Are You Connected To Your Children Or You Lack One Of The Four Foundations Of Successful Parenting?
Imagine your child wants to disclose his pornography addiction to you, how do you think he would put it?
How about your daughter telling you she has "a crush" on some boy?
The answer for most parents is this: they can't even imagine it!
Many parents believe it is a sign of their strictness, but in reality, it is a sign of failure in what we consider one of the four foundations of successful parenting (the rest shall be discussed later), and that is: strong connection.
Your children not being able to discuss some of their struggles with you is a sign of failed connection, and maybe even failed parenting.
This is because if the kids do not feel comfortable to bring those worrying things to you, they would take them to others they trust and feel comfortable around, and in most cases, would be exposed to bad advice and guidance. What such parent-child relationships lack is a good connection, so what is connection itself?
Good and Failed Connection
Connection to children is being not only physically present, but being emotionally present.
Good connection is when our children always long to be with us, when they feel confident around us, when they are eager to have us actively involved in their lives and decisions, when they find it easy to talk to us about their fears, struggles, mistakes and failures.
Failed connection is when kids are scared whenever they hear our voices, they rejoice when they see us leaving the home, they are scared to talk in our presence, they do not find it easy to discuss with us the problems they are going through and they never want us to be involved in their decisions.
Good connection produces children who love and trust us, children who are confident, children who are eager to be advised and helped by us.
Bad connection produces vulnerable children who will fall easily for anything or anyone who seems to promise them love, acceptance and inclusion. Bad connection makes children vulnerable to peer pressure, to lovers who want to exploit them and it makes them feel alone and prone to depression.
What It Takes To Be Connected To Children
- Time: It is often hard for most parents to connect with their children because connection requires spending time with children and listening to them when they have unimportant things to say, so they can come to you and feel comfortable when they have important things to say.
Connection requires engaging the children in fun activities, games, walks and talks that make them long to be around us, and make them miss our presence. All of these require time.
2. Consciousness: Creating a strong connection to children is not only about being present with them; in fact, a parent who spends less time with children might be better connected to them than one who spends the whole day with them.
Strong connection is created by being consciously present, but in any case, you still have to be present.
Conscious presence means you are constantly watching your children and before reacting to any situation, you ask yourself: "what can I teach the child from this incident? How can I make him improve?"
It means you listen attentively to their jargon, you follow their storylines and ask about some random friend they mentioned the previous week.
3. Self-regulation: Most connections get destroyed during one process: the process of correction.
The way we react to mistakes, failure and misdeeds from our children is the biggest thing that severs most connections.
Reacting in ways that would correct children's mistakes, make them better, and still not sever the connection and love between us and them requires a lot of self-regulation and control.
It requires us to manage our anger, to be patient sometimes, and not react immediately. It requires us to be in a good state of mind ourselves and not be frustrated and under pressure.
Why Connection Is Often Hard To Create
Wrong Priority: One of the biggest things that destroys connection with children is how parents rank priorities; both theirs, and the children's.
Many parents have set for themselves wrong priorities that make it hard for them to fulfill their responsibilities towards their children; insha Allah we would be discussing these further.
The Way We Were Raised: Many parents find it hard to connect to their children because of the way they were raised: they see some actions that foster connection to be disrespectful, they see some actions they foster discipline to be too harsh, and they see some actions that foster growth to be too permissive.
Getting over these behaviours would be hard, but tust us, insha Allah, we are here to stay until the end of this journey.
This is not the end, it is only the beginning of our journey to giving tips on creating connection with children. Subsequently, we will be giving detailed thoughts on specific actions that need to be taken to foster connection and get over the bad habits that make connection hard.
To follow each of our activities and stay connected: https://linktr.ee/naaseducators
