You know the moment. The little one is wrestling with a zipper or a stubborn shoe buckle. Their face is scrunched up. They are getting frustrated. And your hands are moving before you even think about it.
It feels like love. And honestly, it is. A Swiss psychologist who spent years quietly watching children figure out the world had a gentle suggestion: wait just a few more seconds.
The Scientist Who Watched His Own Kids Learn
Jean Piaget was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on August 9, 1896. According to Britannica, he became a major figure in 20th-century developmental psychology and was the first to study systematically how children come to understand the world.
A lot of his conclusions came from watching his own children. After his daughters were born in 1925 and 1927 and his son in 1931, he and his wife observed their kids closely, according to a biography published by Shippensburg University.
What Piaget discovered changed the way we think about children. Kids are not empty jars waiting for grown-ups to fill them with knowledge. They are builders. They construct their understanding of the world piece by piece: by touching, testing, failing, and trying again.
As Piaget put it in one of his most-quoted lines: “To understand is to invent.”
Why Stepping In Too Fast Can Get in the Way
Piaget believed that children only truly understand what they work out for themselves. Each time an adult rushes in and solves the problem for them, the child loses the chance to discover it on their own.
When he lectured in the United States in the 1960s, audiences kept asking how parents could speed up his stages. He started calling it “the American Question,” journalist Pamela Druckerman recounts in her book Bringing Up Bébé. Six decades later, with flash cards for toddlers and enrichment apps for preschoolers, that question still has not gone away.
Temple University psychologist Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., explained on the American Psychological Association’s Speaking of Psychology podcast that even when adults have a learning goal in mind, the best environments let kids do the exploring and discovering themselves because “they’re the agents of their own learning.” She added that people learn better when they are active rather than passive.
Child psychologist Dr. Amy Kincaid Todey, Ph.D., told Parade that finishing tasks kids are capable of handling “can unintentionally undermine their sense of competence.” When children do not get the chance to struggle and succeed on their own, they miss out on the confidence that comes from mastering something themselves.
Licensed psychologist Dr. Dale Atkins, Ph.D., author of The Turquoise Butterfly, warned that quickly solving problems or clearing away every obstacle can send a quiet message to a child that the situation, or their feelings about it, is too much to handle. Over time, she said, that pattern can chip away at confidence and teach kids that anxiety is something dangerous to be avoided.
It Goes for Feelings, Too
Dr. Jessica Hoffmann, director of research at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and an assistant professor at the Yale Child Study Center, said that when adults rush to make sadness or disappointment disappear, kids may learn to hide those feelings. And they lose the chance to build the skills to manage them on their own.
Her advice is to stay calm and stay close. “Supporting our children by sitting with the feeling builds a muscle,” she said, one that lasts a lifetime. She also suggests asking yourself in the moment: are you trying to ease this for the child’s sake, or for your own comfort?
A Few Simple Ways to Put This Into Practice
None of this means walking away or letting kids flounder. It means changing how you show up. Here are the suggestions psychologists shared:
- Pause before you help. Give your grandchild a real chance at the problem before stepping in. If they are stuck, offer the smallest possible hint rather than the answer.
- Describe instead of fix. Dr. Emily Guarnotta, Psy.D., PMH-C, a psychologist and owner of Phoenix Health, said that describing what you see and offering support works better than a quick “You’re OK.”
- Protect unstructured play. Piaget believed play is where new ideas are born. Let your grandchild lead, even when their block tower defies all logic.
- Match the challenge to the child. A toddler learns through hands and mouth. A 9-year-old can reason through a problem out loud. Meet them where they are.
- Stay calm yourself. Dr. Hoffmann called this co-regulation: your calm signals to the child that you can handle whatever they are going through.
Researchers have refined pieces of Piaget’s work since his death in 1980, debating how neatly children fit his stages. But the heart of his message has not aged a day.
So the next time your grandchild is wrestling with that zipper, take a breath. Count to ten. Watch what happens when it finally slides up on its own. That look on their face, I did it, is not just a zipper closing. It is a mind being built. And you gave them that.
