When your kids are babies and toddlers, you are their world. They depend on you to fulfill all of their physical and emotional needs.
As they get older and start school, we have mixed feelings when they start to care more about what Johnny up the street thinks than what you think.
Sometimes you wish you could interview your kids’ potential friends, and choose the ones for him that seem to be good influences in his life.
Then again, that wouldn’t teach your child anything about developing the good judgment he’ll need throughout his life, so it’s probably okay that it doesn’t work like this.
Fact is, the friends your child chooses are going to start having an increasing amount of influence over the choices he makes and how he thinks.
You obviously want to keep a guiding hand in his life, and even though he may appear to be rejecting you and your crazy, out of touch, grown up advice, fact is you can and will continue to have a big influence on him, no matter how unspoken it might be.
How do you make sure this influence is a positive one?
Sitting him down for talks about life that make his eyes roll and having him asking, “Can I go play now?” is not the best way to pass along your positive input.
Here are five less obvious ways of remaining a positive influence in his life that he will actually see as fun rather than boring grown up stuff.
1. Spend Real Time With Your Kids
Playdates and sleepovers can be such a blessing as they allow mom to get so much more done without the kids being “in your hair.”
This fact, combined with your child’s desire to spend more and more time with her friends can lead to a lifestyle where we hardly see our kids.
As tempting as this may be some days, resist the urge to make your only quality time with your kids the ride to and from soccer practice.
Schedule date night with your kids, and if you have more than one, each child should have her own special night where the two of you do something of her choosing.
Engage in activities where you and your child are actively working towards the same goal.
This can include playing a game together, reading, doing a puzzle, making a craft, or even having your child play her new favorite song for you.
These opportunities for your child to experience you really investing time in her will foster conversation, instill in her that she is a valuable and worthy person, and keep the two of you connected so she will come to you when she’s in serious need of some advice or guidance.
2. Maintain Family Traditions
A great way to stay connected with your kids and avoid any complaints about having family time instead of time with their friends is to maintain family traditions.
Family traditions set expectations that can cut out the resistance as your kids get older.
Instead of having to convince your child that a camping trip with the family would be fun this summer, if it’s the Smith annual summer camp fest, it will be a time full of positive memories that your child will gladly participate in each year.
These traditions can include seasonal outings like camping, apple picking, and a hunt for the perfect Christmas tree.
They can also include more “mundane” activities like always having a pancake breakfast on Sunday mornings, or taking turns going to the store with mom every Saturday afternoon.
These traditions give your child the reassurance that she always belongs to something that’s a good and positive influence — her family — even as friendships might go through rocky times and drastic changes.
3. Find the Lesson in Every Experience
Help your child navigate the fact that life isn’t fair sometimes and failure happens.
It’s important to be a good listener, to ask nonjudgmental questions that help your child figure out how to get through problems that are serious in reality, or just in his own young mind.
But it’s also important to put a spin on these experiences that he may not yet be able to see.
Teaching your child that every problem brings with it a gift or lesson he needs is an invaluable way to help your child have a happy and productive life.
There will be times he doesn’t want to hear it, but always ask during the course of any bad experience, what can you learn from this? Is there anything good that can come from this?
Encourage your child to always find the silver lining.
Gently suggest, maybe this isn’t so bad because of X, or maybe this happened because of X, or maybe this experience will open up X for you.
Don’t preach to your child in his time of crisis, just say something like, you may not want to hear this now, but in the future think about whether this experience was good in a way because of (insert positive result).
4. Don’t Be a Dictator
Sometimes we wish for perfect children who do what we say unquestioningly.
It doesn’t appear that those children exist, which is actually a good thing.
While we obviously have to have some rules that don’t bend for the safety and protection of our kids, it’s not always a bad thing for your child to question your rules and decisions.
This doesn’t mean it’s okay for everything to be a debate, but if you’ll have patience with your child and try to avoid saying “because I said so” about too many things, it will help develop her reasoning and problem-solving skills when she can be involved in setting rules and boundaries.
Listen to her side of the argument when she disagrees and respond in a way that lets her know you value her opinions.
Explain your decisions and reasoning behind them, and allow her to come up with alternative suggestions.
Sometimes the end result will be, “You’ll understand why it has to be this way when you’re a parent,” but you’ll often work out a solution that everyone can live with.
And at the very least, your child will be practicing good decision making and thinking things through.
5. Focus on Values
Think about and really define what values you want to instill in your child. Live these values in the things you do and the way you talk to your child.
And help your child figure out what values are important to him.
As adults, we can do values exercises where we specifically sit down and just work out what’s important to us.
For children, asking them to just think it through would likely result in answers like candy, clothes, and their favorite video game.
But you can help your child develop a sense of her values that she operates from throughout her life in a more subtle way.
For example, when she’s considering whether to break plans with a friend to join the “cool kids'” last minute invitation to hang out, you can talk about whether it’s important for her to be “popular” right now among a small group of people who will have no long-term influence in her life, or whether loyalty, kindness, keeping commitments mean more.
Give examples and tell age-appropriate stories that illustrate the positive outcomes that result when we follow our intrinsic values.
As your child gets older, you can even start making a list of values she self-identifies during your discussions and encourage her to refer to them whenever she faces a challenging decision.
We Can Help!
At Kids Party Characters our focus is on creating lasting memories for your child and her party guests for years to come.
When you book your child’s birthday party with KidsPartyCharacters.com she’ll have her choice of over 200 characters to choose from as her special guest.
Our characters are portrayed by trained actors who come to put on a show for your child and her friends, not just stand in the corner and look cute.
In addition to an interactive experience with your child’s favorite character, we have all the extras kids love such as face painting, balloon artists, and cotton candy.
Make a Kids Party Characters party one of your family traditions that is guaranteed to please. Start booking your next party today by visiting us at KidsPartyCharacters.com.
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