Fair Firm and Fun leadership

There’s a reason babies and toddlers experience discomfort, growing teeth, banging onto things, falling down, over and over again, learning to walk and getting up again…they are far more resilient than most of us mums give them credit for.

I believe it’s because we all need to know that life is not always fun and games and feelings sometimes are good, but not always, and that’s life.

Parents naturally want to protect their children.

Sometimes, our heart takes over, and we can tend to overprotect.

Here’s the thing… We can’t protect our children from life; we can only teach them how to cope and thrive.

The sooner we teach our children that we will make their life fun and games whenever possible, however, there’s always going to be lots of times in a day that we either are not expecting or that we need to be doing things we really would prefer not to do.

So, in my view teaching kids that life is not all about them and their desires, there’s others to consider and things we need to do, that’s what parenting is about.

When it comes to allowing our child to feel uncomfortable even for a moment to learn patience, hear a necessary ‘no’ or eat food they push aside, we don’t feel good about it and we may even avoid teaching them life skills.

Of course, we don’t want to disappoint them.

If we don’t show strength in teaching our kids, our child will show strength in resisting the lesson.

Soon, our baby understands that all they must do to get what they think they want is push harder than we do.

And, so often we cave in - just this once. But, it’s not just this once, is it?

Families must have a hierarchy so that we can teach without defending our decisions.

Great leadership is fair, firm and fun. This way we dont have to spend hours every single day explaining ourselves. When children trust that we know what we’re doing and they dont have to worry about a thing, we have it handled, they stop battling for the leadership role.

Even though we love to think of our children as friends, I know that because I was committed to making sure my firstborn child loved me more than anyone, it’s not fair on them.

When we teach children how to listen, learn, help, and be respectful it allows everyone to enjoy the time we have together.

When children trust that we have things handled, they relax and stop trying to find something to argue or worry about.

This one change in our beliefs can directly impact how our children feel about us and how they treat us, with respect or not.

Most importantly, we are giving our children the gifts of discipline, resilience, thoughtfulness, and self-worth. That’s great parenting!

Sharon

How to have the last word

Is it possible to run a home, have meaningful work, be an attentive partner and an engaged, and loving parent?

I say Yes! Yes with a caveat.

I tried being my child’s best friend. It felt great until it didn’t.

It didn’t once she was smart enough to realise that even though (I had convinced her), she was the smartest and most important person in the room, why did I sometimes have the last word?

Can you see how that can be confusing for anyone?

Our job as the parent is to parent.

Parenting involves guiding, leading, inspiring, saying ‘no’ sometimes, and meaning it.

I know, babies and kids are really really cute and they look even cuter when they smile than when they get disappointed.

Nobody likes disappointing their children however, being a parent you may have realised by now, means that many times a day we also have to be doing things we don’t want to or like doing - and so do our children. Thats life!

My theory is the happier we can be doing those things, the ones we would prefer not to be doing, the happier our lives.

Why waste our precious lives, being moody or grumpy, when we actually can just ‘put on a happy face’, and get things done without complaint. This change in perspective leaves more time to spend doing things we like and love.

The job of parenting means that we need to be teaching, guiding, encouraging and leading a lot of the time. The attitude in which we do that will determine how our efforts will be received by our little darlings.

Fair, Firm and Fun is my preferred model.

If we make parenting playful it goes toward the possibility of making life playful too.

Yes, it’s possible to get a lot done in a day and still enjoy yourself, it all depends on your perception to the tasks.

When your children see you happy and light hearted, they want to listen and learn from you because instead of them feeling like YOU should listen to them, they see that you have things handled and even though you’re busy, you are making decisions that help them and the family to enjoy life.

It’s then, kids can relax and stop trying to boss you around, because they soon get to understand that you are a fair, firm and fun parent and thats what they love to be a part of- your family TEAM.