Santa Clarita life coach Alex Urbina detailed the fine line separating parents who help their kids from the parents who are enable them on the latest “My Conscious Dad” show on KHTS AM-1220.

“As parents, we love our kids so much that we want them to be successful … so I think it’s just natural as parents that we’re going to do whatever we can to help our kids win,” said Urbina. “When we cross those lines … we start to fall into the enabling.”

Santa Clarita Life Coach Alex Urbina

When parents enable their children, Urbina noted they are “(taking) away the opportunity for (their) kids to really figure out who they are and how confident they are in making their own choices.”

There’s a fine line between parents helping their child when they are first learning a task, and enabling the child to the point where he or she never learns to do it on their own, according to Urbina.

Related: Santa Clarita Life Coach: Emotional Honesty Benefits You And Those Around You

“Enabling is doing something for someone that he or she can do for themselves or should be doing for themselves,” he said. “Helping is more about doing something for someone that he or she is not capable of doing for themselves.”

While growing up, Urbina recalled that his mom would be the one to offer help most of the time, while his dad would let him figure the situation out on his own.

“I was too young to recognize that he wasn’t turning his back on me,” explained Urbina. “He knew, I think, in his gut that he didn’t want to jump in and save me and ruin the opportunity for me to learn that I am capable.”

Urbina compared the process of enabling to taking in a wild animal from the time it was a baby, nurturing it and then letting it loose in the wild, only to realize it does not have the tools to survive.

“By that time, you have already created the dysfunction and you have acknowledged it and you have verified it and validated it to the point where now it’s a full-blown habit, and your son or daughter can’t fend for themselves,” he explained.

Parents will often enable their children by trying to control the outcomes of certain situations in order to “have the situation turn out the way (they) need it to look.”

“Because you don’t want them to… fail, you get in there and you start to put all of your choices into play and you start to manipulate the scenarios and the circumstances so that they have a favorable outcome,” explained Urbina.

Urbina encourages parents to take a step back and ask if what they are doing is “really about them — or is it about me?”

“It really comes down to being conscious,” said Urbina. “Ask yourself, ‘How much of what I’m doing for my kids is getting in the way of their development?’”

Santa Clarita life coach Alex Urbina is one of the leading experts on teen, parent and family relationships. Specializing in personal transformation, Urbina has 20 years of experience as a life coach in Santa Clarita. His Life Leadership Training programs are being implemented in schools, youth organizations and transformational centers across the country, helping empower people to realize their full potential. “My Conscious Dad”, hosted by Urbina and his daughter, Jazmine Urbina, helps listeners consider new possibilities they couldn’t see before. The show airs on Fridays at 1 p.m. on KHTS AM-1220.