Stage 2 in the parental authority lifecycle. The final stage, the adult years, is covered in The Boundary Myth: Why "Setting Boundaries" Fails Parents of Adult Children.
Strong trees grow strong because something pushes back on them. Wind, weather, a little resistance every day. Grow a tree in a perfectly protected greenhouse and it comes out weak, because nothing ever asked anything of it. Children are the same. In the years from four to eleven, when you still hold real authority over your child's day, the daily temptation is to use that authority to remove the resistance, to fix the forgotten homework, carry the backpack, answer the question the instructor asked them. That rescue is exactly what stalls the strength you are trying to build.
This is the second stage in the parental authority lifecycle. In the final stage, the adult years, the problem is that authority is gone but the bills are still on the parent's desk. Here, at the child stage, it is the opposite. Your authority is real and high, your responsibility is real and high, and that is precisely why rescuing feels like good parenting.
This piece came out of a success training session for parents in our school on how to support kids without rescuing them. The examples come from the floor of a martial arts school, but the mechanics apply to homework, sports, music, chores, and every other place a child meets something hard. It is the same framework I use with parents at KarateBuilt and with clients at Integrated Mental Health Associates, because the parent who learns to tolerate a bad grade at nine is the parent who can hold the hard line at twenty-nine.
The child years are Stage 2 of the five-stage parental authority lifecycle. At this stage, both a parent's authority and their responsibility are still near their lifetime peak. That combination is exactly why rescuing feels like good parenting and does the most quiet damage. The work here is to support a capable child through difficulty without removing the struggle that builds them.
The black line is the parent's legitimate authority, control over environment, behavior, choices, exposure. The red dashed line is responsibility to provide: food, shelter, transportation, money, structure. At Stage 2 both lines are still near their peak. You hold real authority and you carry real responsibility. That is exactly why the rescue reflex is strongest here, and why learning to support without rescuing now is what keeps the later stages from going sideways.
"I am the entire world."
Parent controls everything: food, sleep, environment, language, soothing, exposure. Authority and responsibility are both at lifetime peak. There are no boundaries here, only structure.
"I shape who you become."
Skills, values, focus, social rules. Authority is still high and responsibility is still high, but its form is changing, from doing everything for the child to doing only what is necessary. This is where support and rescuing get confused.
"I am still in charge, but only barely."
Authority drops faster than responsibility. The teen develops the capacity to refuse, a social network outside the home, and a real internal value system. The parent still pays for everything. Actual control is going.
"No real authority, but the bills are still on my desk."
Legal authority gone at 18. But many parents are still paying tuition, rent, phone, insurance, and providing a place to live. The old tools no longer fit. This is where the boundary myth lives.
"I have a relationship, that's all."
Authority is gone. Responsibility, in nearly all cases, is gone. The only currency left is voluntary relationship, which the parent has to earn.
Rescuing makes a child weaker because growth comes from meeting resistance, not from being protected from it. Like a tree that needs wind to grow strong, a child needs real challenges to build capability. When a parent fixes every difficulty, the child never reaches a growth boundary and never learns what they can handle. Research links over-controlling, helicopter parenting to lower competence and well-being (Schiffrin et al., 2014).
Almost every well-meaning parent of a young child shares a single hidden belief: that a good parent removes the struggle. Nobody says it that plainly. But it lives underneath the daily moves, the reminding, the hovering, the stepping in the second a task gets hard, the quiet finishing of the thing the child was supposed to do themselves. The belief feels like love. It is the opposite of what the child needs.
The struggle, within safety, is the curriculum. A child who never has to figure anything out never finds out what they are capable of. The forgotten homework, the project that did not get practiced, the test they were not quite ready for, these are the resistance the tree needs, not a mark against your parenting.
There is a common name for the opposite of this, and most parents recognize it instantly. The helicopter parent hovers, and the moment a challenge appears, they fix it or soften it or carry it away. They are trying to help. They are doing real harm, because rescuing a child from every difficulty keeps the child from ever reaching a growth boundary. We do not just have permission to let our children meet hard things. We have a responsibility to make sure they do.
When a parent steps in during a hard moment, they often believe they are giving their child something. In fact they are taking something. They are taking the chance to struggle and recover, and that chance is the thing that was going to make the child strong. Said plainly: a parent who rescues a capable child is, with the best of intentions, stealing that child's capacity.
