We have a lot of fun with positive parenting here at Live On Purpose TV.
Today, how to raise a confident child.
Okay, parents, you're probably getting used to this by now but I've got to
remind all of us of what our job is as parents. If you've watched a few of these
videos already, you already know. It's to love them no matter what and even if.
Love them. Your job as a parent is to love your kids. Can I be any more
painfully clear about that? That is so important because all of these
strategies and tips that I share with you are nothing more than manipulation
if we lose sight of that primary job. You're with me on this? Love them no
matter what and even if. Now because we love them, we want them to have a more
excellent experience, right? To experience joy and happiness in their own lives and
to do that, they need to know a few things. What if we can help them to be
more confident? Now remember your job isn't to make sure that they're more
confident but because you love them, you would also love it if they were more
confident, right? Because their life gets to rock more and it'll bless your life
too but that's not why we're doing it, how did you raise a confident child? How
do you increase or boost the confidence that your child has? I'm going to suggest
four steps. I originally heard about these four steps from Foster Cline and
Jim Fay. You might recognize those names as the
authors of Parenting With Love And Logic. One of those basic parenting books that
I think is a classic and I highly recommend it and these four steps have
been adapted from what Cline and Fay taught in that love and logic approach
with a few little Dr. Paul enhancements. Now let's take a look at step number one.
Step number one, you're going to give your child a
task that they can handle. How can you tell if your child can handle a task? Now
do you see what this has to do with confidence because they might not know
if they can actually handle any particular task and you might have a
different understanding of that as a parent too? Most of the things that we
want them to do, they haven't yet mastered the skill for, okay. So we've got
a little mismatch here in what people are thinking about who can handle what
so we're going to accelerate this with a little test, it's just a mental test so
run it through your own mind. What if you were to ask yourself, okay, if I took away
the motivation factor, is the ability there? That's what I mean by can they
handle it, okay? A task that they can handle. 5k test is a really good way to
get to this, it's where you're asking your own mind, "Hey, if I offered my kid
$5,000 to do what I just asked them to do, would it happen?"
See how useful? I'm not saying you should offer your kid five grand, don't get me
wrong, I'm saying you run this test through your own mind if I offer it in
five grand, would it happen? And that way, we're getting past the motivation issues
and into the can they handle this thing, okay? Give them a test that they can
handle. Again, toward building confidence. Step two, once you give them the task, of
course you're going to hope that they, aah,
here's where I throw a little wrench into things.
You're going to hope that they blow it.
Disclaimer, I don't want your kids to fail any more than you do, that's why I
use the word blow it because we're not saying hope that they fail, we're saying
hope that they have a significant opportunity to learn something. Think
about your own life for example, where have you learned your greatest lessons?
Honestly, take a little inventory and see, it's from your mistakes, isn't it? Yeah, me
too that's because our mistakes carry a powerful energy for
learning stuff and if we want our kids to learn confidence, how are they going to
do them? They're going to learn it through this process, okay? Just like you did so
we're going to hope that they blow it. Now this does a couple of things
psychologically, think about it. As a parent, if you hope that they blow it,
will you remind them? No, that goes against what you're hoping for besides, we
call it reminding, they call it something else, don't they? Nagging, riding me,
getting on my case, doesn't work so we're going to back off, hope that they blow it.
Now the other thing this does for you as a parent is it allows you to keep
smiling and I've found that when parents are smiling, kids are thinking, there's an
interesting correlation there because they're wondering what you're up to,
right? And we want to invite them to think not fight, think not fight, put that
in your notes somewhere. So we backup, we're going to hope that they blow it. Don't
worry, we got two more steps. Here we go. Every choice has a consequence,
the better my choices, the better my consequences.
Step three is where we let consequences do the teaching. Now there's an emotional
component here too that we have to address.
Normally when your kids blow it, what kind of emotional energy do you bring to
that? Yeah, you know, don't you? It's like, oh, if you would just listen to
me this wouldn't happen next time. Okay, no. As a parent, remember you were
kind of hoping for this so when they blow it you're like, oh, good. Why? Because
they get to learn something and if you notice that the price tag for your kids
learning something, it's going up every day, it doesn't get any cheaper. Earlier
is not an option and later is just more expensive so how about right now?
That'd be good, wouldn't it? That's when we want them to learn something, it's the
lowest cost so you allow the consequences to fall, alright, and you
step up with an empathic loving response to your child because they're going to be
hurting right about now and normally what happens is, we don't really want our
kids to have that consequence while we're building confidence in our
children, sometimes we want to take away that consequence from them but then we
feel a little guilty as parents because we realize at some level we just stole a
learning opportunity from them so we ball them out and bail them out. This is the old
3 R's of parenting, rant, rave and rescue. Doesn't work but we go there
because we don't really want our kids to have a consequence. It's not about you,
don't steal this from your child, allow the consequence to happen and then you
respond in a loving and empathic and compassionate way, okay. Connect with how
they're feeling. No I told you so's, no balling out and bailing out, let
consequences and empathy help you to teach the confidence and now we go to
step four. Isn't this brilliant? You give them the same challenge again. This is
where you send a powerful empowering message as a parent that hey, you are
smart enough, you are observant enough, you are brilliant enough to learn from
your significant learning opportunities in a way that allows you to get this.
Let's try it again, see if you ball them out and bail them
out, you're sending a whole different message. What you're really saying is, hey
you're probably too stupid to do this, I guess I'll just have to take care of it
for you. No, that's not really what we want them to learn, is it? And so in
building confidence, they get to face this thing knowing that you as their
parent have full confidence that they can do it, that confidence will model for
them the kind of confidence that we're trying to build in them. Four steps, give
it a try see what happens. Pretty simple, right? Love and discipline and there's a
lot of tips that go along with that. Tune into the playlist also for positive
parenting, you'll find a lot of resources there.