Teaching Children About CHOICE
I didn’t even really know what the definition of a parent was. I mean, what is it that we are actually here to do? After doing many years of ‘work’ around why I parented the way I did, I came to this end result. We are here to guide our children to know themselves. To help them find out who they are by standing back and allowing them to live their life with full knowledge that we are right behind them to support them.
In my earlier years of being a parent, I wasn’t doing that. I had nose-dived into what I playfully call the #WeParentFromThePastTrap, repeating the patterns of exactly the way I was parented without even realising it! I still remember the day I woke up and realised I had turned into my mother!
I became a controlling, micro-managing, ‘over-parenter,’ which is the opposite of the ‘chilled-out’ parent I saw myself being through the rose tinted glasses I wore. As my kids got older I realised my ‘way’ of parenting was a pretty near constant stream of what to do and what not to do. I constantly told my kids what to do. Just like my mother constantly told me and her mother before her.
Can you see the broken record that is the ‘way’ we parent? It’s pretty clear that when we choose to lift away the old glasses and look with fresh eyes. I realised I didn’t ‘like’ being told what to do – even as an adult. I prefer to be able to work things out on my own, come to my own solutions and conclusions and ask for help if I need it. Our kids are exactly the same, given half the chance. Do you consistently invite or give your kids the opportunity to do stuff on their own and ASK for help when they need it? Or like the old me, do you do it all for them and end up a depleted ball of resentment? If you are a bit telling-them-what-to-do-all-the-time-ish and more than a smidge doing-it-all-for-them, your kids will feel like they have no choice, say or empowerment in their lives.
If they feel like you have all the power and they have none, they are more likely to react in an undesirable way and you might have a wee bit of trouble getting them to listen, respond and do what you’ve asked. You may have kids that avoid telling you what’s really going on for them because there is a recipe of control playing out that so many of us inherited from our parents’ way of parenting.
I thought the role of control was my responsibility as a parent and I did it because I cared, until I realised they didn’t. Then I realised IT DIDN’T MATTER because it doesn’t matter – unless you MAKE it matter! I suddenly realised that the reason my kids didn’t listen to me with the stuff that ‘did’ matter was because I was controlling everything in their lives that ‘didn’t’ matter. So what can we do to change this outdated recipe of control?
We can:
• Stop using the old ingredients and get some new ones.
• Stop telling them what to do and share from our own experience instead. This is the key ingredient for empowered parenting to provide a way that equips our kids from our ‘grey hair’ experience to live in the world we’re in and not the one we came from.
• Model the behaviour we want to see. Kids learn from what we DO as parents, not what we SAY. Bugger!
• Teach our kids about choice.
My Choice — Your Choice. Parent Choice — Kid Choice.
I’m not talking about whether you have macaroni or mince for dinner. I’m talking about who’s choice it is and how we can let go of a huge number of battles simply by bringing our over-parenting to an end and teaching our kids about choice.
Teach them it’s Your choice, or the Kid’s choice for things like the clothes they wear, the haircut they have, whether they wear matching socks or pajamas to school (as long as that fits with the school’s choice). It can also be a Kid Choice on how they keep their room – as long as there’s no moldy food in there – then it becomes a Parent Choice to implement a rule like, “No food in your room.”
Then, when it’s mum or dad’s choice, they listen, they respond and they actually WANT to do what you’ve asked. When you say, “Mum’s choice. Time to get in the car,” they get in the car!!! No battle, no whining, no issue…because they have power in other areas of their lives…all because they have a choice over the other stuff.
Choice. You get the idea.
It’s a game changer!