Take the Lifeworks Challenge!
How effective is your parenting?
Parents try any number of gymnastic feats to try to get their kids to behave. At LifeWorks, we’ve boiled ‘em down to five.
Do you find yourself doing a lot of teaching with your kids?
Do you use words to explain, cajole, lecture, intimidate, advise, or convince?
Do you watch your kid’s eyes glaze over as soon as you open your mouth?
Do you offer lots of unsolicited advice?
Are you convinced that if you just explain a LITTLE MORE your kid will eventually succumb to your good parenting and change?
If you answered yes to the above questions, your parenting techniques may need some help!
Usefulness: Varies considerably. Three-year-olds must be taught table manners and simple rules of polite conversation. Similarly, troubled teens (see Abbie) may be teachable on some issues, like driving a car, for instance. But lecture that same kid about her choice of friends and you will see her eyes roll and her shoulders slump a she tunes you out within seconds of your first word.
Popularity: A favorite technique of parents with kids of all ages.
Effectiveness: Poor to Fair
Do you find yourself managing too many details of your kids’ lives?
Do you know all about every homework assignment?
Do you find yourself getting more involved in your kids’ schoolwork than they are?
Do you obsess about curfews, cleaning of rooms, grooming and piercings, friendship choices, instant messaging, web surfing, telephone usage, and clothing choices?
Do your kids get lazier and more passive the more active and involved you get?
Has your involvement in your own life and interests shrunk in proportion to your over-active interest in your kids’ lives?
Do you sweat ALL the small stuff?
If you answered yes to the above questions, you may need to BACK OFF and learn some new parenting skills. Managing is, at its best, the implementation of appropriate boundaries and consequences. At its worst, it is a failed effort to control, micro-manage, and manipulate.
Usefulness: Varies, but disintegrates as kids age
Popularity: Another favorite of parents. It gives them illusion of control.
Effectiveness: Poor to Good
Note: Many ineffective and stuck parents are teacher/managers.
Do you work at modeling your values to your kids?
Do you concentrate on showing, by example, the behaviors and attitudes you want and expect your kids to emulate?
If so, do you primarily model on issues like clothing choice, church attendance, grooming habits, table manners, an social priorities?
Or do you also model on issues like healthy, intimate (not just harmonious) relationships within the marriage and the family, healthy communication skills, good boundaries, money management, time management, stress management, healthy conflict resolution, individuality and creativity, and goodwill?
At LifeWorks, we believe modeling is an extremely effective parenting technique if you’re willing to take the risk to model the hard stuff!!
Popularity: Underused
Effectiveness: Excellent (long-term)
Do you allow your kids to experience both positive and negative consequences of their actions?
Do you allow your kids to have educational (if sometimes painful) experiences through which to learn?
Or do you protect your kids from the consequences of their actions?
Do you often get your kids out of trouble, finish their homework, run last-minute errands, resolve their disputes for them, and generally race around trying to keep your kids from failing or experiencing any appreciable degree of discomfort?
When was the last time you rushed a forgotten lunch to school, ironed a teen’s shirt when he’s running late, or helped your child complete a school project she “forgot about”?
At LifeWorks, we believe parents do an enormous disservice to their children by failing to use this wonderful teaching tool. Teacher/manager parents, LISTEN UP! Experience is the best teacher and often the only one they’ll listen to!
Popularity: unpopular
Effectiveness: superior
Do you recognize the sovereignty of God in your life? Can you see the limits of your own influence? Can you let go and trust God when things are genuinely out of your hands?
Do you cultivate wisdom (not just answers!) and serenity in an ultimate sense?
Do you cultivate a strong spiritual faith in your own life?
Are you able to wisely acknowledge that, at some ultimate level, results are out of your hands?
At LifeWorks, we recommend that parents memorize the following prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Popularity: unpopular
Effectiveness: superior
Give up your old habits and get yourself some new skills! At Lifeworks, our counselors are ready to help.
Take the LifeWorks Challenge! Call today!
Learn more about Harry Cates.
Email: hlcates@wefixbrains.com
Learn more about Chris Jones.
Email: cjones@wefixbrains.com
Learn more about Melanie Wells.
Email: mwells@wefixbrains.com
Recommended reading on Parenting
Traits of a Healthy Family: Fifteen Traits Commonly Found in Healthy Families by Those Who Work With Them (Epiphany)
Boundaries with Kids
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families: Building a Beautiful Family Culture in a Turbulent World
Healing ADD: The Breakthrough Program That Allows You to See and Heal the 6 Types of ADD
Resource links on Parenting: