How to Switch Your Parenting from Preaching to Teaching

The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see - Alexander K. Trenfor

In Parenting is Teaching, not Preaching, I explained why kids resent parents who take too long to explain things and why a relationship based on lecturing your kids is not healthy and makes the kids just not listen to you.

Today, I share five tips that will make the communication and cooperation at home better for you and show you how to switch your parenting from preaching to teaching.

1. No Pink Elephants

Parents are used to telling their kids what not to do. The words “don’t”, “stop” and “no” are very common in the parenting vocabulary. Unfortunately, using them only makes the child do more of what you are trying to stop. Read Beware of Pink Elephants for more.

Rather than telling your kids what not to do, tell them what you want them to do and notice how their behavior changes dramatically.

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Parenting is Teaching, not Preaching

Boy in tree with Batman symbol on his forehead

Last week, I ran a parenting workshop and parents’ biggest frustration was “My kids don’t listen to me”. Everyone in the workshop shared this frustration whether their children were toddlers or teens. It took me some time to change the focus of the workshop from complaining about it, which is suitable for psychology or “recovery”, to thinking about what we can do about it and how to move forward, which is more suitable for coaching or “discovery”.

Going through life is like sailing a ship and being its captain (see Sailing the Ship of Life for more). When we complain, it is like dropping an anchor, and when we consider what to do about the situation, it is like raising an anchor and moving forward. Progress may be slow at first, but it is better to move than to be stuck.

Parenting is just the same.

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Kids’ Personality Traits: How to Change Them with Awareness

If our children are like a garden, we the parents are the gardeners. If you have a garden at home, you know that when you take care of your garden, it looks beautiful and has lots of flowers and grows healthy nutritious fruits. If you neglect your garden or worse, water it with weed killer, no flowers or fruits will grow. Our kids are the same. If kids are the garden, and kids’ personality traits are the plants, we need to water them with great love and care and remember that their early years are critical.

Think about it this way: if wanted to have a big plant of tomatoes, you would water it with water and use fertilizer that that supports healthy tomato growth. It is the same with kids and their traits. If you wanted your child to grow kindness like you would grow a tomato, you need to water with support, not a weed killer, to help it grow. It’s a simple rule and a simple process.

One thing people are often uncomfortable about is saying their child’s personality has “traits”. If you are not 100% comfortable with calling it traits, call it a behavior that is constant or that appears more often than not. I, for example, am not 100% comfortable calling it a trait. That is because I don’t believe a child who is being stubborn on several occasion means that they are stubborn as a personality trait. It is a behavior he/she has learned in some way. If we learn it, we can always un-learn it, or learn a new or opposite trait. This time, I cannot say the process of un-learning is simple. It is definitely possible, but not always easy and simple.

This post is part 7 of 8 in the series Helping Kids Build Character

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Do Parents Let Their Kids Play Violent Video Games?

Recently, I received a question from a mother who said her teenage kids wanted to watch violent video games and they claimed other parents allowed their kids to do so. They thought she was just being mean and ignorant of what was happening in the world. “I do not like the idea of them playing violent and sexist video games but I feel helpless”. Her idea was to design a questionnaire for parents and see if her teenagers were right. She asked me what I think of her idea. Here is what I wrote to her:

Your experience is quite normal and it is wonderful to read that there are people like you still out there, advocating for children to be engaging in healthy activities!

Feel free to set the rules in your house. Your teen is a teen. He does not set the rules. You do! He is welcome to make different rules in his house!

You don’t need a questionnaire to back up what you already know is right. You can be the captain of your own family ship, regardless of what other parents do.

Kids cannot buy their own games, computers, iPhones, etc. You have a lot more power than you think! I have clients who found amazing result when they put their kids on a technology diet for a week. Their kids were suddenly like new! If they can’t use your credit card and don’t know your PayPal password, you have nothing to worry about.

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If-then Parenting Style

Here's to the things left unsaid and the thoughts unexpressed

Ashley was a very successful woman. She was brilliant and smart. She had been in a very solid and stable relationship with her husband of 12 years before they decided to have their daughter Mira.

When Mira was born, Ashley was 39, with a booming and successful business that took her away from home 2-3 days a week. Her husband Daryl decided he would take over the responsibilities of caring for Mira. He changed jobs and started working from home. Ashley continued to travel 2-3 days a week.

This seemed like a good arrangement in the beginning but the gap between Ashley and Daryl increased and they often had arguments about the best parenting style for Mira.

