Kid Whisperer: How to erase ‘I can’t’ from your child’s vocabulary

When we do things for our kids that could be done by them, our kids learn that acting and being helpless get things done without any effort. — Dreamstime/TNS

Question: My 10-year-old acts like he can’t do anything. Yesterday he said, “I can’t open this,” handed me a box of cookies that a five-year-old could open and walked away and started watching TV. I know I’m messing up.

What do I do?