A parent's responsibility does not disappear as a child grows, it changes form. With an infant it means doing everything. With a child it means doing only what is necessary and handing over the rest. The guiding rule is independence with safety: give the child room to act, and reserve your control for genuine dangers only. Let them climb into the car while you stand ready to catch them.
The confusion at this stage is not about whether you are responsible for your child. You are. The confusion is about what that responsibility now requires. The shape of it changes completely between the infant years and the child years, and most of the trouble comes from carrying the old shape into the new stage.
When your child was an infant, responsibility meant doing everything. You fed them or they did not eat. You moved them or they did not move. You controlled the entire environment because they could not. That was correct. It was the assignment.
The problem is that this version of responsibility is the one almost every parent gets trained on for several years, and the brain does not want to let it go. So at four, at six, at nine, the parent keeps doing things the child is now perfectly able to do, and calls it being responsible.
Real responsibility at the child stage means doing only as much as is necessary, and not one thing more. Picture a young child learning to climb into the car. You can lift them in, which is fast and keeps your morning on schedule. Or you can stand right there, ready to catch them, and let them climb in themselves.
The second way is slower and messier, and it teaches the child something the first way never will: I can do this. Once they learn they are capable of that, they start to suspect they might be capable of the next thing too. These suspicions compound. That is the entire game.
"My job is not to remove the risk. My job is to tell the difference between the risk that grows my child and the risk that actually harms them, and to stay close enough to manage only the second kind."
This is the cleanest way I know to hold the child stage. Give your child the responsibility and the room to do the thing, and keep your eyes on the genuine dangers only. Let them climb into the car, and stand there in case they fall. Let them make their own sandwich, and your job is to say, "use this one," and hand them the butter knife instead of the steak knife.
You are not giving a four-year-old the choice between the butter knife and the butcher knife to see whether they cut themselves. Nobody would. But most parents fall off the other side, doing the whole sandwich because it is faster and cleaner, and the child learns nothing.
Independence with safety draws the line in the right place. The child gets the autonomy. You hold the genuine safety. Everything in between, the spilled milk, the crooked sandwich, the slow climb, is learning, and it belongs to the child. Parental autonomy support of exactly this kind is one of the most consistent findings in developmental research, tied to stronger self-regulation, higher competence, and better school performance in children (Grolnick & Ryan, 1989).
Helicopter parenting hurts development by stealing the very capacity a parent wants to build. A parent who calls out corrections during a class, or manages every detail of a test or assignment, takes away the child's chance to focus, struggle, and recover on their own. The child learns that someone else owns the outcome, so they wait to be rescued instead of building the skill themselves.
Here is the part that surprises parents, because it happens in the exact place they are paying to have the opposite happen. Watch the parent viewing area of a martial arts school during class. The parents are seated, physically separated from the floor, not invited to coach. And yet some of them cannot stop. They call out across the room, "kick higher," "pay attention," "do it again." They mean well. They are undermining the very thing they enrolled for.
The child on the floor now has a problem. Who do I listen to? The instructor running the class, or the parent I have learned my whole life is the final word? The child freezes between the two, and the lesson the parent thinks they are reinforcing, focus, is the exact lesson they are breaking. Learning to attend to an authority figure outside the home is one of the core skills a martial arts school builds, and it is one of the top reasons parents enroll in the first place.
The parent stays responsible for the result, so they manage every input.
The child learns: someone else owns this. My job is to wait until they step in.
The parent stays responsible for safety and structure, and hands the result to the child.
The child learns: this is mine. I am the one who has to figure out what to do about it.
The handing-it-over column starts early. The best parents I see do it with three- and four-year-olds. When a test or a belt is coming up, they do not ask me whether their child is ready. They turn to the child and ask, "Do you know what you have to do? What's your plan?" A four-year-old can begin to answer that question, with support.
Imagine the compounding interest on a child who has been quietly answering "what do I have to do to be ready" since the age of four. By the time they are an adult, that habit is a superpower.
A rule is a directive aimed at the child's behavior, such as no cookies before dinner. A boundary is a clear statement of what the parent will do, paired with letting the natural consequence follow the child's own choice. Young children need firm rules. But the parent who only issues rules, and never names their own behavior or lets a consequence land, builds the problem they will face in the later stages.
