Parenting On Purpose

#18- Listen Listening is something that is imperative to parenting on several levels.  It is important that we listen to our children, that we listen to our spouses in order to work as a parenting team, and that we train our children up in listening skills.  The skill of listening is something that can make or break their future employment as well as their future marriage.  It is another area that we have spent a whole week discussing, click here to check out “The How To’s of Listening.” And as always listen to today’s podcast for more insight on this topic.  

# 17- Date Your Child Something that you can do even when your children are small to help prepare them for future dating is taking them out on dates yourself.  This one on one time can help to serve many purposes for their future. Even at a young age you can begin to instill in them how to show respect to members of the opposite sex.  For instance, if a father is taking out his young daughter, he can open doors for her ect.  If a mother is taking out her son, she can teach him how to open doors for her and begin to train him how to be a gentleman. As years go by, maintaining these special times can set the stage for awesome communication.  Parents often wonder how they can communicate with their teens.  Consistently having a weekly “date” is a perfect way to keep open doors of communication…especially if this has been established from a young age.  See, your kids are never too young to begin this training. Listen to today’s podcast for more on this topic.

#16-Have Fun It is so easy in parenting to get caught up in life and simply forget to have fun! This seems to happen right when we need to focus on having fun the most.  Either parents are stressed over a situation, having to really focus on a parenting issue with a child, or the family is really busy.  These are the times to make sure that you are taking time out for fun.  During crazy or stressful times for the kids in the residential program at Sheridan House, we would make sure to surprise them every so often with something fun or silly.  It would be something as simple as waiting for the van to pull in from school with a bucket filled with water balloons.  It can be something silly like that which only takes five minutes out of the schedule to communicate fun. Kids, even our teens in residential care, will pretty much always get into a fun and silly surprise.  Whether it’s taking the long way home from school to hit up a dollar menu for a milkshake or a bucket of water balloons, put fun back into the routine.  We can’t forget that after all we are raising children, take time out for fun.   Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on this topic.  

#15-Give them Keys That Open Doors It may seem like a small thing in the vast array of things that we teach our children but something as simple as manners can help them be chosen by a future employee.  Simple etiquette will make a teen or young adult stand out from among their peers, even when interviewing for a job. There are several small things that we can do to train our children in this area.  It can even start with toddlers but thankfully this is an area that is never too late to focus on.  Simply teaching your child to say please and thank you can do wonders.  Basic table manners is also an invaluable tool that will help your child in many areas from dating to dining out with clients. A few other simple but valuable etiquette tools to teach your child are looking people in the eyes and having a proper response to people.  Teaching your child to look someone in the eye when they are talking communicates not only confidence but respect.  Another thing that communicates respect is the “yes sir/ma’am” and “no sir/ma’am”.  Basic manners will be something that sets your child apart from the rest.    

#14- Teaching How to Give Another lesson that we train our children in that can affect adulthood is teaching our children how to give.  Teaching them from an early age to give is something that helps to take the focus off themselves and teaches them to be others focused.  There a several areas that our children can learn to give first is financially.  We dealt with this in our series on raising a financially mature adult, which we gave a link to in yesterday’s post.  Another area of giving is giving of yourself, your time and serving others.  Check out our series on teaching your child to serve by clicking here.  

#13- Teaching Money Management Money management is similar to time management as a key to a balanced adult life.  It can also have far reaching impact if your child doesn’t know how to be responsible with money.  It is one of the top three reasons for marital conflict.  This is why we need to take training our children in this area very seriously as well as model money management in our own lives.  Check out our previous series on money management by clicking here.  

#12 Teaching Time Management Over the next few days we will be discussing areas that we need to train our children in that will have an impact on their adult life.  The first is teaching time management.  Teaching our children how to order and manage their time is really key to ordering their life.  It is one of the keys to being a successful adult, being marriageable and employable, as well as being able to find the time to serve God where He has called you.  We spent an entire week discussing this topic. To check out our previous series click here. Listen to today’s podcast for more on this topic.

#11- The Importance of Unplugging One of the things that technology is supposed to do is make it easier for everyone to communicate.  In fact, through things like facebook and twitter we can be updated on even the small details of what is going on in each other’s lives.  Through texting we can discreetly communicate small snippets of information.  Even email has replaced most interoffice communication and the need for buying stamps.  But with the need for instant communication we may be loosing the personal touch which comes with face to face communication.  There was a time when you wouldn’t think of telling something important over the phone because it was too impersonal.  Now we blast our important announcements over the social networks and twitter. We need to be careful through all of this that our children don’t miss out on being taught how to communicate properly.  If the only way they are learning to communicate is through text and tweets, they are seriously missing out.  You cannot have a deeply heartfelt conversation about emotions through this venue.  That training takes lots of time given by mom and dad.  Make sure there are times of your day where there are “no cell phones allowed”, so your family can communicate to each other with some good old fashioned talking! Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on this topic.  

