Precious Kids Great Parents

I’m sitting here thinking of my family, and all the families I’ve worked with – analysing the kids and what they are now.

30+ years of parenting and 30+ years of educating means I’ve had a lot of children pass through my life.

As I reflect, I can’t help but think that maybe we haven’t all got this parenting stuff licked. It’s hard. There is no magic one way.

What I do believe is that maybe we have it all backwards. We have a baby and I believe most of us parent accidentally. We do what we do by nature, or by the latest book, or how we were raised. For some this is great, for others, not so.

I mean – we get to build a brilliant human being. I wonder how many of us look at our newborn and think about what sort of human being they want this lovely bundle to turn into?

I’m sure there are some that say – “He’s going to be a Lawyer, just like his mummy”, but that’s not what I mean.

Let’s face it, if you were building your dream home, what would you do? You’d picture it in your head, get the right materials, use the best tradesmen, build it carefully. You wouldn’t just throw all the materials on the block and see what happens – no, you would vision it first and carefully craft and build the best you can.

I know (because I’ve done it) that if you sat a group of parents of school children in a room and asked them what skills they wanted their children to have as adults they say they want their children to be:-

·       Good communicators

·       Good decision makers

·       Team Players

·       Caring

·       Happy

·       Resourceful

·       Know themselves

·       Collaborative

And yet we as parents often fail to think about how we are going to create this wonderful person. We don’t plan the strategies we are going to use. Often partners come from completely different understandings – and we fail to talk about and plan how we would like to parent.

How do we have to parent to help create an adult the world needs?

We can’t make them anything, but we can build them in a way that supports them, shows them love and nurtures them so they develop a positive self-worth, learn to be co-operative, develop great communication skills, show love, understanding and respect to others, learn to be great team players and are able to make great decisions.

How we treat our children and lead sets the ground work for the sort of human being they will become.

So let’s start with the end in mind.