I met them both when Mira was 1 year old. At first, I thought they wanted to do the parenting program with me. After a while, I realized each of them was trying to convince me that their parenting style was the better one and that I should tell their partner this.

This post is part 1 of 19 in the series From the Life Coaching Deck

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Shaming Kids: Good Parenting or Not?

Shaming kids - girl covering her face from pointed fingers all around

From time to time, I hear or read about parents who shame their kids in public as a way to “teach them a lesson”. I think Shaming kids is a very bad idea.

Shame is one of the most debilitating feelings. It can make people, young and old do horrible things. Many grownups I work with are trying to overcome a combination of guilt and shame which is impacting their lives. These feelings are born in childhood, when parents use this combination as an incentive, thinking, “If I shame you enough, you will feel guilty and the guilt and shame will prevent you from doing it next time”.

I grew up in a house that thought where shaming kids and using guilt were major tools in the parenting tool box. If parenting practices are the tools, my parents used a hammer. Yet my parents grew up with parents of their own who used this hammer as an educational tool.

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Raising Babies: Talk, Talk, Talk

I have three kids and they all started talking very early. Many new parents ask me if it is better for babies to talk early or not? Is it something they are born with?

Firstly, I personally do not think this is hard-wired. There is no timer in the brain of a baby that says, now you are 1 years old, you should start saying words. It is very much dependent on the stimulation the baby gets from their environment.

Secondly, babies who can communicate early are very easygoing babies.

Why?

Because they can express themselves and are not as frustrated as a baby who uses sounds to communicate.

This post is part 6 of 7 in the series Raising Babies

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How to Use Mirror Neurons to Empower Your Child

A recent research on mirror neurons has discovered that when we watch someone doing something, the same neurons that fire in their brain also fire in our brain. By watching them, we end up thinking and feeling the same thing they feel by doing.

Our neurons “mirror” their neurons. In other words, when someone eats ice cream, their neurons think “yummy”. When we watch someone eat ice cream, our “yummy” neurons light up the same way.

Imagine what our lives would be like if we could look in the mirror and change what we see in it. Imagine if it could help us change what we see both inside and outside of ourselves.

I think kids are such very special mirrors. They visually project the image of those who stand before them. If you want to see your parenting image, all you have to do is look into your live mirror, your kids.

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Obedience: Should You Teach it to Your Kids?

One of the biggest dilemmas in parenting is how to teach your kids to react to authority. The reason this is a dilemma is because you are the first authority figure they will meet and you want them to obey you because you have their best interests at heart. But not every authority in their lives will be the same. And if they obey you blindly, they will do the same for other authorities.

Kids are born completely helpless. They look up to their parents and their lives are highly dependent on them. Parents become authority figures. They have so much power during this time, a bit like Gods, deciding their children’s fate.

Whether you like it or not, as part of your job description as a parent, you must decide what your stance is on the question of authority.

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Handy Family Tips: Road Trip Games

Most parents dread taking their kids on long drives. Without some cool road trip games and activities, many children grow restless and fall into the “Are we there yet?” routine, which makes everybody go nuts.

We started having a taste of this ourselves when our eldest, Eden, was four and a half years old. We moved to Arlington, TX, where we spent most weekends touring Texas on long road trips with another family that had a boy a bit younger than Eden. We spent many hours in the car, but we did not seem to have a problem entertaining the kids.

When we lived in Thailand, entertainment in the car was a hot topic. At the time, traffic in Thailand was so bad we could spend up to 3 hours just going to the supermarket or to see friends. Our son, Tsoof, was a baby and we spent many car rides touring up and down Thailand. Typically, it was also hot and humid.

Through the years, we have traveled with our kids through the USA, China, New Zealand (twice), Korea, France and Australia. We traveled up the center of Australia and down the east coast when our youngest, Noff, was one year old, Tsoof was 7 and Eden was 13. The trip took us 6 weeks and we spent many hours in the car. People thought we were crazy. Taking 3 kids in one car on such a long road trip seemed to them like a suicide mission. But it worked well for us.

It all depends on how you spend the time in the car. So what did we do?

This post is part 20 of 24 in the series Handy Family Tips

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How to Switch Your Parenting from Preaching to Teaching

Parenting is Teaching, not Preaching

Kids’ Personality Traits: How to Change Them with Awareness

If-then Parenting Style

Shaming Kids: Good Parenting or Not?

Raising Babies: Talk, Talk, Talk

How to Use Mirror Neurons to Empower Your Child

Obedience: Should You Teach it to Your Kids?

Handy Family Tips: Road Trip Games

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