Here’s what I saw:
This man took no personal responsibility for what came out of his own mouth.
When kids hear you talk a talk, but see you don’t live what you preach, that hypocrisy affects their development.
The irony is this:
Because he was not consistent in his words and actions about personal responsibility, they did not accept his beliefs about personal responsibility.
She is the reason her children do not develop personal responsibility.
If she tries to exercise personal responsibility, it’s possible that her kids will develop this way anyway. Despite parents’ best efforts, children can be challenging and stubborn, and they can become depressed despite parents’ best efforts. I get that.
But because the father did not exercise personal responsibility, he is partly responsible for his children not developing personal responsibility.
Her kids don’t struggle when it comes to money. They don’t really need personal responsibility. They have him. They’re cruising.
Instead, she’s struggling because, underneath it all, beneath her struggles with defining personal responsibility, beneath the time she spends with her grown children, beneath the surface where they look like a tight-knit family, is this one truth:
He does not respect his own children.
This invisible truth prevents her from feeling closeness to her own children, a closeness that no amount of money can buy.
If she’s honest… she wouldn’t have anything to do with her grown children if they weren’t hers.
If you really, really want to love your kids as they grow up…if you want to be a really tight family, who spend time together because they like each other, because ‘that’s what families do’…if you want a real, warm, mutually-respectful connection with your kids:
- Don’t be a hypocrite. If you want a child to believe in something you value, make sure you live up to that value and that you hold him to it too.
- Don’t let other people—including you—consequence your children for bad behavior. Let them feel the consequences for their bad behavior at a young age.
- Don’t cave to keep your kids from hating you. Be okay with your child when you ‘hate’ not doing what they want you to do. Be okay with your kid hating you when you don’t let them do what they want. Eliminate discomfort. Trust that if you are a loving, supportive parent, they will usually learn the lesson and overcome their temporary occupations of ‘hate’.
- Stop doing whatever it takes to keep the peace when your baby is small. Let them be mad at you if it’s worth a lesson they need to learn.
…
And my final “what not to do”:
- Don’t bend over backwards to get what your kids want. You provide what they need. If they want something, let them bend over backwards to get it.
