Parenting tip – Be united

How can you be purposeful in training your children?  Be united

While our children are young, we are often short-sighted about their character development.  Some parents carry a fire extinguisher, putting out fires but they can fail to take the time to install an “automatic fire extinguisher system,” with a view to the future.  It is essential that we look at the road ahead, and ask ourselves: are we leading our children in the correct direction?

 While we do not want to over-react to bad behavior, it is important to understand that ignoring moral training can have negative repercussions.  As parents we easily miss opportunities to make the most of a crisis by teaching our children life lessons that they can gain from it.  We dare not make a pattern of allowing our children to justify or overlook their errors or faults.  Therefore, we must be intentional about how we respond to crises and be consistent in our response.  Some of the following recommendations may be useful.

Some recommendations

1.  Recognize our weaknesses. It was not until I became a mother that I realized that I tends to be “soft”. More than once I succumbed to the precious and innocent eyes of my children who looked at me, as if to say: “Mom, what I did wrong is not so important, you can ignore what I just did. “Once I recognized this, I decided to work at it with my husband.

2.  Recognize each other’s strengths and work together. Recognizing our weaknesses is not easy, but for some recognizing strengths can be even harder. Allowing my husband to be stern or more demanding of the children was not easy. But I discovered that his ability to be firm was effective in helping guide and correct our children. On the other hand, my husband recognized my strength to be sensitive and understanding. We learned to recognize our strengths and work together to practice more effective parenting skills.

3. Decide in advance what is permissible and how crises, conflicts and discipline will be managed.  Children seem to be born with the ability to recognize the weaknesses of parents and discover early the buttons they must press to get their way.

Currently, my children are parents.  In a recent conversation, I asked my children why they almost always went to me first. To which they replied with a smile: “Mom, you were the most lenient, but we recognized that you and dad were united”. I realized that if we would not have worked together, the our children would have gotten their own way more than they should have.

 4. Finally, parents must decide together the kind of people we want our children to become.  It is a long term investment as we work to mold the hearts of our children. Our resolve as parents to guide our children on the right path will help them to make correct decisions every day.

How can you be purposeful in training your children?  Be united and decide together the kind of people you want your children to become and what you need to do to mold their hearts so they will find the right path.

For Sonia Maldonado PhD (soniam@lifeschool.es)