18/02/2026
🌟 Why I Hand the Job Entirely to the Child — Even When It's Messy 🌟
There's a moment I live for in therapy. It's not when a child gets something right. It's when a child pushes through the uncomfortable feeling of not knowing if they'll get it right — and does it anyway.
This week our group made coloured rice and sushi entirely by themselves. My role? Words of encouragement and my physical presence and enagement only. No hands.
Opening one-kilogram bags of rice, pouring food colouring, managing Ziploc bags, chopping vegetables, checking items off a shopping list — all of it, independently.
🙌 Why I deliberately step back and let children do hard things: ✨ Motivation overrides anxiety — when a child genuinely wants the outcome, they'll push through the discomfort of uncertainty ✨ Real tasks build real confidence — completing something meaningful lands differently than completing a worksheet ✨ Executive functioning grows through authentic sequencing — shopping lists, cooking steps, and checking tasks off are life skills in disguise ✨ Mistakes in safe environments become reference points, not sources of shame ✨ Children discover their own capability — and that discovery is something no adult can hand them
When children are trusted with jobs that actually matter — jobs that feed the group, that produce something they're proud of — they rise to meet that trust every single time.
The mess is worth it. The look on a child's face when they realise they did that? Absolutely worth it. 🌈
What meaningful, real-world task could you hand fully to your child this week? You might be surprised what they're capable of. 💚
