Did you miss the first part of this series? Here are the other parts:
Introduction
Part 1: Control Your Own Behavior
How to Get and Keep Your Child's Heart
By far, this is the most important part of parenting. If you don't have a heart-to-heart connection with your child, they will not accept your guidance. You might be able to control them for a time when they are with you, but out of your sight there will be nothing to guide them. Books have been written on the importance of attachment with a child's parents from birth. It is greatly detrimental to a child for the parent(s) to fail to form an attachment to her child, especially in the first year of life. This has been proven by the vast number of children raised in orphanages who were left in a crib for hours with no one holding them. Thankfully, in America and other countries (I assume), we have foster homes instead of orphanages so children can form healthy attachments to adult caregivers. By the way, perhaps this will help some of you understand why we purposely get attached to the children in our home! It is for their emotional and mental health. It will help them learn to form other healthy attachments in the future.
Guidance Instead of Control
No one likes to be controlled by another person, and, if you think about it, should anyone be controlled by another? Our relationships should be respectful to one another. If you're a Christian, you should be guided by the Holy Spirit, but He doesn't even control us. We have the freedom to make our own choices. If you train your child by controlling him will he learn to control himself (or to be gently led by the Holy Spirit)? Remember the long-term effect you want to have on your child. You probably want him to eventually make good choices on his own.
The key to guiding instead of controlling is having that attachment or heart-to-heart connection with your child. How do you make friendships or emotional connections to anyone, including adults? Mutual respect, kindness, taking an interest in what the other person enjoys, spending time with each other. You are still the parent and must have consistent boundaries, which are held in place kindly and firmly, and all of this can be done with respect for yourself and the child. It might be a paradigm shift, a release of control that you don't want to give up, but it might be necessary for the sake of your family.
I love the personal illustrations of Danny Silk in Loving Our Kids on Purpose. Since he had that emotional connection with his children, when it came to them making difficult choices as teenagers, they often chose the path that would not hurt their parents' heart--out of love! We must give our children freedom through choices, little by little, as they grow, so that one day their choices can be governed by love for God, others, and themselves.
Special Time with Your Child
One way to form healthy attachments to your children is to give them lots of positive, personal attention. Children thrive on this! Our little Boy7 seems to be constantly trying to get my attention while I am caring for his baby brother. He even crawls on the floor, talks like a baby, and puts a bib on! This is an unusual example, but a very real one. Boy7 desperately needs attention since he has been caring for his 3 younger siblings alone at his bio home. All children need and love attention, though. It's easy for a stay-at-home-parent to think you're giving attention to the children all day long, but caring for their basic needs is not the same.
I like Jane Nelson's suggestion (see Positive Discipline Tool Card above) for the amount of special time needed for each child. It is at least a start that can be adjusted to meet your child's needs. In today's busy world, we all need a little prompting to actually sit down and have face-to-face time with our children. What you do during that time can be decided by you and the child together. Scheduling the time is a must if you are a busy parent! (and who isn't, right?)
What can you do today to cultivate a heart-to-heart connection with your child? If it is already damaged you might want to start with a sincere apology for disrespecting her and/or not spending enough time together. Search your own heart first, and don't walk into the room with a list of things he's doing wrong. Be the mature adult in the relationship and fix yourself first.
This concludes the series on Parenting Effectively. I had other points in the outline, but I think they will fit more appropriately in a separate series on Age-Appropriate Discipline. I'll include the things that actually worked with our previous foster children.
I hope and pray that I can implement these parenting methods in my own home. That was the original purpose of this series. I feel like there is so much more that I could say and that I only touched the surface of these subjects. Let us all keep learning and striving to be the best parents we can be! Our kids are worth it!
I'd love to hear your comments or suggestions!
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