There is a distinction that becomes the whole ballgame in the later stages, and the groundwork for it is laid right here at the child stage. Most parents think a boundary is a rule, a thing you impose to change your child's behavior. The two are different. A rule is a directive aimed at the child. A boundary is a clear statement of what you will do, paired with letting the natural consequence follow the child's own choice.
Both have a place, and the mix shifts with age. When children are young, rules are appropriate and they should be firm: we do not hit, we use kind words, bedtime is at eight, no cookies before dinner. A four-year-old does not need to be persuaded that bedtime is a good idea. They need bedtime.
But even now, the parent who only ever issues rules, and never names their own behavior or lets a consequence land, is building the problem they will complain about in fifteen years. The skill that protects you later starts as a small habit now: state what you will do, then let the result be the result.
Framed as control over the child's behavior, enforced by reminders and pressure.
When the rule does not produce the behavior, the parent escalates or quietly takes the task over. The child never has to own anything, because the parent always does.
A clear statement of your own behavior and availability, with the natural consequence left intact.
The child keeps full ownership of the outcome, including a bad one. The boundary holds whether they rise to it or not, because it was never about controlling them.
A natural consequence is the result that follows directly from a child's own choice, like a poor grade after skipped homework. A punishment is imposed from the outside and often unrelated, like losing television for a week. Natural consequences teach because the link between choice and outcome is obvious and belongs to the child. The hard part is tolerating the small bad outcome, the C, so the lesson can land.
The engine that makes all of this work is the natural consequence, and it is worth separating cleanly from punishment, because parents reach for the wrong one constantly. A punishment is something you impose from the outside, often unrelated to what the child actually did. No television for a week because of a missed assignment. It is hard to calibrate, easy to get wrong, and it teaches the child very little except that you are angry.
A natural consequence is the result that follows directly from the child's own choice. It teaches, because the link between the decision and the outcome is obvious and it is theirs. The work of separating these two cleanly traces back decades, to the distinction between natural and logical consequences and punishment in child discipline (Dreikurs & Grey, 1968).
Take the homework. You can remind your child fifteen times and then sit down and do it with them. Or you can set the expectation that managing their own time is their job, and let the consequence of not doing it be a bad grade. Here is the hard question, and it is the whole question: can you tolerate the bad grade?
A C that teaches a nine-year-old how to manage their own time is worth far more than an A you produced by nagging. Time management is what makes people effective as adults. The grade is not. If you cannot stand the C, you will take the homework back, and your child will learn nothing except that homework belongs to you.
There is a clean line between supporting a child and rescuing one, and it runs through a single question: who asked? Help that the child requests builds them, because it teaches them to recognize when they are stuck and to reach for support. Help that you supply unrequested, jumping in to fix the thing before they have even asked, does the opposite. It tells them the task was never really theirs.
So wait to be asked. When your child says, "I can't do this by myself," that is the moment. "Great. What do you need? Let's figure out what would help." Not before. That restraint, the waiting itself, is the support.
Parents should make the big foundational choices, like learning a language, an instrument, or martial arts, because a child's motivation rises and falls and will not carry them through the hard middle on its own. The child's job is to navigate the daily failures and recoveries inside that choice. Significant skills are built by staying with something when interest runs out (Duckworth, 2016). Do not expect gratitude for it.
None of this means the child runs the show. There is a real limit to "let them decide," and it sits exactly where the genuinely valuable, genuinely hard skills live. A child will not, on their own steady motivation, choose to push through the long uncomfortable middle of learning a language, or a musical instrument, or martial arts. Motivation does not work that way. It rises and falls by the week, by the day, by the hour.
I tell parents this directly. When a parent says, "I want to see whether my child wants to keep going," I ask what they actually want for their child. If the answer is "I want them to learn Mandarin," then understand that every child in the middle of learning Mandarin will, at some point, feel like quitting, and then feel fine, and then feel like quitting again. The skill is on the far side of that.
Significant growth does not come from a child's moment-to-moment choices. It comes from a parent making the foundational choice and holding it, while the child does the real work of navigating the failures and recoveries in the middle. That is the division of labor: the parent owns the big choice, the child owns the daily struggle inside it. Sustained effort toward a long-term goal, the quality that actually predicts achievement, is built precisely this way (Duckworth, 2016).
