Day 9
Giving my kids a good life does not mean removing all struggle and
disappointment.
Some parents don’t agree on raising children. It’s rare for two people to totally
agree. You can’t change a person. Become a good model with your parenting
skills. Share what you’ve learned.
When your child comes to you with something outrageous as a solution (in
this case wanting money), such as “I’ll just have to start selling drugs”, the
best thing you can say is “That’s an option”.
This will usually stop the child in her tracks, and cause them to do
some serious thinking.
We learn how to be parents by following our parents example. However today children are aware of their
“rights”. They use this against
parents. Be sure to give your children
choices with consequences, and always follow through with what you said you
would do (the consequence) if the child chooses the lesser of the two choices.
Avoid telling children how to solve their problems, instead offer a menu of
choices (things other kids have tried).
Then ask them to look at the possible consequences of each choice before
deciding on a course of action. The
child will make a good choice and feel good, or a bad choice and gain wisdom
through experience.
Children are mirrors of our own behavior.
They will imitate our actions, tone of voice, attitudes, values, and
fears.
Children will be more cooperative when they feel they have some
control. This happens when they are
offered choices.
When parents are in an emotional state is not a good time to come up with
choices to give your children.
There are times when we have to either give orders or tell our children
there are no choices.
When we are constantly giving our children choices, and then we have to
give an order, the children are more accepting of our order.
Acceptance and Approval are two different things.
Everyone makes mistakes. It’s
helpful for our children to be able to talk with an interested, not blaming,
adult about their experiences. Just
because you listen doesn’t mean you approve of what happened. Parents listen with curiosity, interest, and
ask sincere questions.
Parents need to be concerned about their teens plans for handling
undesirable activities more than they are about restricting those
activities.
Knowing your teen can handle the adversity and temptations associated with
an activity is far more important that weather the activity is good or bad.
Day 10
Take good care of yourself (and your kids) by setting firm limits, in
loving ways.
We can kill our children’s spirits with love and criticism.
Children who live with criticism grow up to be critical and chronically
unhappy.
Attacking, nagging, humiliation, fault-finding, ridicule, rejection, and
criticism. These cause the child to
become less and less confident. They
recognize what they do wrong, instead of what they do right. Children don’t learn by being corrected, they
learn by modeling and example. Bite your
tongue when you want to tell your children what they did wrong. Bite your tongue when you have impatient
words that indicate your child does not measure up. Focus on what your children do well.
No comments:
Post a Comment