By Wendy Garrido
This is the last article in our eight-part series on Conscious Parenting Principles. Find the previous seven articles on our website at www.NorthStarFamilyMatters.com Attention ° Emotional Support ° Responsible Choices ° Boundaries ° Independence & Community ° Good Communication ° Encourage Curiosity ° Role Models
True Story: Mel is eleven-years old and proudly says, “Well, I’m going to have my baby when I’m sixteen so that I can be a young mother like my cousin!” One of Mel’s role models is her older cousin, Jenn, who is eighteen and pregnant with her second child. How is it that Mel finds Jenn to be a good role model, one that she wants to take after? The fact is Mel’s life isn’t filled with a lot of people who model high self-esteem, healthy boundaries, and respect for self or others. Jenn is all she has to look up to and Mel hasn’t learned to discern between people who are making healthy choices and those who aren’t.
The stereotypical role model is someone who possesses qualities we like, who inspires us to be more like them, and hopefully a better person. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and we want to encourage our kids to recognize both sides of a person instead of idolizing anyone. While Mel might have fewer positive role models in her life than children in some families, we don’t have to look far to see “role models” who may not exemplify our values or priorities. As conscious parents, our purpose is to help our children learn to identify the healthy and unhealthy decisions people make, and then choose the healthy choices for themselves.
It’s our job to create an environment that encourages discussions that clue us in to who and what is influencing our children, as well as what they are learning from their experiences. The people who hold significant roles in their lives, whether family members, celebrities, or peers, can be vehicles to engage kids in discussion. Make it a habit to ask your child’s opinion about who she thinks makes good decisions. Why does she think that? What areas does this person have room to grow in? Listen to her without arguing or objecting to her perceptions. Then share your perspective.
What are some characteristics you define as part of a “good” role model? Healthy boundaries? Good communication? High self-esteem? Respect for self and others? If you want your child to model these traits, do your best to demonstrate them yourself and be frank about which areas of life you think may not be your child’s best role model.
And, let’s be honest. In spite of all the years of “wisdom” we think we have over our children, none of us is perfect. As parents, being a positive role model doesn’t mean hiding our fears, anxieties, or mistakes from our children, nor does it mean telling them how they should live their lives based on what we learned from our own mistakes. After all, just which one of your parents’ past experiences did you learn from? As much as we might think our kids would be better off if they just listened to our advice, the truth is that we all learn from what we observe with our own senses and intuition. It’s futile and detrimental to expect our children to learn from our mistakes and deny them the right to have their own experiences.
The best way to be a healthy role model for our children is to be conscious of and acknowledge our vulnerabilities and mistakes. Kids learn from what they see us doing and demonstrating in our interactions with them and others. When we are honest with ourselves, we teach them to do the same. When we express our struggles in healthy ways we give children the right to express theirs. When you’ve said or done something you’re not proud of, acknowledge your feelings with your child and discuss how you would have liked to have responded differently. If the word or action was directed at your child, apologize and let her know that she never deserves that treatment from anyone. Acknowledge that you made a mistake and will try to do things differently next time.
Perhaps you thought that you had finished “growing up” once you had a child. You may have realized by now that our children are often our best lesson in life. They notice how we react, what we say, and, especially, what we do. They push us to look internally, reflect upon our actions, and be our grandest vision of ourselves.
Our kids are still kids, but within all of us “grown ups” is the child we once were. While it may be many years since you paid much attention to the memories of your childhood, your own children will bring you face-to-face with your childhood baggage. Recollect all the times your childhood intuition told you that you were not to blame, that an injustice had occurred, that someone had good intentions or not, or that people around you were in denial. As you consider the role model you want to be for your children, listen to that child within and be the role model that you wished you had had when you were a child.
November 2007