As mentioned in a previous article, Parent Power is the authority given to us to guide our children towards acceptable behaviour. It is a neutral power that is automatically given and, when used effectively, can help us raise resilient kids while building a strong, positive relationship with them.
Gaining our children’s compliance is not always an easy thing to do which is why we need our power to back up our words when they refuse to listen. Our goal with our kids is to teach them how to think for themselves and understand why what we tell them to do is necessary, rather than have them blindly follow our direction.
In the end, we want to have taught our kids our version of right versus wrong, created a strong, loving relationship with them so they want to be part of our lives, and built up mutual respect so they will work with us during those tumultuous teenage years.
Five ideas for using your power wisely:
Provide clear expectations, enforcement and follow-through. Kids crave structure. They like to know what is expected of them and what the potential consequence will be for breaking that rule. Just like us, they feel an injustice has been done when they are not told of expectations and then get in trouble for breaking a rule. Be clear about your rules, enforce them consistently and do your best to follow-through on the planned consequence.
Allow choices. People like to be allowed to make their own decisions – although some will oppose it on occasion. People who resist choices usually have something else going on for them – fear of making a bad decision, challenges with self-regulation, etc. Allowing our kids to make choices and teaching them how to make good ones is an important part of helping them develop.
Guide rather than boss. Notice the kind of language that you use and when possible choose words that suggest an action rather than ordering it. For example, “Pick up your jacket” becomes “Your jacket belongs on a hook.” Depending on your child’s personality this can make the difference between daily fights and voluntary compliance. When we boss people around we are using power. Frivolous use of our power does not build respect. Save the bossing for moments when it feels totally necessary, and practice using positive communication the rest of the time.
Choose your battles carefully. There are a lot of things to correct, advise on, or lecture our kids about and if we do them all we cannot possibly build a positive relationship with them. Remember your kids will do things differently from you and will have their own perspective about what is right or wrong in many situations. Any time you have to fight to get your way, you are not teaching, but forcing compliance.
Be creative. Rather than going on automatic and pulling out habitual parenting tools (spanking, grounding, yelling, time-out…) force yourself to think creatively about the situation. Parenting is not a task to do on auto-pilot and yet so often that is what we do. When our kids are babies most of us experiment to figure out how to stop them fussing. As our kids grow and start pushing our buttons we often stop thinking and start reacting. When we force ourselves to come up with a new idea to try we are developing our own brain pathways along with those of our child.
There are a lot of great ways to gain our child’s compliance and still build a loving, respectful relationship. I encourage you to come up with your own, but to get started you might check out two of my earlier (September 09)articles sharing creative ideas for dealing with name calling (Name Calling: How parents and teachers can use it to their benefit) and rude/whiney behaviour (Would You Like a Do-Over?).
The less you use your power muscle and the more you practice using positive parenting strategies, the more you will benefit when your kids reach that rebellious, teenager stage. We all need to use our power sometimes, we just need to be sure we don’t get lazy and start using it to get our way all of the time.
The choice is ours … we have the power to make a difference!
Debbie Pokornik is a presenter and owner of empowering NRG and is releasing her first book Break Free of Parenting Pressures: Release Your Natural Guidance early 2010.