And do not wait for the thank-you. A child does not say, "I'm so grateful you made me learn Mandarin." Neither does the adult they become. You make the choice because it is right for them, not because gratitude is coming, because it usually is not, and certainly not on any schedule you will get to enjoy.
Setting a boundary without rescuing takes three moves in order: name it, hold it, tolerate it. Name the expectation clearly and once. Hold the line calmly when the child tests it, instead of folding because holding feels mean. Then tolerate the imperfect outcome, the bad grade or the hard day, without stepping in to fix it. Most parents fail at the third move, not the first.
Supporting without rescuing comes down to three moves, in order. Naming the line is the easy part. Holding it when your child pushes is harder. Tolerating the outcome when it is imperfect is the part that takes most parents down. Almost every parent who fails at this fails at the third gate, not the first.
Say the expectation clearly, once
State the rule or the boundary in plain words. "Homework is yours to schedule." "No cookies before dinner." "You're responsible for being ready to test." Clear, short, said once. Not a negotiation, and not a lecture delivered on a loop.
The block: vagueness. A line the child cannot repeat back to you is a line you cannot hold them to. If you have not named it cleanly, you have not set it yet.
Stay in place when the line is tested
It will be tested. The child will go for the cookie, skip the practice, push to see whether the line is real. In that moment, holding the line can feel like being the mean parent, and that feeling is where most parents fold. The phrase that lets them off the hook is, "I don't want to push my kid." But folding there teaches the child only one thing: that lines move if you push them.
The shift: from "holding this makes me the bad guy" to "holding this is the help."
Let the result be imperfect, and stay calm
This is the gate. The child gets the C. They do not make the team. They have a hard class. They are, for a while, not happy with you. Most parents cannot sit in that, so they reach back in and fix it, and the whole structure collapses, because the lesson only lands if the consequence is allowed to land.
The clearest example I have is my own. When my son was four, he had to learn to swim, and I was not going to negotiate that, because I did not want him to drown. One day he did not want to go, and he threw a real fit about it. And the answer was simply to tolerate it.
"I get that you don't want to go swimming. Let's get in the car, we have to go." Less talking, less emotion. I could hold it because in my mind there was nothing to debate. He was going to learn to swim. The fit was not a reason. It was just weather.
He kept being upset the whole way there, and we still went, and at the end of the lesson he was fine. He has never once, at any age, thanked me for making him go that day. I never expected him to. Tolerating his discomfort, while staying calm and not yielding, was how I cared for him. That is the move.
"If I let the bad outcome happen, I am failing my child."
The bad outcome is usually small, a bad grade, a hard day, a complaint, and it is the exact thing that teaches. The parent who cannot tolerate it is the one who keeps the child from ever learning to handle it.
Refusing to fix it is the support, even when it feels like the opposite.
One of my favorite people in the world is a student named Ms. Lanet, who came to us with severe, at times life-threatening physical challenges, and who is now earning her black belt. What her parents did is the entire framework lived out. They did not walk in handing us a list of what she could not do. They set no limitations on what she could be taught. They let our instructors challenge her, fully, and then they sat back and watched.
They stayed close on the genuine safety questions, the surgeries, the real medical limits, those conversations happened. But they did not borrow trouble. Instead of protecting her in the places she did not need protecting, they let her grow. And she has gone past what anyone, including her instructors, thought she could do. That is independence with safety at full strength: hold the real dangers, and refuse to invent the rest.
I know how hard this is, because I have failed at it myself. I spent twenty years in martial arts before my son was born. He was diagnosed with autism and was non-verbal until around the age of four. When he turned three, the age we start children, I hesitated to enroll him, even though I own the school and have told a thousand parents exactly what I am telling you.
To put him on the floor, I had to make a genuinely uncomfortable choice: to risk him failing, and to risk looking bad doing it. One of his first words, more or less, was "Hi-ya." Knowing the framework and living it are two different things.
Supporting without rescuing produces a stronger, more capable child who has actually practiced handling hard things, plus far less stress for the parent. It does not promise that the child will thank you, that they will not struggle, or that every outcome will be good. The struggle is the point, not a sign of failure. You aim to get it right more often than not, not perfectly.
The honest version of this framework includes the part the motivational version skips, a real account of what supporting without rescuing actually delivers, and what it does not promise. Take the second list as seriously as the first, or the whole thing becomes another empty promise that hard parenting will be rewarded on a convenient timeline.
