways that are easy to see. A child may spend a long time observing before they're ready to try something themselves. They may move toward something, retreat, and return much later with a confidence that seems to have appeared from nowhere.
This can be difficult in a culture that gives us so many ways to measure children. Ages, stages, grade levels, and developmental milestones create an expectation that growth should be visible and follow a recognizable direction.
But a child's life is much harder to capture that way. While we're watching one particular skill and waiting for signs of progress, all kinds of things may be developing elsewhere. What eventually becomes important to them may not be what we were monitoring in the first place.
Meeting Them Where They Are
Meeting children where they are sounds simple until where they are makes us uncomfortable. It's much easier to trust a child's pace when that pace falls somewhere close to what we expected. The real work often begins when it doesn't.
Then we have to live with questions that may not have immediate answers. We may have to offer support without knowing whether a child will eventually need it less. We may need to keep an eye on something that concerns us without turning our concern into pressure.
And we may occasionally get it wrong.
“What I want for my son is for him to live a fulfilled life. And what that looks like, I can’t know. Because I’m not him.”
There will be times when we push and realize afterward that we were responding to our own fear. There will also be moments when a child needed encouragement and we didn't recognize it until later. Meeting young people where they are isn't a technique that guarantees we'll always know what to do.
It's a relationship.
We get to know the person in front of us. We learn what overwhelms them and what helps. Over time, we become better at recognizing when they want our involvement and when our anxiety is making us reach for control.
And as they grow, the answer keeps changing.
The support that was essential at ten may be unnecessary at fifteen. Something that once felt impossible may become ordinary. Other things may continue to require help long after the world thinks they shouldn't.
There doesn't need to be shame in any of that.
A fulfilled life doesn't have one developmental timeline.
And perhaps meeting children where they are begins there: allowing the life they're actually building to tell us what growth looks like, rather than deciding what it should look like before they've had the chance to live it.
Want to Keep Exploring?
This article was inspired by Episode 75 of Radical Learning Talks, where Sari González and Becka Koritz talk about what it means to meet young people where they are, the pressure parents feel when children develop on unexpected timelines, intrinsic motivation, neurodivergence, and how to offer support without taking over.
If you haven't listened yet, the full conversation goes into the stories and experiences behind these ideas—and into some of the messiness that doesn't make it onto the page.
You might also want to read:
What If I'm Making the Wrong Decision for My Child?
For the fear that shows up when you can't know in advance whether the path you're choosing will be the right one.
Can Parents Be Friends With Their Kids?
A closer look at power, trust, boundaries, and what becomes possible when closeness and adult responsibility are allowed to exist together.
What’s the Difference Between Homeschooling and Unschooling?
An exploration of what changes when learning begins to move away from adult agendas, predetermined timelines, and the assumptions of conventional schooling.
Got a question for Sari & Becka?
Dear Sari & Becka is where we answer real questions from parents about learning, relationships, homeschooling, unschooling, and all the situations where there isn't an obvious answer.
→ Read Dear Sari & Becka or send us your question
What happens when worry takes over?
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The Parenting Archetype Quiz helps you recognize what tends to take over when parenting feels uncertain or difficult—and begin understanding what's happening underneath.
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