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Perfect Parenting Keys
An Excerpt from Perfect Parenting
By Elizabeth Pantley
Your most important goal as a parent is NOT to make your children happy on a short-term basis. It's to raise capable, responsible human beings. There are many times when your children will be unhappy with your decisions. Usually, this means you've made the right decision! We have an incredible amount of information and knowledge at our fingertips, more than any other generation of parents in our history. Take advantage of this information. Read. Think. And be confident in your actions.
Key #6: Give choices, ask questions.
A primary goal of all children is to become independent. Instead of fighting against this very natural process, a wise parent will use it to his advantage.
As an example, let's look at the very common problem of a child's messy bedroom. A parent can rightly expect that a child's room be neat and clean. A typical mistake is for the parent to demand that the child clean it -- on the parent's time schedule, and to the parent's exact specifications. The typical child responds with a full-blown temper tantrum, which ignites the parent's adult-sized temper tantrum, which results in a lot of anger, and a still-messy room.
A better choice is to engage the child's decision-making skills and utilize his desire to be in control of his own room and his own life. A parent might offer several well-thought-out choices, such as, "Would you like to clean your room after school today, or would you prefer to do it after baseball practice tomorrow?" Another choice might be, "What would you like to do first, change your bedding or vacuum your carpet?" Yet another choice would be, "Would you like to clean your room yourself, or shallI help you?" It's clear that a child will respond better to any of these choices than he would to the statement, "Clean your room and do it now."