I swore I would never do that to my kids.
By: Somer Harding
Tags: Motherhood, Parenting Advice, Fatherhood, Parenting, Family

I can vividly remember thinking to myself, “I will NEVER make my kids polish the kitchen faucet with chrome cleaner when I am a mom!” And I never did. But I did take away the driver’s license of my youngest for 6 months when she drove our neighbor around in a joy ride the day she got her license after having been told that wasn’t allowed with her provisional license.

We all have to find our balance as parents. What are we comfortable asserting and what do we let slide? One thing for sure, kids thrive in structure and boundaries.

We are currently going through a culture shift where parents are beginning to understand that not having enough rules and consequences has led to a millennial generation that has been known to cry in job interviews. Those millennials are parents now and they liked having so much attention slathered all over them as kids, but it didn’t make them very tough or resilient. They don’t know how to be strict and firm and have only seen that from characters in the movies they didn’t like very much. Who will teach young parents how to be authoritarian?

What parents need to remember, is that it really comes down to the consistency and focus of the attention that you give your children. You don’t have all day to devote to paying constant attention to your children, and it isn’t good for them for you to do that anyway. What you do provide is positive, loving, authentic attention in small, defined ways that are linked to the positive behaviors that you want to see in them.

Here is an example. Your child’s 3rd-grade teacher has told you that organization is a really big problem at school. This is no surprise to you as you walk past his bedroom every day and have stepped on too many legos right in the arch of your foot that makes you shriek and maybe say things you wished you didn’t. You get it. But what are you supposed to do about that? You are picking up everything at home to try and show him how it is done. You clean his room so he can enjoy what it is like to live with some sense of order. What more can you do?

Believe your son can improve in his organizational skills and be his best cheerleader with every move in the right direction. Focus on continual improvement. Not perfection overnight, just continual improvement. Set small attainable goals and then reward for those goals. Rewards are time and attention oriented. What they want more than anything is your authentic, devoted attention. It should feel like falling in love when you play a ten-minute card game or throw the ball. The walls could be falling down around you and you wouldn’t stop what you are doing for anything, because he earned it by meeting your expectation.

Don’t over-promise in time or attention and be consistent. Be sure to focus on continual improvement and take a good-look at progress. When one organizational goal is mastered, add another and another.

Most importantly, this is your son’s growth, not yours. You can’t do it for him.

Apply this same tactic to talking-back, having a bad attitude, impulsivity……it works for it all. Your job is just to set the expectation and cheerlead. If something gets forgotten, with a cheerful smile you simply say, “I KNOW you will be successful tomorrow!” What will be hard is that you will have to NOT provide the reward. Maybe there will be a bit of a tantrum, but you can handle that. No big deal, that is what kids do. Don’t be worried.

My entire career has been focused so much on helping parents understand this one thing, I spent years developing an app that provides this structure for you. You can be in charge and full of love. You can set limits and still be flexible. You want healthy, grounded, resilient adult children that can cope with all of life. That starts early.

I never asked my daughters to polish the kitchen faucet, I rarely do it myself. They will tell you I was the strictest mom they knew, but it is funny how all of their friends came to me during their adolescent years when they needed help. Kids want to know you are in charge. Kids want to know that whatever they do, you can handle it and you will set them in a good direction. Who cares if there are water spots on the faucet?

Care that they know you love them.