#10- You Can’t Do Everything One valuable lesson to teach our children is the lesson of moderation.  This is one of the areas in the power of no.  There will always be time where we have to say no to things for the sake of family, rest or even our own sanity.  Part of teaching your children how to manage a schedule is by giving them the freedom to turn down the superfluous things, and sometimes even the things that may seem important, for the things that are the MOST important. Putting family first is a lesson that we have to role model.  They must see us turn down things in our lives for the most important things such as a date night with our spouse or a family night.  If this is not something that you do naturally, or you are a people pleaser and have a hard time saying no, it is worth the effort to make a change to role model this for your children.  The other thing that you can do is by helping older teens balance their schedule by setting up family times that “cannot be missed”.  Teens today seem to be running around like chickens with their heads cut off with all the school and extra activities.  We need to step in and help them learn to balance!  

#9 The Potential Cracks in The Walls- Raising Responsible Children By Giving Them Responsibility. We cannot hope to raise a child who is responsible unless we are giving them areas of responsibility.  Two areas that are easy to teach a child to be responsible is money and chores. This again is something that can start when they are younger. With chores as we talked yesterday can even start teaching your toddler to clean up after themselves or put their dirty clothes in the hamper and move up from there.  Chores not only teach a child how to do basic household tasks but they also teach time management as they learn how to work chores into their schedule. In do so it ultimately teaches responsibility, “I can’t take the time to play the video game right now because I have to finish this chore.” Keep in mind that we are raising children and not mini adults so this will take consistent training, coaching and encouragement. The second area where we can give a child responsibility is with money.  We can teach them good money habits or how to be responsible with their money, using allowance.  Using yesterday’s topic as a spring board, we have to make sure that in these areas we are training our kids and then stepping back and allowing them areas of responsibility so they can learn.    

#8 The Potential Cracks In The Walls- Get Out of The Way So They Can Learn It is so tempting at times to step in and do things for our children. From cleaning their room when they are little to doing their science projects for them as they get older.  We have to let our children learn to do things for themselves.  This means that we have to take the time to, sometimes painstakingly, train them how to do things and then back off and allow them to do it.  This may mean that they (gulp) fail.   That’s ok.  We then applaud the effort and continue the training process. This process begins when a child is very small.  We can begin with teaching our children how to clean up after themselves.  It then moves to a child learning how to clean up their room.  They will then graduate to learning how to do full blown house hold chores.  If we are consistently doing these things for them they will never learn how to effectively do them for themselves. It is the same with school work.  We can help, and should, our children with their homework.  This can be a painstaking process and sometimes is much faster to just give a child the answer instead of teaching them how to look it up for themselves. We are not doing our child any favors if we take this approach because they will never figure out […]

#7 The Potential Cracks In The Walls- Don’t Become The Consequence It is very easy to get frustrated in parenting, maybe we are stressed, over tired or have just given the same consequence for the same behavior seemingly 1000 times. When we allow ourselves to be frustrated we can also allow ourselves to become the consequence. This can also be the case when we haven’t taken the time to come up with a parenting plan and just react to a situation.  Check out the week long series that we did on this topic called “Separate the Relationship from the Discipline” by clicking here.Listen to today’s podcast as well for more insight on this topic. Listen to today’s podcast as well for more insight on this topic.

#6 The Potential Cracks In The Walls – Don’t Get Derailed By Childish Outbursts There are a few things that can make a parent feel guilty and even give in at times to their child’s behavior/desires.  The first is temper tantrums.  When a toddler is told no or doesn’t get their way and throws a fit, it is very tempting as a parent to give in and allow the child to have what they want.  It seems so much easier short term to give in and attempt to preserve peace and not have to deal with the temper on top of saying no.  However, this is detrimental in the long run and you are actually training your toddler to throw a tantrum to get their way. A second thing that can derail a parent is  the “that’s not fair” comment.  Again if you are not careful you can allow that comment to cause you to question your decision.  If you are consistent in your parenting and are giving out consequences consistently for behaviors then you have no reason to question.  The old parenting adage must apply, “say what you mean and mean what you say.”  If you are not being consistent in your consequences then it isn’t fair to your children because they don’t know what to expect. Always keep in mind that we are raising children, not mini adults, we should have the expectation that they will act like children!  

#5- Potential Cracks In The Walls- Understand That Every Child Is Different One thing that is important for every parent to grasp is the fact that every child is different.  Every child will have a different personality, energy level as well as what motivates them.  Even gender plays a big part in children’s differences.  In order to create a successful parenting, especially discipline, plan it is important to understand these things about your child.  There are things about children in general that can be approached with all children in a similar fashion, such as a schedule and consistency, but there are also things that we cannot take a cookie cutter approach too. Rewards seem like one of these issues.  For example, in the residential homes at Sheridan House if a resident does perfectly on their school report for five days in a row they earn a lunch out off campus.  This is something that is applicable and enjoyed by both genders.  On the girls campus a reward for hitting a certain points level is getting to go and get a manicure.  This is obviously not something that would be as exciting for the boys so they have a reward that applies to them. Make sure to take the time to process through your children’s differences, some children are more motivated by the consequence for bad behavior and some are more motivated by the reward for good behavior.  The “pleaser” child for example is […]

#4- Potential Cracks In The Wall- Impulse Control One thing that can cause a life to not be secure is a lack of self-control.  Not being able to control ones impulses has vast consequences from affairs to self-inflicted financial problems.  This is why from an early age it is imperative that we teach our children how to control their impulses.  The slogan “you want it, you got it” is not a very wise way to live life.  For more on this very important topic check out our week long series “Teaching Impulse Control” by clicking here.