The Girl is approaching the ripe old age of one, and I’m finding that my perspectives on this whole skeptical parenting thing are become less abstract by the day. Call it what you will — early confusion, naive over-extension — but my views on what it means to be a father, particularly a father attempting to raise a critically thinking kid, have evolved and refined since a little more than a year ago (on the very verge of fatherhood) when I set out to build this blog.

You may recall, particularly if you have read the archives, I roughly defined three pillars of skeptical parenting. Now, you may also recall that I am just some schmuck of a blogger and this is all my own opinion — so take it or leave it. Those pillars were what I called the Three Eyes (a bit of a play on words as well as a cynical nod to the psychics out there reading this) and are summed up as: Independence, Integrity, and Imagination.

So, the question I’ve been asking myself — to myself, but also sometimes as lengthy narratives in this blog — is how does one go about building these features in a young mind, particularly in a young mind who is looking to me for support, guidance, and — more importantly — cues and examples to follow? The latter two are very important, but to be honest I think the aspect with which we’ve had the best success has been the former: independence.

The first thing, looking back on that “nearly a year” of fatherhood is the challenges. By these I refer to not only the challenges for me, but the challenges for The Girl herself. I’m going to step into anecdotal-evidence-mode here for a moment — skeptics cringe! — and explain what I have observed — because what I have observed is so often a font of frustration for a guy who does his darnedest to consciously push his kid to strive for independence. Sadly, my observation is that far too many parents seem to coddle their tots. (Which you should not confuse with cuddle, because we do in fact do plenty of that around our house!)

To me coddling is the antithesis of the act of nurturing independence. Coddlers don’t push their kids to try things for themselves. Coddlers don’t just stand behind the kid as she tries something, they do it for them. Coddlers take the lazy way — and yes that is a judgment — and use the excuse “we don’t think she’s quite ready for that” when clearly the poor kid wants to try feeding herself with a spoon, or wants to try climbing the stairs, or wants to see kinds of noises come out of the piano when different keys are pressed. One might argue that these are safety concerns, but it is our role as parents to balance safety with learning and exploration, to mitigate risks — not firewall them.

Everyone tells me that for a girl to walk at nine months old was amazing. We were wandering the public market the other day and The Girl was, at times, toddling along beside me slow but determined. We met another kid of the same age, bundled tightly in a stroller: “She’s walking!” his mother exclaimed. The skepdad in me wanted to yell at her and tell her that if she’d just let the kid stretch his legs — instead of treating him like he was a newborn babe — he might be walking too. But no, she’s a coddler and I’m too polite to yell at strangers in public. So we just smile and tell her that we’re amazed too.

Really, she was walking at nine months because the moment she showed inclination to stand I gave her the means to do just that. “Grab my hands and pull yourself up.” The moment she wanted to pull up on something besides dad, we found stable little chairs and stools for her to practice with. And the moment she wanted to try walking we resigned ourselves that falling down and a few tears were just a milestone on that path to independence.

She was walking at nine months. At a few weeks shy of twelve months she runs, dances, squats, spins in circles, and goes wherever she pleases — so long as there isn’t a safety gate in her path. I’d call that a tick on the checklist of independence.