You know when it’s one of “those” days?  You know, the one day all of your kids seem to forget everything, you have a blazing headache, and you were already running late coming home from work?

Pretty soon, consequences start flying off your lips.  No more TV, no friends over, no computer time, no this, no that.  Once you start seeing all the things going wrong, it can be tough not to come down on each and every infraction.  We’ve all done it, and we’ve all felt bad after doing it.  What’s the point.  When we parent like that, is it just to make us feel more in control?  Is it to teach them something?  And how many consequences are really going to stick here?

When you feel this avalanche coming on, it’s a great time to stop.  Just stop.  Stop and think about the common thread among all the problems.  Could it be that the kids are taking three and four reminders to follow your directions?  Are your kids getting distracted by their leisure activities?  Are they not being responsible with their homework?  Do your kids take forever to get to bed?  This isn’t meant to point fingers and make someone feel bad.  You are just trying to identify problem that needs to be solved the worst.

Let’s say you’ve decided that your kids need to be more responsible around the house — picking up shoes, taking care of dirty laundry, cleaning up the coats, etc. you find yourself barking lots of orders and listening to your kids whine about this stuff.  It’s understandable that your emotions would get rattled by all this commotion.  But rather than responding in a frustrated way to each incident, explain the big picture to your kids.  Tie all these loose ends together for them.  Help them see how each little problem adds up to the big problem.

Now your parenting can have purpose!  They can see what you are seeing.  Each incident is no longer isolated.  All you have to do is say, remember, you are working on your habit week of being responsible for your belongings.  Add whatever consequence you think can work for a period of time, like a week or so.  Take away the TV for a week “so you can focus on your new habit.”  At the end of the week, you can determine if your kids accomplished their goal.  If not, you may need to add or extend a consequence.

You can easily turn this into pursuit of perfection.  Be careful about that.  The use of a consequence like this is not meant to withhold everything until a child does everything just exactly right.  When you see some improvement, you can bring back whatever you took away in small amounts (TV, computer games, etc).  If your child keeps up their progress, can bring more back.  It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, just enough to be useful and purposeful.  Instead of doing reactive parenting, you are doing purposeful parenting.

What do you think?  Have you wondered what you’re really doing as a parent, and whether it’s even working?  Have you found ways to make your parenting more purposeful?

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    Last reviewed: 2 Dec 2009