Give Away Your Legos

Molly Graham has a metaphor that changed how people at Facebook thought about growth. Imagine someone dumps a giant pile of Legos in front of a bunch of kindergartners and says: build something. You start building. You get good at building houses. Then someone shows up and says: it's not a house anymore, it's a neighborhood. Give your house to this new person and go build dog parks.

Every instinct screams: but I'm not done! They'll mess it up! Houses are more important than dog parks!

This is exactly what parenting feels like as your child grows.

You've gotten good at feeding them. Time to let them feed themselves. You've mastered the bedtime routine. Time to let them do parts of it alone. You're finally excellent at tying their shoes. Time to teach them to do it.

Molly's insight: the emotions are inevitable. You'll feel protective, territorial, worried they'll fail. But holding onto things you've gotten good at means staying buried under a pile of Legos while the real opportunity - helping them build their own things - passes you by.

Your job isn't to build their house forever. It's to keep giving away what you've gotten good at so they can build their own world.