How Do I Find A Slopy Road? — The One Road That Makes Parenting Easy And Fun.

If you are scared of failing as a parent, try this!
Hold a little child by the hand - any little child - and walk down a slopy road. You will realize one thing!

You will realize that walking downhill (or down a sloppy road) is a very easy task: you do not have to exert much effort, you’re naturally sliding downward. You still have to pay attention of course: you have to hold yourself not to go too fast; twists and turns will occur, but all in all, the momentum is with you and you have to exert only little effort.

Parenting a child can be as easy as walking downhill: all you need to do is to find your slopy road and your relationship with your child, making your child listen, and relating with your child will go smoothly like a downhill walk.

But, How Do We Find A Slopy Road For Parenting?

If you live in a place like Lagos, you would be scared already that you’d never find a slopy road that is not full of cars going to and fro. That is not safe, but you do not have to worry!

Whether you live in Lagos, or Atlanta or Georgia, there is only one slopy road for parenting: the RCCD road! And no, that’s not Reedemed Chritian Church of....! it’s Regulation, Connection, Coaching and Deen.

And this is how it works: work on those four things and they will serve as a slopy road: every other thing you want to do from advicing your kids, to making them listen to you, to making them love you, to making them love your presence and making them confide in you, all of these will come as easily as walking down a hill: you would not have to exert much effort.

Since these things are so important that they make parenting as easy as watching your kids walk down a hill: you do not have to shout or worry or push them, you only have to occasionally watch out to ensure your kids do not fall, so how about we talk about each one of them a little?

First, Regulation
Many parents are at war with themselves, not their children: they are worried, sad, scared and depressed, and then they transfer the aggression to their children.

Parenting, which should come off as easy and fun, becomes a hard and unbearable task that makes the parents feel even more depressed, and the children that should make them feel better about themselves make them feel even worse.

The first step to being a successful parent is not talking to your child differently, but talking to yourself differently, regulating yourself, controlling yourself, ranking your priorities right.

Of course, these will not come easy, but guess what? We are not leaving you to do it alone, we will guide you through some processes of self-regulation in coming weeks insha Allah.

Second, Connection
We have already discussed what connection is in this article https://link.medium.com/PbjZsQjVMfb, so we will not go back to that. And our next article will be on how to create connection, so we will not go into that.

Third, Coaching, Not Controlling
This principle is particularly necessary for dealing with teenage children. Most parents believe that managing their kids in the teenage years is almost an impossible task: "they want freedom, they want to feel like adults, they don't want us involved in their lives, they want to decide for themselves".

These are the challenges parents have with teenage children, but don't you wonder why it is that it is this same age that kids are most easily influneced by their peers? Did you just say they don't want to be guided? But that's their peers guiding them, albeit to bad habits.

If parents understand the principle of guidance and coaching over forcing and controlling, their teenage children would be begging to have them involved in their lives! It’s not too late to implement these too, we will be around to help with that too. In time. Insha Allah.

Fourth, Deen
Many parents' biggest fear about their children is that they would go wild and uncontrollable. Become a gangster. Rapist. Drug addict.

Making the deen a core aspect of your parenting makes parenting a rollercoaster ride; in fact, it is the most important of the four things mentioned so far when it comes to making parenting your child a smooth journey.

With a child who is devoted to the deen, you have laid a great foundation for so many things parents struggle with: you could easily teach them about empathy, about kindness, about morality without fearing that they would relent when you are not there. You can essentially trust them to parent themselves at some stages.

With the deen, the fear of peer pressure reduces, the fear of going wild is overcome, and there is a religious sense of responsibility he would feel towards you such that if you make a slight attempt to connect, it would go a long way.

We have mentioned the deen last because a lot of parents find it hard to inculcate devotion to the religion in their children for various reasons; some children even get to hate both the parents and the religion in the process; oftentimes, this is because the first three steps above did not serve as foundation before the parents started trying to build the religion in the children.

Other parents totally fear to inculcate the religion in their children for various reasons.

The best way to inculcate love of the deen in children, and reasons to not be scared about doing so: all of these we would also address in coming weeks Insha Allah.

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