Call me cruel, but I could have been more like a crutch than a… well, whatever the opposite of a crutch is…

Sunday morning and a girl is wide-eyed and glowering at me with that ‘for the love of all things pasta, rescue me dad!’ look.

But is this really an independence skill? It seems simple and obvious enough, and it could very well be of the first steps towards an independent child.

The question that burned in the back of my mind was this: what are the the key skills that define moral, skeptical, critical thought and how would one go about imparting those skills to a child?