Thursday, November 4, 2010

Intentional or Accidental


One of the big challenges in parenting is to be more intentional and less reactionary. This principle applies to most areas of life- if you plan ahead and work your plan, you succeed much more than when you simply react to circumstances. Because very few of us have formal training in parenting, our default reaction is to do what we remember our parents did or just make a snap decision, usually based in emotion.

I thought about it this week while watching a football team practice. They were trying to anticipate situations they would face in the coming game and rehearsing how they would respond to that scenario. Then in the pressure and speed of the game, they would not have to think up a response because they had already decided what they would do. Their coaches had looked at film and reviewed scouting reports to come up with a game plan for how to handle the coming challenges.

What if we tried to do that in parenting? Imagine a mom and dad sitting down once a week and game-planning their parenting for the week. They could talk about where the kids were in their development, what issues were pressing at that moment, what events they would encounter, what was going on in school, etc., all the issues their kids were facing. Then they could talk through a strategy for how to respond when various situations developed. In some cases they could get together with the kids and teach them what to do in various situations and coach them with the game plan in mind, all the while giving life skills to their kids. That way they would be proactively training instead of reacting in the heat of the moment.

What about trying that? Think about having a weekly planning meeting and instead of reviewing game film, talk about what's going on in your kids lives and figure out some strategies to make them more successful. I'll bet you do better than just waiting for something to happen and I'll bet you grow closer together in the process. You might even want to pray for the kids as a part of this exercise. Now there's a novel idea!

I know this- the kids will see you as a unified team and won't be so inclined to
play one of you against the other. They will feel more empowered to handle things that happen. And if you monitor their behaviors and coach them along the way, not criticizing but coaching, they will feel like you are on their side instead of working against them. Remember to catch them doing right and reinforce that with plenty of praise and encouragement. What do you think?