Open & Honest Communication

Raising children requires open and honest communication. The only way children will ever participate in an open and honest dialogue is if they feel safe to speak openly and honestly.

If you as a parent create any sensation of fear, even the slightest amount, if you are angry, harsh, critical, or punitive, you are creating a sizable obstacle to effective communication with your children.  All problem solving and all skill development requires safety and trust.

Children may forgive our transgressions, but they will not necessarily forget.

Now, with that said, I have never met a parent who did not lose their sense of calm at least every now and then.  So, what do we as parents do when we make parenting mistakes?

The first step is always to take a step back, take some time to consider what went wrong and to regain a sense of calm.  It may take a while to figure out what went wrong, but once we do regain our composure we will want to go back to our children and apologize for our loss of self-control, to take ownership and responsibility for the error, and to remove any sense of responsibility from the children. 

Whatever they may or may not have done, it's not their fault or responsibility that we lost control.

The next step is to repair the relationship.

Different people tend to do different things after a fight or argument.  Somethings will bring people back together, healing any hurt feelings. Somethings leave the relationship damage unresolved. Each infraction left unresolved diminishes the relationship more and more over time. As parents, it's best if we can heal hurt feelings and resolve relational problems as they occur. Our children will need us most during adolescence. It's best to have a strong and intact relationship going into this stage of life.

There are many ways for parents to keep their head in the right place. A proactive parenting plan will help you keep stay calm more often and safeguard a strong, trusting relationship with your children.

Printable PDF

Kenneth H. Little, MA 

603-726-1006

KenLittle-NH.org

© 2019 Kenneth H. Little. All rights reserved.  

Trust & Faith

Parenting requires two key elements: trust and faith. It's very important that parents
trust their children and have faith in their innate goodness and capacity, while
continuously working to develop the required skills, ability, and character.
With constructive proactive parenting the likelihood is very high that your children
will turn out to be the good, capable, successful adults they were born to be. 

Believe this. Believe in your child’s natural goodness and innate ability from birth on.

The probability of a good outcome declines as parents implement parenting plans and
methods that are based in fear, anxiety, anger, and mistrust. For example, if you
believe that children are inherently sneaky and dishonest, you are likely to parent
them in a way that increases their sneakiness and dishonesty. Similarly, overly
restrictive parenting designed to increase child obedience and safety often inspires
increased rebellion and risky behaviors.

Trust

I often hear parents say to a child who has made a mistake -- "you broke my trust".
This in my view is a deep parental mistake, more akin to shaming than guiding and
correcting. Under what circumstances does a parent think create illusory conditions
of trust based on the expectation that their child will never make a mistake?

Mistakes are expected, not surprises. Trust your children to make mistakes as they
grow up. 

Children are born with natural goodness and abilities, not as perfect beings. Life is a rigorous and demanding practice-to-mastery activity. Mistakes are an expected part of life. When a child makes a mistake, it will be more reasonable and honest for a parent to say, "ah, that was expected. Let's see if we can figure out what went wrong." Mistakes are an expected part of growing up, not betrayals of trust. It's much more reasonable and accurate to trust that children will make mistakes, understanding that this is a very ordinary part of growing up.

Smile at the mistakes and reassure them.

Faith

Have faith in your children. Believe in them, that they are essentially good and
capable. Children make mistakes. They will need coaching and corrective guidance
on life skills, but this does not make them bad. "Bad" behaviors are much more
accurately seen as expected mistakes.

This is not an exercise in semantics.

How you feel about children in general will leak out all over your children. Many
parents (and teachers) that I've worked with over the years have expressed the belief
that children are essentially "bad", that they are liars and are always "up to no good",
trying to get away with some bad behavior. This is a belief, a basic assumption about
children and human beings. It's not a fact. 

While it may apply to a very few, most children are not inherently "bad". If you believe that children are basically bad, this belief will be infused into every parent-child interaction: it will be in your eyes, in your tone of voice, in the conclusions you jump to, and in the way you talk with your child after events. Your child will gradually internalize your beliefs over time and have increasingly bad behavior as a result.

This parenting approach is a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

The parent believes it and interacts with their children accordingly who then internalize the belief and ... act it out in the real world.

My strongest possible recommendation is for you to question your beliefs about
children and work continuously to develop a belief in their inherent ability and
goodness. They do not misbehave intentionally as an expression of "being bad"
humans. Children are inherently "good'. Think of misbehavior events as “just a mistake”, not a catastrophic indicator that they will grow up to be felons or failures.

Note: there are a very few children who do certain things that are indicators of a much
larger problem. This is rare. I have worked with these children. They do need extra
help. It's unlikely that your child is this child. I'll do a post on red flags another time,
but just as an example, cruelty toward animals is an example of a child in significant
distress. If you are concerned, consult with your child's medical doctor first. If you
are still concerned speak with a clinical specialist.

Even if your child is in a high-risk category, your belief in their essential goodness
and ability to overcome can have a significant constructive impact on future outcomes
while in the opposite direction, your belief that they are inherently bad is more likely
to cement their destructive future fate.

Printable PDF File

Kenneth H. Little, MA / 135 Lee Brook Road / Thornton, NH 03285 / 603-726-1006 / Achieve-ES.com

© 2019 Kenneth H. Little. All rights reserved.