How To Be A Great Parent
Something happened today. And it actually made me a bit angry and a bit sad. I wanted to invite a mate of my son’s to go away for a couple of days and rang someone to ask if they would allow their son to go away with us. Nothing wrong with that.
I chatted to the parent, but the parent said to me “I don’t think my son would like to go away with your son because your son picks on my son and teases him too much”. BIG GULP!!!! So there I was on the end of the phone, trying to remain calm but listening to these horrible things about my son. My first thought was about all the bad things that the other kid does (and many of them behind his parent’s back).
At one stage the parent said to me “are you still there Kim?” I mean what was I supposed to say in response to something like that? It made me feel humiliated. But at the same time I acknowledged that my son was sometimes a little hard to get along with. Being the third son he has always felt the need to make his presence known in unusual ways. I think it could be third child syndrome?
Well, I had a choice to make. I acknowledged to this man that my son had a problem sometimes and said that we were trying to work on it. When I finally got off the phone I relayed the message to Sam. Sam had tears in his eyes as he listened to what someone had said about him. I allowed him to cry a bit and then we started talking…
No matter how good you think your child is, they can always improve on something, and therein lies our lesson today. I chose to listen to the observations of someone outside of our family unit. Often people on the outside can see more than we can. I passed the message on to Sam. And I think Sam knew that this person was right. I could see his frustration but at the same time I wanted to empower him to make better choices on a daily basis. So I allowed him to feel some pain, and that is a hard thing to do sometimes as a parent.
Sam and I chatted for a few minutes about what we could do to change a few things in his life. Then we moved on. Only time will tell if the incident had enough of an impact on Sam to facilitate some small changes. But the thing is that Sam saw me responding graciously to someone giving constructive criticism. He was watching me to see how I would respond to it. And that is a huge key here.
Our children are always watching us. They observe how we respond to everything around us. Now just imagine if I had said to this person “I don’t agree with you. Your son is mean as well sometimes”. That would have been classified as finger pointing and would not have accomplished anything. I could have been justified in doing just that, but it would have been counter productive in more ways than one.
Now, Sam has seen his mother responding graciously to an accusation about him and that will do him far more good than watching his mother try to stick up for him (even though I will when necessary). Sam had to learn a life lesson today and I think he is starting to understand that there can be long term complications of perhaps not playing fairly with others all the time.
It is a hard lesson to learn, but the children who are willing to take things on board and learn from their mistakes go further in life and become champions. Do yoruself a favour and allow your child to become a champion today. The bible says “bless those who curse you”. So instead of getting angry when people say or do the wrong thing, how about you pray for them instead?
and of course, you can get more great information on how you can become a champion parent by going to http://www.yourchildcanbehave.com