You can locate where you get stuck by testing each move honestly. If your child cannot repeat the expectation back, you are stuck at naming. If you re-explain and quietly give in when tested, you are stuck at holding. If you step in to relieve your own anxiety about a bad grade or a hard day, you are stuck at tolerating. Three questions per move will surface it in minutes.
Could your child repeat back, in their own words, what the expectation actually is?
Did you state it once and clearly, or is it living in reminders and lectures?
Is the line about what your child must do, or about what you will and will not do?
The last time the line was tested, did you hold it, or did you re-explain and quietly give in?
How many times have you said "this is the last time" about the same thing?
When you fold, is it for the child's sake, or to end your own discomfort in the moment?
What is the imperfect outcome you cannot sit with, the bad grade, the hard day, the complaint?
Are you stepping in to teach your child, or to relieve your own anxiety about how it looks?
Can you stay calm, say less, and let the natural consequence finish doing its work?
With a child you still hold real authority, so the move is to set the line and hold it while staying calm. Validate the feeling in a few words, then act with less talk and less emotion. The emotions you show are the ones the child needs, steadiness and warmth, not the frustration or guilt you may feel. Nine common situations and the effective strategy for each follow.
Scenario: Screen time limit. The 7-year-old gets one hour of tablet per day. The hour is up. The parent announces it. The child says 'Just five more minutes' and then escalates: 'You never let me do anything. All my friends can play as long as they want.'
The child: Arguing, then crying, then the comparison attack ('my friends get to'). Possibly slamming the tablet down.
The parent must tolerate: Being the 'mean parent.' The social comparison pressure. The fight right before dinner when everyone is already tired. The temptation to say 'five more minutes' just to end the scene. Emotions to tolerate: the wish to avoid the fight, guilt at being the mean one, irritation..
If they cave: Five more minutes becomes the real rule. The stated limit was fiction. The child files that and brings it to every future limit.
Effective strategies: Brief and even: 'Time is up. I know you want more.' Take the tablet, no debate. Keep a friendly tone so the limit, not your irritation, is what lands.
Scenario: Homework. 9-year-old sits at the table with a math worksheet, puts their head down, and says 'I can't do it. It's too hard.' Starts to cry.
The child: Shutting down. Crying. 'I can't do it' repeated until the parent takes over or removes the expectation.
The parent must tolerate: Watching their child struggle and not rescuing them. The temptation to just do it together, which often means the parent doing it. The worry: what if the teacher thinks I don't care? Emotions to tolerate: the urge to rescue, worry about the teacher, discomfort watching them struggle..
If they cave: The child discovers that 'I can't' produces rescue. The skill the homework was supposed to build gets skipped. The pattern shows up in every hard thing from here forward.
Effective strategies: Warm and confident: 'This is hard, and you can do hard things. I am right here.' Sit near, do not take the pencil. Project belief, not worry.
Scenario: Social conflict. 8-year-old comes home crying because a friend group excluded them at recess. The child demands the parent call the other parents and fix it.
The child: Crying, upset, insisting the parent intervene. 'You have to do something. It's not fair.'
The parent must tolerate: The child's real pain. The instinct to protect. The fear that doing nothing means the child suffers alone. The urge to call the school or the other parents and make it stop. Emotions to tolerate: the instinct to protect, anger at the other kids, the urge to call someone..
If they cave: The child learns that social pain produces adult rescue. The social problem-solving skills they needed to develop never get a chance to develop. The next conflict requires a bigger rescue.
Effective strategies: Validate fully, fix nothing: 'That hurt, I get it.' Listen, stay calm, and ask what they want to try. Your steadiness shows them they can handle this.
Scenario: Quitting. 10-year-old decides three weeks before their belt test that they want to quit karate. 'I hate it. I'm not going back. You can't make me.'
The child: Refusal, anger, tears, 'I hate karate.' Possibly a meltdown before class every week until the test.
The parent must tolerate: The child's temporary misery. The weekly fights. The fear that forcing them to finish will make them hate the activity forever. The doubt: am I being rigid? Emotions to tolerate: doubt, the wish to avoid the weekly fight, guilt..
If they cave: The child learns that quitting is available whenever something gets hard. They miss the lesson the challenge was designed to teach. The pattern follows them into every hard thing they encounter in the next decade.
