This article is SO true- I am trying not to be that way- but have not always done a great job- but the boy has been warned- me helping is over! Working in a college though, I see this everyday!

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing at all. It's heartbreaking, but it may be best. As parents, we want to swoop down and rescue our children at the first sign of distress, but we may not be doing them any favor if we do.

Parenting speaker Brenda Bird calls this being a helicopter parent. We hover over our children, she says, then swoop down and rescue them when they need saving. Perhaps when they have left their homework on the couch or their lunch on the counter. If one of my kids leaves his lunch, I think it's okay to take it to him, so long as he doesn't do so more than three times out of any five-day week. For me, what's hard is when one of your children is unhappy at school. That's when you want to cradle him or her and make it all better.

When I went into the fourth-grade, they moved us across town into big, scary, Reagan School. That didn't set well with me and I came home crying every day for the first several weeks of school. I know my folks were heartbroken, but they didn't rescue me - they made me stick it out.

The problem with rescuing our children is they don't learn to stand on their own two legs. Do you remember that episode of the Andy Griffith Show? A young man comes into town and causes an accident. He has a wealthy father and fully expects him to bail him out of the trouble. Andy teaches him a great life's lesson, though. He shows him that there comes a time when a person has to fight his own battles, solve his own dilemmas, answer to his own actions, and, in general, stand on his own two legs.

It's hard, however, when it is our beloved children we are talking about. Can't we just rescue them until they are eighteen, then let them go? No, we have to begin teaching them early that we can't always soothe their every ache or solve their every trial.

If we teach them that someone else is going to fix every problem for them, we may have to handle very big and expensive problems for them when they grow up. Things that are hard when they are young may be much harder when they leave the nest. Facing the principal when they are young is preferable to facing a judge when they are older.

I guess I'll never forget the look on my son's face when I left him in that classroom the first day of kindergarten. I suspect the look he was giving me was reflected back at him from my own face. That broke my heart, but he did just fine and had a great year. I'll always believe it was harder on me than him. I counted down the hours, then the minutes until I could go get him. I wondered if it really would be so bad if I let him be a kindergarten dropout. He could still get a good job, couldn't he?

I want my children to be happy, well-adjusted and well-rounded. Because of that, I have to let them suffer some, too. You can't have one without the other in this world. I know God often wants to rescue us, just like any loving parent. But he really wants what is best for us, so he allows us to face our own trials, dilemmas and heartbreaks. In his wisdom, he knows that rescuing us is not always what is best for us. We need that same wisdom dealing with our children.