The Power of Being Needed
Last night, my thirteen-year-old brought 75 first-calf heifers in from the pasture by herself. And last week, the two of us gathered 220 cows and calves across 300 acres of complicated Montana rangeland on horseback, and I couldn’t have done it without her.
And it lined up with a piece of research I’ve been chewing on this week.
One of the strongest protective factors against teen depression is whether a kid believes they’re needed by the people around them.
A Canadian psychologist named Gordon Flett has spent his career on this. His research shows kids who don’t feel needed are measurably more likely to slide into depression. About a third of teenagers, in his surveys, don’t feel they matter to anyone, or aren’t sure they do.
Our daughter on horseback bringing heifers in from the pasture on her own.
For ten thousand years, parents didn’t have to manufacture that feeling. Children were needed. They hauled water, worked the herd. A family ate or didn’t based on whether the kids showed up. It wasn’t sentimental. It was survival.
And based on Flett’s research, we’ve swung too far the other way.
We’ve taken the chores off their plate. Smoothed the road. Kept them safe from every sharp edge we could find.
Eliza came out to the ranch with me in early May, and I’ll admit I was worried about it. I knew I’d still be heads-down learning the ropes of a new ranch myself, and I figured I wouldn’t have enough left over to smooth the edges of adapting to a new place. But I was thinking about it the wrong way.
She jumped right in and didn’t need much guidance. In fact, she has been the one guiding me.
She knows more about horses than I do, and she’s the reason I’m getting better on mine. She’s helped me pull several calves out here. It’s not the kind of thing you forget at any age. She didn’t flinch.
She’s more steady out there than I’ve ever seen her, and it’s not because there’s no phone in her hand. I think it has a lot to do with how much we depend on her.
When she came out to Montana, I worried I might be asking too much of her. Turns out I haven’t been asking enough.
Your farmer,
Cody