KEYS TO PARENTAL LEADERSHIP

An Excerpt from Bob's Audio CD

To effectively lead, you first must follow. Alertly follow the guidance of your heart and mind that combine to form your most wise and balanced judgment. You lose access to this crucial source of guidance when you react with much emotion and stress. Therefore, persistently practice maintaining your peace and poise no matter how your child behaves. This provides you with the base you need to sense and follow your own best judgment.

Leading effectively requires carefully following a vision of the outcomes you intend. Spend time everyday clarifying your vision of how you want your child to behave and to feel. Accomplish this by writing lists of what you want. You prepare yourself for accomplishing your parenting goals the way you prepare for a successful trip to the grocery store. Making a list of the items you want to pick up represents a simple procedure that you can apply to supply yourself with a positive vision. Write a simple list describing the behaviors, moods and attitudes you want from your child.

Your list might include respectfully responding when spoken to. It might include compassionate toward self and others, happy, feeling loved and appreciated. One parent’s list contained: showing love and appreciation, following directions the first time they are given. Another’s included all of these, plus: picks up his toys, makes his bed daily, cleans his room daily, gets up and out in a timely fashion each morning.

Create a vision of your parenting goals by listing exactly what you want. Without making such a list you may inadvertently commit the common error of focusing too much attention on what you do not want. In other words, you might focus so much on the problems that you fail to see the solutions. The more you focus on your goals, the clearer will be your path to them.

In addition to envisioning your goals, clarify how you want to reach them. You don’t merely want your child to do as you say. You want to achieve your goals without anger or stress, without repeating yourself endlessly, without feeling frustrated, overwhelmed or out of control. How do you want to achieve your parenting goals? I would think you want to achieve them with a positive attitude, in a relaxed, easy, unstrained way. You want to feel love, peace, confident and in control. You also want your child to feel happy, secure and truly loved in the process.

Achieving your goals in a balanced, harmonious, unstrained way might take a little longer. You may have to tolerate things improving my only small degrees at a time. Yet, no other way of maintaining your sanity, your sense of humor or your self-worth exists. If you strain yourself mercilessly to achieve your objectives you feel more like a slave and a victim than an effective, successful leader in your household.

To achieve the results you want in the way you want them, remind yourself as often as possible of how you want to parent. Remember that you want to feel calm and relaxed, secure, happy and confident during your efforts aimed at producing the results you want. You might try repeating to yourself over and over, "Stay calm" or use the phrase, "Peace, poise, power." When you lose your self-control and parent in anger or stress, look back to see what triggered it. Then, resolve to do better the next time you feel triggered.

Make it your daily mission to follow the path of balanced, harmonious, unstrained action that leads to the outcomes you want.

Leading your child successfully necessitates attentively following the signs your child demonstrates that reveal the best way to succeed with him or her. Pay close attention to notice the voice tones, attitudes and general manner of relating with your child that wastes your energy and contributes to further problems, and ways that work best to produce the results you want. Effective leaders observe and follow what they see, rather than blindly reacting out of habit or impulse.

To effectively lead you have to sense when and how to allow your child to lead himself and to lead you. When you do this properly, you nurture the child’s positive leadership abilities. If you run into much resistance or opposition when directing your child, consider the possibility that she may need more space to do things her way. She may also need you to do things more the way that she wants you to do them. A reasonable amount of compromise and flexibility on the part of a parent can go a long way in bringing out more cooperation, reasonableness and flexibility from the child.

You also have to know when heeding your child’s directions, demands or requests would give your child too much control over you. Giving a child what he wants does not always or automatically provide a child with what he needs. The child who demands his way may need your firm refusal to learn how to accept boundaries and fulfill responsibilities. For instance, three year old Mathew wanted to leave the house unattended. His mother could not allow that. She saw this as an occasion to remain firm, even though she knew he would tantrum in response. When he did just that, she maintain her calm and observed him closely to call upon her best judgment. It occurred to him that the best response from her would be no response; just let him cry himself out until he realizes on his own that that won’t change things.

No single strategy works under all circumstances. When Melissa’s three year old demanded to be allowed outside unattended she paused and considered before responding. Her first response would have been to forbid it without a second thought. However, she considered her options. It occurred to her that she could allow this as long as she stood at the door and watched. It just might give him the sense of freedom and responsibility that would encourage him to behave in a more mature manner.

Parental leadership compares with driving your car. You cannot entirely depend upon a map to reach your destination. You have to pay constant attention to the road to recognize when and how to respond to each event. When parenting, considering your options based on what you have learned and experienced in the past is like looking at the map. But you have to also observe the child in the present situation to access and follow your best judgment in the moment.

Effective parental leadership, then, requires being alertly, consciously present, instead of parenting on automatic pilot. It means looking at your child, listening to your child, seeing your opportunities in the present situation to lead your child well.

The CD, Keys To Parental Leadership, is a one hour program clearly explaining what how your child's behavior forms and what you can to do contribute to the formation of the behavior and character development you want. It's now available for $9.95. See "Contact Us" on this website for ordering information.