Parenting is an important word but, what does it exactly mean? Is it a role, a job, an honor, a responsibility, a chore, or a delight?
In my view, a parent is a guide. Someone who has been given the honor and the responsibility of assisting another human being through the process of becoming a happy and successful adult. Whether you see parenting as a chore or a delight will have more to do with how much success you currently find in your parenting role.
So, do you need to be your child’s best friend, a strict disciplinarian, a trusted confidant, or role model? Do you have to choose? Or can you become just enough of all of these things in the right measure to keep your child’s growth and development on track?
I would argue that parenting requires us to be both a positive and fun influence in a child’s life, as well as, someone who can set limits and create boundaries when needed. Depending on how your child responds to your attempts in both of these areas will dictate much of what you need to learn to do next.
Effective training in parenting is generally hard to find or nonexistent for most parents. This is particularly true if your child has an unusually strong motivation for things you do not understand or cannot easily control. It is with these children that our society has failed our parents and ultimately the kids themselves.
Parenting should be more than just an individual’s trial and error based on what they experienced as kids and think might work. It should be based on the basic universal principles of behavior, so that a parent knows what they are trying to achieve, how they are trying to achieve it and have a way to assess and adjust what they are doing when not being successful.
This sort of parenting can and should be taught. It is why I have created Robert Schramm Consulting and make myself available to parents around the world, who want to learn how to become their child’s best possible parent.
