Parents and teachers are confronted with this art of living dilemma on practically a daily basis. There is probably not a child in existence who hasn’t screamed at an adult at least once “let me do it!!!” But of course, adults cannot let children go ahead and do just anything they want without supervision. Too much supervision is stultifying, and too little exposes the vulnerable to enhanced dangers. Can Creator share any rules of thumb that will help supervisors intervene only when necessary and with maximum divine balance and wisdom?

Here again, the main factor and consideration that will help a person do the right thing in such circumstances will be the degree to which they are in touch with their true nature within, and their heart is able to respond with loving kindness when they see a young person who is challenged, and whose feelings might be greatly hurt by looking foolish and are struggling, themselves, with an inner impulse to be bold and take on a challenge, and perhaps are overreaching and putting themselves at risk of failure. When one has a supervisory responsibility, as with teaching children or in a childcare setting, and one is on duty, there is a need to put personal feelings aside, or at least subordinate them somewhat to the needs of the more vulnerable young person. This means being willing to give them loving support, nurturing, and guidance that might need to be firm, even denying what the child would like to see happen, if the outcome would be truly harmful. But if it is truly in the child’s best interest, a selfish need of the adult overseer to simply avoid the responsibility in a selfish desire to save time and short-circuit what could be a learning opportunity, would deny the child valuable life experience that would actually be of value, even through failing at what they want to take responsibility for. A wise and patient parent or teacher will often let a child try to succeed even when failure seems certain. How else are children to learn what their limits truly are, except through the attempt? The key is being there to help support the youngster when they fail, with a little bit of encouragement and perhaps some perspective that they made a good effort, and the thing to learn from the experience is that perhaps they need to wait until they are a bit older, perhaps through growing greater strength or developing coordination through practice, or spending more time learning about the fundamentals they need and the skills, whatever might be the case, but in a way that is encouraging and not judgmental and negative in tone that would be felt as a judgment and make the child feel shame and humiliation, concluding they are inadequate and unworthy when it is simply the case that they are inexperienced and need to chalk this up to experience and not feel diminished. They can still enjoy the fact they made a noble effort, and if that is the attitude of the adult supervisor, they will learn much from their failure and will learn to take failure in stride, and develop the ability to calibrate a new challenge with respect to what they have experienced is doable with their current skills and talents, and will be better equipped next time to know what they can handle. And this will lead, with a little coaching, to some new coping strategies and learning techniques to break a complex endeavor down to its various pieces and do one aspect at a time when it is unrealistic to expect success in carrying out the entire operation in sequence when they are likely to falter with some of the more complex and less experienced aspects. So here as well, the parent or teacher can be a positive force for good simply by explaining why they might be struggling with a certain aspect even though they can do other things needed readily. This is the essence of teaching, to have an interplay with the student perceiving what they might be struggling with, and giving extra attention to shed light on the missing information or how they might go about trying something in a different way that could be easier and more doable for them in particular, whatever their struggle might be with respect to their own personal inadequacies. People learn much more from their failures than their successes, so any failure that ends in self-judgment, shame, and guilt has turned a learning opportunity into a trauma that can, in fact, become life-limiting if taken to heart. The greatest responsibility of an adult caretaker is to prevent such things from happening, to stifle the curiosity and initiative of the young and set them up to be limited in life by their own low esteem.