I was confused last week to learn that our 14-year-old daughter’s cellphone listed eight emergency contacts. 

Her phone has heavy parental controls. Through an app on our cellphones, my wife and I see and approve our daughter’s contacts, limit her online and social media accessibility, and shut the thing down whenever we dang well please. 

Except for her emergency contacts. Those are always accessible to her by design in case she experiences, you know, an emergency when we disable her phone. 

So eight emergency contacts left my wife and I scratching our heads the other day — for about two seconds. 

The parental app showed the six emergency contacts aside from me and my wife were our daughter’s friends. She had added them through the app — on my wife’s cellphone when my wife wasn’t looking. The move let her talk to them even if we put the skids on her phone. 

We deleted the six names, and I shot my daughter a text. 

“Did you make your friends emergency contacts on your phone?”

“Yes lol” 

“Not funny” 

“I know i only did if like my friends were all matching or something the next day.” 

Matching or something. Got it.

Let me be clear. My daughter’s actions weren’t what my wife or I would consider a serious transgression in our home. Between me and you, I was a little impressed by her move. One family friend called it brilliant. It was funny. 

And she’s a fantastic kid. She holds a 4.0 grade-point average, we never have to ask her to study, and she’s deeply committed to basketball and other responsibilities she takes on. 

We’re proud of her. 

But the ordeal had me thinking: I want my kids to learn independence through freedom, but I struggle to trust their judgement, especially when they try to pull one on me — which is something I did to my parents countless times growing up, though I don’t tell my kids that. 

I get it. 

But then another ordeal reiterates the struggle, like when our toddler snatches the salt from the table and turns his pizza into a sodium chloride heap. (Don’t get me started on how Salty Little Dog licks the shaker and leaves it perpetually plugged.) Or when one of them spills a gallon of milk.

But like their parents, who get to make plenty of mistakes, I’m told the little pitfalls bring benefits. Letting them learn on their own might drive me nuts, but it does a lot for them, including: 

• • Fostering independence
  • Building critical thinking skills
  • Developing self-confidence
  • Teaching responsibility

And in a day of rampant anxiety, clinical expert Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz, says failure is an option for kids (my emphasis). 

Koplewicz authored the parenting book The Scaffold Effect, which promotes a parenting approach for combating anxiety in children. The “scaffold” technique includes gradually reducing support as the child develops strength, letting them learn from mistakes to become independent.  

That fosters raising confident, independent kids, Kopliwicz says. 

But for every parent in the back raising their hand, this can be scary. Especially when things like letting your kid drive a car on a busy interstate pops up.

I’ll try to remember the scaffold effect when I try to mask my anxiety and hand my daughter the car keys this fall.

Send your parenting stories or tips to devin@idahoednews.org. We can always use them.