No matter how many kids you have, at some point , there will come a time when you just can’t go any further in bending to help them. This article is about giving you strength to make the tough decisions. What makes a good parent is raising your kids to be self reliant, good decision makers and good people.

Sometimes, you will be good at all three and sometimes you will only be good at one or two of these. I would love to say that if you most of the time do the right thing the right results will come out. I can’t. What I can tell you is that it is an odds game. What I mean by that is that if you do the right thing most of the time, with your kids, the odds are most of the time you will get the results you want. What makes a good parent is the ability to make the tough decisions, no matter how painful, to move your kids to the right place.

The first point in making the tough decisions is doing your best as a parent. This may seem like an obvious point but I want to speak about it a little. Especially to mothers reading this article, what makes a good parent is accepting you can’t be mommy for ever. You can be a strong mother, forever, just not the mother who is raising a baby. For many of you, this will be extremely difficult. Many mothers have a level of nurturing, hard-wired into your system, that very few men will ever develop or understand.

In my experience, accompanying this huge nurturing capacity is a certain amount of, “I can’t do enough for my kids” capacity as well. Part of the reason for this latter part is the feeling that if you didn’t have this mentality you wouldn’t be doing your best as a parent. On this point, what makes a good parent is the ability to realize inside when you did your best, your kids at some point will still make mistakes and it’s not your fault. When they make those mistakes, they will need to be responsible and work their way out, themselves. Teens, especially, need a chance to work out their issues themselves, whether it be in doing badly on a test in school or getting a speeding ticket.

Parents, you have and will make bad decisions in your life. How you deal and have dealt with them now shapes your life. Helping your children deal with their bad decisions, as children and teens, is one of the most important things you can do for them. Handling their bad decisions for them, without out them taking responsibility is one of the surest ways to make them more likely to have a hard time as an adult.

Please read part 2 of “What Makes a Good Parent and Standing Firm”.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bocknek

The Problem Solving Expert for Parents and Families

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Dr. Robert Bocknek is the problem solving expert for marriage, parents and families at www.takebackthehome.com and www.keyboard-culture-parenting.com.  He can be reached at bocknek@takebackthehome.com. He is author of the “Take Back the Home course” and the “Learning how to Learn course” which can be seen at www.takebackthehome.com.

     

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