Effective strategies: Calm and sure: 'I hear that you are done. We finish the test, then you choose.' Drive them in without re-litigating it weekly. Project confidence in them.
Scenario: Chores. The 8-year-old is asked to clear the table and says they will do it later, then negotiates it away.
The child: Later, in a minute, or a bargain to trade it for something easier. The job quietly does not get done.
The parent must tolerate: The fact that it is faster and cleaner to just do it yourself. Emotions to tolerate: the pull to just do it yourself, irritation, the wish to avoid conflict..
If they cave: Chores become optional, and the child learns that delay and negotiation make the task disappear.
Effective strategies: Short and friendly: 'Table first, then screens.' No nagging, no doing it for them. Let the calm order stand.
Scenario: The forgotten item. The 9-year-old leaves homework or a lunch at home and expects the parent to drive it over.
The child: A call from the office, with the assumption that the parent will fix it like always.
The parent must tolerate: The image of them hungry or in trouble, and the ease of just making the drive. Emotions to tolerate: the image of them in trouble, guilt, the ease of fixing it..
If they cave: The parent becomes the safety net, and the child never builds the habit of packing their own bag.
Effective strategies: Warm, not anxious: 'You will handle it today. Tonight we will set up your morning check.' Do not drive it over. Confidence, not rescue.
Scenario: A small lie. The 7-year-old says they washed their hands or finished reading when they did not.
The child: A quick untrue answer to skip a step, watching to see if it gets checked.
The parent must tolerate: The pull to either overreact or to let it pass because it is small. Emotions to tolerate: the urge to overreact, the pull to let it slide, disappointment..
If they cave: Lying works, and it becomes the easy route around any expectation.
Effective strategies: Even and kind: 'In our house we tell the truth. Let us do it together now.' No big reaction. Calm steadiness over a lecture.
Scenario: Referee. The two siblings bring every dispute to the parent and demand a judge.
The child: Tattling, escalating, each insisting the parent rule in their favor right now.
The parent must tolerate: The noise and the wish for peace, which makes stepping in feel like the fast fix. Emotions to tolerate: the wish for quiet, the pull to be judge, the noise..
If they cave: The children never learn to settle anything, and the parent becomes the permanent court.
Effective strategies: Step back, calm: 'You two work it out. If it gets unkind, the toy rests.' Do not judge the case. Project confidence they can solve it.
Scenario: Stalling at bedtime. The older child runs the one-more-thing routine: water, a question, one more hug, repeat.
The child: A steady stream of small requests that stretch lights-out later and later.
The parent must tolerate: The drawn-out goodnight and the wish to end the day warmly rather than firmly. Emotions to tolerate: the wish to end the day sweetly, guilt, fatigue..
If they cave: Bedtime erodes a little each night, because each extra request earned more time.
Effective strategies: One drink, one hug, lights out, said once and lightly. Do not return for more requests. Warm and unbudging.
These nine examples are the child stage of a five-stage set. For all five stages and 45 examples, see Boundary Setting at Five Stages of Life.
The hardest idea in this whole framework is also the simplest: restraining yourself from fixing your child's problem is how you show that you care about your child. Standing calmly next to a four-year-old having a fit about swimming, and going anyway, is love. Letting a nine-year-old take a C they earned, and not taking the homework back, is love. It does not feel like love in the moment. It feels like the opposite. It is the real thing anyway.
We make a great deal, in martial arts, of the black belt, and here is why. A black belt is never earned by someone who never failed, never fell, never had a class that went badly. It is the proof that a person met hard things and kept going. You cannot hand that to a child. You can only refuse to take away the struggle that builds it.
There is a through-line across all five stages of this series. The parent who learns, at the child stage, to name a line, hold it, and tolerate an imperfect outcome is building the exact muscle they will need at every stage after. The boundary that is so hard to hold with a twenty-five-year-old, covered in the Stage 5 piece on the boundary myth, starts as a small habit with a nine-year-old and a bad grade. Practice it now, while the stakes are a swimming lesson and a forgotten worksheet.
The payoff is real, and it runs both directions. A stronger, more capable child who got to find out what they could do. And a parent whose life is lighter, less anxious, and far less exhausting, because they finally stopped trying to carry an outcome that was never theirs to carry.