What is the purpose of parenting? To protect and prepare our children to survive and to thrive in the world that they will live. Parents need to be more than just sitting on the sidelines, Parents need to be ACTIVE PARENTS, if you notice in the purpose above, they are all action words, we don't expect our children to just sit there and take our word for it and we shouldn't expect them too. As parents, our goal should be to teach them through our actions and their goal should be to learn and then practice those teaching also.
I love this quote by Brother Williams, "By the time children are teens, the only tool you have to influence them is relationships." It is so vitally important that we have those healthy relationships with our children. The Problem-Handling Model is a wonderful way to treat our children The first question is, who owns the problem? If it is the child's problem, then we need to allow the natural consequences that come from that problem. There are some exceptions to this though: if it affects someone else, it is too dangerous, or if the consequence is too far in the future. If it is the parent's problem, we can follow the following steps to respectfully discuss with our children. 1. Polite Request. It is amazing how often children will positively respond just will you being nice. 2. "I" Statement. It looks like this: "When you _____, I feel _____. I feel _______ because ________. I would like________." The reason this works is because the child is able to understand how you feel about a situation, how it affects you and what you would like to happen. 3. Firm Request. I feel like this is pretty self explanatory. 4. Logical Consequence. This is always the last result, but when it is necessary there a few things that we need to take into account. 1. It needs to be discussed in advance 2. Involve the child in the conversation of rules, boundaries, and consequences 3. Follow through with the consequence 4. Give the child another chance to redeem themselves after the consequence 5. The consequence needs to be logically connected to the natural consequence Last Word: The hardest thing you will ever do as a parent, when you can fix a problem, is to JUST stand back and sympathize with your child.
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Kelli-MarieI am a junior at Brigham Young University-Idaho, studying Marriage and Family Studies. Archives
March 2017
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