Pro-life vid of the day: Parenting your powerful child
by LauraLoo
From Chris Fabry Live and The 700 Club comes a video from Dr. Kevin Leman on parenting powerful, challenging children. He believes every child is given their personality for a distinct purpose – even the kids who drive their parents crazy. His 44th book is entitled, Parenting Your Powerful Child:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XR-_Fr3PoQ[/youtube]
Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.
Apr.04, 2014 12:00 pm |
Video of the day |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
There are essentially three types of children: easy going, slow-to-warm-up and difficult temperament. Our ”brood” consists of the easy going (anything flows, lalala) and the difficult temperament (why, why and WHY?). No experience with the slow-to-warm-up. The challenge I think is to get to know the child’s temperament and determine whether to sweat or not sweat the small stuff…
In the developmental psychology field there are many proponents of NOT sweating the small stuff. The difficult temperament child requires, however, that the small stuff is sweated, otherwise the parenting becomes authoritarian rather than authoritative. The only challenge is to figure out what constitutes the small stuff in regard to your parent/child relationship of a difficult temperament child.
Dr. Kevin Leman is essentially asking parents to get to know their children’s temperaments and structure parenting accordingly.
Good thread Laura. Much needed discussion.
Very good suggestions from Dr. Leman. Parents need to be parents not BFFs, pals, or buddies. Our children have plenty of friends they need parents. I have never seen so many parents afraid of displeasing their children. You do not need your children’s approval. They will either be parents themselves or grown ups before you will probably get much approval from them (sometimes not even then). You are not doing your job if your child is happy all of the time especially with you. But that is life in the real world. They will not like their future bosses, teachers, professors, co-workers, supervisors, and even relatives some or even most of the time. Guess what? It doesn’t matter go to school, work, family functions, anyway it’s called responsibility and commitment. I am NOT talking about taking abuse that is an entirely different matter and should not be tolerated under any circumstances. Sometime your child will have a valid complaint, talk it out, apologize if necessary and go to bat for them if called for in that situation. Don’t assume your child never does anything wrong because if you do they will make a total fool out of you. Don’t assume they never do anything right either. Pray with them, for them, and over them, then pray for godly wisdom how to raise them. God will give you wisdom if you ask HIM.
I truly have a Leman library. :)
“Parents need to be parents not BFFs, pals, or buddies. Our children have plenty of friends they need parents. I have never seen so many parents afraid of displeasing their children. You do not need your children’s approval. They will either be parents themselves or grown ups before you will probably get much approval from them (sometimes not even then). You are not doing your job if your child is happy all of the time especially with you. ”
Yeah, this is true. I have such problems with this, I’m really an awful disciplinarian. I just worry about going over the top. I don’t remember being disciplined appropriately so I always worry that I don’t know how to discipline appropriately at all. I refuse to spank, I will never physically hurt my kids, I try to use time outs and other consequences. I’m really bad at sticking to it though, because they cry and I give in really easily. My son’s an easy kid and it’s not really an issue with him, but my daughter is definitely a “powerful” child and it’s getting to be a real issue. :/
Time outs have become problematic because most parents do not use them as teaching moments but in away that does nothing. Example: “go to your room and think about what you just did,” or “sit in the corner for five minutes” (this one the teachers’ favorite!!!). What does the child do in his/her room or in that corner. Nothing!!!! (well except for scratching their nose and some other stuff that is unrelated to their infraction). That is an ineffective use of a time out….
Time outs need to be applied with a structure and a lesson plan in mind not for their own sake….
I know that Thomas. I do an initial “cool down” time out for tiny people who are freaking out, after the fit-throwing stops we have a conversation about whatever the issue was. I’m just bad about sticking to it.
I hear you . It’s a fine line parents walk. Our oldest son made the big 1 0 last month. He is of course maturing and his favorite line to everything now is why why WHY. He writes a lot of essays lately about the reasons he has to do stuff he does not want to do. We may have another Shakespeare on the horizon :)
Yeah it’s hard not to want to get approval, though. But it’s true. I’m probably/definitely not going to spank so I’ll have to find some ways to discipline other than that.
But I do want to be fair to my kids. I am not planning (lol…. plans) on being an authoritarian but rather authoritative. I don’t want to be that lay down the law dictator but honestly if anything, I’d probably err too much on the permissive side because the harsh dictator is way opposite of my personality.
Anyway I’ll probably have to read up on powerful children because if the first 8 months have been an indication, I definitely have a powerhouse on my hands. haha.
The encouraging thing is no one is perfect and no parent is perfect and that’s perfectly okay. ALl we can do is our best for each unique situation.