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Parenting Behavior

Posted on 23 June 2009

What do I mean by Parenting Behavior?

We all look at our kids at some point (and it is usually fairly often) and wish that they were better behaved. They can just take off on a path of destruction and leave your house like a war zone. This is why we name hurricane after people! The behaviour of your children is always an important issue for parents. We all want to be proud of them, and when they do things that embarrases us and make us cringe, what do we do?

How I approach this problem is not so much how I can change them, but rather how it is that I can change myself. How can I make myself a better role model to my kids so thet they have a sound example to follow? In essence, how can I improve my own Parenting Behavior, which will in turn make theirs better? It stems from the old adage “lead by example”.

I just need to point out at this stage that I am not some tree-hugging left wing greenie who names their kids after the stars, or fruit, or some throwback from the 60’s. I am just a guy who honestly wants to give his kids the best possible father that they can have. My kids love me now, and I plan on that happening all the way through their lives. I believe that my positive Parenting Behavior will give me that.

I know that at times I let my kids down because I let myself down, and this really disappoints me. I don’t like yelling at them, or giving them a spanking (a practice which I have pretty much well eliminated from my world I am happy to say). I want them to have the best experience that they can of my fatherhood. This does not mean that they should not have discipline or that they shouldn’t be punished for things that they do that are naughty, because they should – boundaries of acceptability should always be set.

Boundaries are one of the important things when talking about Parenting Behavior. When we continually change the goal posts, we are severely restricting our children from a stable set of rules that they feel that they must conform to. Imagine driving to work one day, and the speed limit was say 50 kms p/h, and the next day it was 75, and the day after it was 35… how confusing would that be, and how would you react? This is exactly what your children are feeling when you keep changing the goalposts on them. It is hard to create a touchstone if everything is moving. I really learnt this lesson from step-parenting teenage boys!

Another thing that I came to notice about my own Parenting Behaviour is for my tendancy of having rules without reasons. I have done a lot of work internally about changing this mentality that I had. If I am asked for something where I am needed to make a judgement call, and I am leaning towards the “no” side of the fence, I pause and ask myself … why not?  They ask it anyway, so it’s better to be pre-prepared! I need to have reasonable grounds for creating a rule, and “because I said so” just doesn’t cut it anymore, and neither does “because that’s how it was when I was a kid”. Rules without reasons serve no purpose other than being in the tool belt of someone on a power trip.

I ask myself consistently how I can improve my Parenting Behavior. As a parent I have made the commitment to be the best parent that I can be, and in order to do that I am working on my parenting skills as I should be. I read every bit of parenting advice that I can find. I feel that I need to be pro-active about my parenting skills because as we all know, they will be grown up and gone in the flash of an eye. And when they have, I know that I will have done all that I can to prepare them for their own journey into the big blue world.