Jared and I recently talked with a therapist about our parenting. It was an interesting conversation and it kinda blew my mind.
It went like this:
1. How do I get my kid to do x,y,z?
I expected the answer to lie within behavior modification principles. Reward vs. Punishment.
But he just said, well, there are two ways: Love and Coercion.
He said that kids are not going to respond well to logic because their brain is still developing and what makes sense to them doesn't make sense to us. But they will still respond to our requests.
And he said that my child would do what we asked them because they care about us.
And more than anything, this just alleviated my parental guilt. We don't punish our kids very often. Occasionally we take their phones. But I've been feeling a lot of guilt like if I were more consistently disciplining my child then they would have learned x,y,z by now.
And I'm encouraged that I can relax and not have to make any giant changes and we can still support and have a better system, but being the taskmaster and disciplinarian isn't the only way.
The bottom line is that I want to help direct them in ways that will support their best decisions. But at the same time, for them to know how much I love them and all the good I see in them.
