Teaching your child can be a challenging task. You want them to pay attention, but you don’t want to force them to learn. You want them to follow the rules, but you don’t want them to become too dependent on you.
Here’s the difference between guidance and leadership, plus some tips to help you guide your child on the right path.
The Difference Between Guiding and Leading
Guiding and leading can be synonyms in the proper context, but the terms are more different when raising children than most parents realize. Leading a child implies that you want them to follow a predetermined path. That’s not always a bad thing, but it prevents them from developing independence and creates unfair expectations.
Parents who lead their children also tend to enforce strict rules without explanation. The rules themselves might be beneficial, but failing to explain them defeats the purpose. Children need to know how and why those regulations exist.
Parents should guide their children through important life lessons, not teach things outright and expect them to absorb the lessons blindly. Guidance involves allowing children to learn through personal experience. Parents are simply the moderators.
Modern education revolves around the idea of guidance. Children do engaging tasks, make friends and learn problem-solving skills mainly on their own. The teacher is supposed to guide them through the lessons, not give them all the answers. Here are some ways to avoid overbearing leadership and teach your child the right way.
Optimize Your One-on-One Time
One-on-one time is the best opportunity to instill important life lessons in your child, but only if you optimize the setting. Here are some things you can do to make these moments more valuable:
- Take electronics out of the picture. You want your kid’s undivided attention.
- Make the activity fun, even if you’re doing chores that require multiple hands. Children aren’t laborers. They need positive stimulation to stay engaged.
- Say nothing and observe how they tackle the activity without assistance. This strategy encourages independence and creativity.
- Let your child figure out why the task is important. The activity becomes less of a chore if they can make that realization on their own.
- Point out mistakes after they occur, not before.
The first two bullet points establish an optimal setting, while the final three tips share an essential theme: The child experiences the lesson before you reveal it. Experience is the best teacher. There’s no way to replicate it. Put your child in the position to learn and let them discover things for themselves.
Set Firm Boundaries
It’s important to let your child explore and learn from experience, but you still need to set firm boundaries to prevent them from going astray. Your child should get used to the reality of living under rules. Once you establish one, you’d better stick to it. If bedtime is at 9 p.m., make sure they’re in bed by them.
If you allow your child to bypass your boundaries, they have no reason to respect you or any other authority. Don’t be afraid to put your foot down. A clear set of rules and consequences means there’s no room for surprises. You’re not leading like a dictator but preparing them for a world with specific laws and expectations.
Just make sure you don’t fall back into the bad leadership tendencies discussed earlier. Rules serve to keep kids on the right track, not to make decisions for them. For example, you should emphasize the importance of education, but don’t choose the school and major for them. They must make those decisions for themselves as you provide potential options.
Focus on External Consequences
One of the most critical steps in a child’s development is learning about consequences. Rather than emphasizing what will happen after bad behavior, demonstrate how their actions impact others. Punishing them with no accompanying lesson means they will only learn to avoid getting caught. Focusing on external outcomes appeals to their better nature.
When your child does something wrong, show them the adverse effects before punishing them. Similarly, when they do a good deed, highlight the positive results before praising or rewarding them. Put the external consequences ahead of the attention you give them.
Kids who learn how their actions affect others take responsibility and realize the world doesn’t revolve around them. Even if they don’t get caught, they will feel guilty and more likely to confess if they understand the widespread effects of their behavior.
Stop Controlling, Start Guiding
Controlling your child’s behavior through strict leadership might work for a time, but they will either try to break free from your control or lack the independence to succeed in the real world.
Healthy guidance keeps children on the right path, but it also encourages them to seek and experience important life lessons on their own. Parents are just along for the ride. Feed them, shelter them, keep them safe and give them enough space to flourish as individuals.
—
Shutterstock image