For better or worse, I mainly rely on intuition as a parent. However, I continually inundate myself with blogs, articles and books on the topic as I am fascinated by the current culture of raising kids.

As a child of divorced parents I was left mainly to my own devices and learned from an early age how to fend for myself. Teaching self-reliance wasn’t a conscious parenting choice; it was a by-product of our family’s circumstance. My sisters and I were loved fiercely but never coddled. Our parents were very occupied with their own lives and the subliminal message to us was that we ought to get on with our own, too. I grew up in a city where I rode public transportation unaccompanied to and from school, divided time between two households, had almost no after-school activities besides homework which no one checked, and when I complained, “I’m bored” my mother always replied, “Then go read a book.” We were allowed to fail, which I did, many times. It was the 70s – no helmets, no seatbelts, no over-parenting. It wasn’t always rosy, for sure, but we definitely learned how to cope with life.

Needless to say, I find it humorous, but also a little annoying that grit is the parenting topic du jour. Grit isn’t something we need to teach, it's what naturally develops by not over-indulging and coddling children. It seems when kids are faced with adversity the natural instinct is to mitigate any suffering. While this tendency is well meaning, it deprives kids from having the kinds of experiences that develop essential life skills. Also, I am bothered that “grit” is being hailed as a measure for predicting achievement: if your child has grit they’ll be more successful. When it comes to parenting we’ve become so achievement oriented that we forget that “grit” isn’t about success at all, it’s about character. Plus, our reluctance to let our children suffer is ironic: it takes parental grit!

I’ve been ruminating on this topic because I am conflicted on an issue I am facing with my 9-year-old son. Teddy is a reluctant writer. He has big, good ideas but is bogged down by the mechanics of handwriting. At last week’s parent/teacher conference his teacher suggested that instead of writing he could speak into an iPad to transcribe his ideas. As a teacher, I wholeheartedly agreed with the suggestion, why not let him take advantage of technology - it’s the ideas that matter, not the mechanics. (And for the record, I am a huge advocate for tools and accommodations in the classroom that enable learning for LD kids. In fact, Teddy uses sensory tools to keep him centered at school.) However, on this issue I hesitated because I wondered: have we too quickly found an easy way out for him? Practicing handwriting and strengthening his fine motor muscles is tedious and difficult: does the iPad accommodation let him off the hook to work hard? What message does that send?

Grit essentially means perseverance and resolve. It’s precisely when you want to quit that those traits start to develop. (This is a lesson I repeatedly learn in yoga: as soon as you think you can’t hold a pose any longer you stay in it, and that’s when the yoga begins.) For now, I am going to trust my gut and make Teddy work a little harder to practice his handwriting and strengthen his fine motor muscles so the mechanics don’t inhibit him as a writer before letting him use the iPad.

Maybe in the process, he'll develop a little grit.