Stepping Back........

Principle Three: Sometimes positive change cannot occur until parents allow their children to experience the consequences of bad decisions.

Parents are accountable to teach their children to take responsibility for their actions. This is almost always a very hard thing to do and often may involve what seems to be a temporary abandonment. In a very real sense, parents can interfere with their children’s progress if they try to protect them from the consequences of their actions.

Our prototype here is Heavenly Father and His response to Adam and Eve after they had partaken of the forbidden fruit. He cast them out of the Garden of Eden, and to help them learn, He cursed the ground for their sake (see Gen. 3:17). While He promises that His grace will be sufficient for us, grace will not replace our experiencing consequences that are necessary to teach us something we need to know.

From: Ensign, July 2006, Families are forever and so is parenthood

Healthy Detachment – stepping back so that an individual can solve their own problems, learn from them, and then experiencing the growth that Heavenly Father desires for them