School’s back in session, and most evenings this month I’ve been sitting next to my son while he works through the three things he needs to do before the day is over.
Homework submitted, computer charged, everything packed up. I often do my own work sitting nearby in the same room while he does his.
Half company, half surveillance, if I’m honest about it.
Then I left for four days of work. And came home to two missing assignments.
Three weeks of that nightly system, and it didn’t survive the four days I wasn’t standing next to it.
So now, I don’t know if I’m his crutch or if I’m slowly building habits with him. Those aren’t the same thing, and watching him that week, I couldn’t tell you which one I actually was.
The same thing happens when we teach and mentor in the hospital. Let’s get into how this transition support and growing from a guide to a bystander actually happens.
Modeling Behavior vs. Being the Crutch: A Question for Physician Leaders and Parents
A close friend of ours, a teacher, has kids about ten years ahead of mine. When hers left for college, she told me the one thing she’d change if she could do it over.
She’d have let them fail earlier, when the stakes were smaller, so they’d feel it themselves and learn how to recover.
I think about that one often. So, where’s the line?
Between modeling the behavior I want him to have, and being the reason he hasn’t had to build it himself yet.
I’ve been mentoring residents, fellows, and junior attendings with a version of that same question for years.
It wasn’t until I was standing over my son’s agenda one night, asking whether he’d actually looked at it or was just telling me what I wanted to hear, that I realized I’d been asking myself the wrong version of it the whole time.
Two Physicians, Two Different Kinds of Support
A few years ago, I had two physicians working on two different projects, both projects they’d chosen themselves, both of them genuinely motivated.
I made the same mistake with both of them at the start.
Personally, I like autonomy. Give me room and a deadline and I’ll rise to it, and because that’s what’s true for me. I falsely assumed it was true for everyone I was leading.
One of them ran with it. She tracked down her own resources, solved her own bottlenecks, and when she presented her progress, the room leaned in. Other physicians signed up to help. Patients and their families joined too.
The other physician came to me just before a significant meeting with a presentation that wasn’t at all ready. What I felt watching her present wasn’t frustration at the slide deck. It was disappointment, because she hadn’t understood the data well enough to build it, she didn’t ask for help, and I didn’t know I needed to step in.
She didn’t know what she didn’t know, and she didn’t ask.
And I didn’t read the room well enough to realize the gap where support was needed.
I ended up rebuilding it myself that night, and doing that meant crossing my own boundary.
I wasn’t supposed to be doing her work. I was supposed to hand it back, show her what strong could look like, and be specific about what I expected next time.
I already knew how to do that with residents and medical students. It felt like an entirely different skill the moment the person in front of me was a peer instead of a trainee.
Three Questions for Knowing When to Step In and When to Step Back
What I’ve landed on, in the hospital and apparently in my own kitchen, comes down to three things.
First, know your own default, because it’s rarely neutral.
Mine is that everyone wants to strive and can see three steps ahead the way I can.
I made that assumption with both physicians before I’d looked closely at either one, and I make it with my kids too, expecting them to want the structure I built for myself with almost nobody checking on me.
Second, evaluate the person actually in front of you.
The physician who thrived didn’t need me to define her path, she needed room. The one who struggled needed me to notice earlier that she didn’t know what she didn’t know.
My kids split the same way. One son thrives with real encouragement and reminders, spoken and written down, so we’ve built an actual system, the same three things every evening, a week laid out every Sunday so we’re never caught behind.
I’m hoping that structure becomes his own habit eventually and not just mine.
The other son isn’t a striver the way I am. He doesn’t chase perfect, but he hates being caught off guard, so he stays ahead of it himself. He’s more organized than I ever needed to be at his age, and what he actually wants from me is less, not more. He’d rather ask his teacher for help than me, and he’ll tell you that himself.
Third, build the plan with intention instead of running one version for everyone.
One child gets frequent, structured check-ins, because that’s what actually helps him.
The other child gets space and permission to go to his teacher first, because that’s what he’s already asking for.
With the physicians, it looked the same. Lighter touch and less frequent for the one who thrived with room to run. Tighter and more structured for the one who needed it, at least until she didn’t.
I still don’t know if the nightly system with my older son is building the habit into him or just replacing it with mine. I’m hoping three weeks becomes a year becomes something he carries into high school without me standing next to him.
That part I won’t know for a while yet.
It’s one skill.
Not a parenting skill and a separate leadership skill. I’d been building it for years in the hospital before I ever needed it at my own kitchen table.
Ready to Find Your Own Line? Work With Stephanie
If you’re trying to find that line yourself, with your team, your trainees, or your own kids, that’s exactly the work I do with clients. You can apply to work with me at womenmdleaders.com/work-with-stephanie.
Thanks for listening. And thanks for doing this hard, human work of figuring out when to hold on and when to let go.