Being Responsible To Our Children

photo credit: più sen

In my pre­vi­ous post I described what it is to assume respon­si­bil­ity for our chil­dren. Let’s now look at the kind of par­ents we are when we are respon­si­ble to our chil­dren. (This post was taken from my weekly “Vic­tim Vocab­u­lary” series )

Being respon­si­ble to our chil­dren means we under­stand that they are not our pos­ses­sions. They do not belong to us. They belong to them­selves and we are sim­ply their teacher and guides.

Rather than vent­ing our frus­tra­tions and unhap­pi­ness on them, we treat them with respect.

Rather than see­ing them as our sec­ond chance at a bet­ter child­hood, or bet­ter par­ent who can finally “do it right this time,” we see our time with them as teach­ing moments, oppor­tu­ni­ties to share the wis­dom gained from life expe­ri­ence for the pur­pose of sup­port­ing their growth and understanding.

Rather than feel exhausted by our chil­dren, we make them an enjoy­able pri­or­ity. We under­stand there is no greater respon­si­bilty, or joy, than the moments we spend giv­ing to them.

photo credit: joxur223

We learn as much from our chil­dren as we teach. We pass on basic life prin­ci­ples that pro­vide a firm foun­da­tion for a reward­ing life and we model those prin­ci­ples in our own lives so our chil­dren can learn by exam­ple. We are relaxed and car­ing with them, firm and hon­est, reli­able and fun. Show­ing such respon­si­bil­ity to our chil­dren devel­ops a bond of lov­ing trust between us; such fer­tile ground fos­ters spir­i­tual con­nec­tion and capa­ble lives result.

When we are respon­si­ble to our chil­dren, we do the following:

We see them as indi­vid­u­als on their own life path, rather than as exten­sions of ourselves.

We share our own life expe­ri­ence & speak to them hon­estly and from the heart.

We share guid­ing prin­ci­ples that sup­port a pos­i­tive belief in a Uni­ver­sal Source that supports.

We encour­age them towards age-appropriate independence.

We let go of con­trol­ling their out­comes and trust God to work in their lives.

We encour­age free AND respect­ful interaction.

We are inter­ested in their thoughts, opin­ions and feel­ings, but not ruled by them.

We allow them to expe­ri­ence the nat­ural con­se­quences of their choices.

We encour­age them to take healthy risks and try new expe­ri­ences that will stretch & grow them.

We set & rein­force healthy bound­aries that are age appro­pri­ate & arrange con­se­quences when those bound­aries are violated.

We give them age appro­pri­ate choices, rather than con­trol them with “because I said so’s.”

We assign age appro­pri­ate duties that will develop their sense of impor­tance & use­ful­ness in the family.

We never do for them what they can do for them­selves (even if they can’t yet do it as quickly or as well as we might like).

We never threaten con­se­quences we are not will­ing to deliver.

We do what we say we are going to do.

We model self-responsibility.

We sup­port them to make cor­rec­tions, rather than pun­ish their hon­est mistakes.

We explain why we make the deci­sions con­cern­ing them that we do.

We win their coöper­a­tion, rather than make demands that result in power struggle.

We share universal/spiritual prin­ci­ples that set them on a path of lib­er­a­tion and faith in a Source that loves and guides.

May your par­ent­ing be blessed, whether you are par­ent­ing your child(ren) or yourself!

Bless­ings, Lynne