It's the Behaviours You Ignore that Make You a Great Parent
A short post about what's important.
I love the saying “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.”
It’s a clever reminder to ignore minor problems and save your energy and smarts for life’s bigger issues.
This holds doubly for parenting.
If you react to every one of your child's misdemeanours, you’d wear yourself out.
Worse still, you’d train your child to ignore you because it’s human nature to tune out continuous negativity.
It’s a protective mechanism we all use.
Better to address kids’ more serious misdemeanours, such as disrespecting others, not doing what they say they will, and putting siblings (and themselves) down.
These are issues that matter.
Not minor stuff such as the occasional use of a swear word, forgetting to put toys away, and being late for mealtime.
It takes wisdom to know the difference between the big and the small, the consequential and the inconsequential. It’s knowing the difference that makes for great parenting.
Recently, I saw a parent make an interesting choice when she was in a park with her children.
Her son, about nine, yelled at his younger sister after dropping a ball in a game, “S%$*, You’re F+&*%^6$ hopeless. You’re so stupid.”
The mother bawled her son out for swearing and didn’t say a word about the merciless put-down.
Yep, his language was fruity and loud, but it was the put-down, not the swearing, that made the girl hang her head.
To my mind, this mother placed the put-down in the small-stuff basket and elevated swearing to the big-issue basket.
Wrong choice if she valued her daughter’s self-confidence and wanted to teach her son how to respect others, particularly how a boy should treat and speak to females. And that’s a problematic issue that needs to be purposefully addressed by parents of boys.
Of course, this simple vignette doesn’t reveal the whole story, but I’ve learnt over time that usually the Part tells the Whole.
It’s these types of dilemmas that reveal our values as parents and determine the stuff we sweat (worry, stress, get angry) over.
The way forward is clear:
Pick the battles you have with kids; just make sure you choose the ones that really matter.