What makes a good parent is creating a true and honest picture for our children. As a parent you must do what you can as long as it teaches them the right lessons. What is important to learn is that you can do a great job as a parent and still one of your children may make decisions that you can’t do much about. It is the proverbial, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink”. What makes a good parent is recognizing when you are leading them to water and when you are trying to make them drink.

My oldest son in college had a full scholarship. All he needed was to keep a B average. We prepped him about the challenges of being responsible and girls and keeping it together. We lead him to the water but he found partying more attractive. He didn’t keep his B average. He lost 75% of his scholarship.

I told him he had to get a loan for the remainder to make up for the short fall. He was so upset he wanted to drop out. I told him he could but if he did he wasn’t moving back in the house and we would give him $1000 to get started but that was it. Furthermore, to get the money he had to draw up a budget for himself. Once he realized how quickly he would have nothing he changed his mind. What makes a good parent is accepting what you can do for your kids and explaining to them why you are doing what you are doing. They might not like it but you will have done all you can do.

Whatever you do with your kids…what makes a good parent is to instill consistent values that you think will empower your children to be good, successful people.

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.

     

More on Topics: College, Parenting, What Makes A Good Parent

Tags: College, Parenting, What Makes A Good Parent

This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under the category Dr. Robert Bocknek, Family, Parenting, Parenting Tips, Teen Parenting, Teenage Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.