How to Empower your Kids
Parenting is the toughest and most important job you’ll ever do – Raising self-empowered resilient kids with great self-esteem and wisdom is extremely challenging. It requires a lot of tough love… there’s nothing ‘selfless’ and ‘kind’ about doing too much for your kids and protecting them from ‘life’ because what you’re effectively doing is disabling them and setting them up to struggle through life due to your ‘usually unconscious’ desire to meet your own needs first.
Parenting is not easy and getting the balance right between allowing your children to experience life, reap the consequences of their actions and take responsibility AND at the same time protecting & guiding them through life is a tricky one.
Where’s the fine line between over-protecting your child and neglecting them?
A good place to start in order to find the answer to this question is to observe your child’s behaviour.
* Do they constantly blame others for their mistakes
* Do they continually act helpless
* Are they demanding and expect the world from you most of the time
* Do they always unbearably complain when they don’t get their own way
* Do they never seem to learn their lessons
* Are they lazy and disinterested in helping around the house
* Do they display constantly selfish behaviour
* Do they lack motivation and self-drive
* Do they lack basic ‘street smart’ skills
Some of these behaviours may indicate that your child is over-protected and spoiled.
Spoiling your child and doing too much for them is NOT called ‘helping’, it’s called ‘DISABLING’. You are giving your child a massive disadvantage in life and although it may seem that you’re saving them from pain in the short term, they will inevitably suffer later as a result of being spoiled. They will struggle with life and are likely to be a victim of bullying and/or deceived and taken advantage of in the real world. They won’t know how to look after themselves and make wise choices, so ultimately, by over-protecting your child you will be setting them up to be co-dependent and needy for the rest of their lives.
Spoiling is not only unkind, but selfish. If you look at the reason’s why you do too much for your child, it’s likely to be for your own benefit… so you don’t have to see them go through pain, or listen to them complain, or make the effort and take the time to teach them how to do it for themselves or even worse, so that they will love you and need you.
Most of what we do when we don’t live consciously is motivated by our ego… our ego wants to avoid suffering or pain at any cost. Our ego doesn’t allow us to see the long term benefits of doing it tough now, the ego just wants to remain comfortable & safe. So allowing our ego to be the master of us, does not enable us to be good parents.
Here are some tips for empowering kids
* Encourage them to take public transport to school, walk or ride their bike
* Allow them to solve most of their own problems and conflicts with siblings and/or other kids
* Allow them to experiment a little and reap the consequences if necessary
* Encourage them to work as a team and take responsibility for their jobs/roles
* Educate them about life – sex, health, exercise, crime, politics etc.
* Encourage them to express themselves in an open and honest way
* Encourage them to ask questions
The key is to guide our children through life, not to control and protect them from life.
