April 2008

Parenting with courage

Courageous parents are not looking for short cuts or “drive-by” parenting! Courageous parenting requires thoughtfulness, self-control, and creativity. Not surprisingly, these are all of the qualities we are asking our children to develop as well.

What does it really take to raise a child? It helps to have enough patience to listen to a 4 year old’s endlessly silly knock-knock jokes. You’ll probably want a pretty good sense of humor for the times when your 10 year old won’t stand near you out of embarrassment. And you may need to muster all the cheerfulness you can when the best laid plans fall apart on a rainy family vacation…

But have you ever considered how important courage is for you in how you parent your children?

From the very beginning, it probably took a lot of courage for you to even consider taking on the challenges of parenting! We know that raising a child is hard work, and it is often the most important responsibility in the life of a parent. Yet, with courage, you found the ability to trust yourself that you could take on this monumental task.

You may have found that your courage continues to be important to you as you navigate the many challenges of parenting. Courage gives you the confidence to trust your judgment that your preschooler isn’t ready yet to walk alone to a friend’s house, and courage gives you the confidence that your older child is now ready to walk alone. Courage gives you the strength to not give up when facing an angry toddler’s tantrum…or an angry teenager who wants to stay out too late! Courage gives you the fortitude to deal with the discomfort of a child acting out in public—and courage makes it possible for you to stay positive…and even polite. Most importantly, courage makes it possible for you to keep going, as you learn from both your successes and your mistakes in raising your children.

In short, when we operate from courage, we are usually at our best. Courage seems to draw upon the best in us as parents, and it inspires us to do even better. With courage, we can tolerate temporary distressing problems, trusting ourselves, and our children, to come through the experience just fine. With courage, we keep our perspective about problems—seeing them as temporary setbacks along the way. Parents who are operating from courage are able to trust that their children want to succeed, and that their children can take responsibility for their own choices and subsequent consequences as they figure out for themselves how to live successfully.

The importance of parenting with courage becomes even more apparent when we consider the alternative: parenting from fear summons the worst in us. Parents who operate out of fear naturally assume the worst: we “can’t stand it” if our child is behaving badly and we fear our child “can’t stand it” if they are frustrated or distressed. Fearful parents often exaggerate and overreact to problems by “awfulizing” them: “Jamie is the laziest 8 year old ever!” or “Meredith NEVER listens to me!” Fearful parents are afraid their children don’t want to do right, and therefore they assume most of the responsibility for the child’s behavior: “I HAVE to sit on Johnny to make him do his homework!” while minimizing the child’s part, “I never have to remember my lunch, my Mom always reminds me!”

Fortunately, every parent comes equipped with a powerful antidote to fear: and that, as you might have guessed, is courage! When parents draw upon their courage, they are less handicapped by fear. Parenting from courage opens up new resources of energy, positivity, and confidence—for parents and for children!
Courageous parents can choose to be neither family dictators nor their children’s doormats. Instead of fearing the worst, courageous parents can trust themselves that they can weather the storms of their children’s problems. Courageous parents also respect their children’s abilities to learn from their experiences, which includes their children’s ability to experience their own frustrations and distress without harm. Instead of seeing problems as failure, courageous parents see problems as opportunities to grow and learn. Instead of holding all the responsibility for children’s behaviors, courageous parents trust their children to take responsibility for their own choices, and the consequences of those choices.

If this sounds difficult…well, it is. Courageous parents are not looking for short cuts or “drive-by” parenting! Courageous parenting requires thoughtfulness, self-control, and creativity. Not surprisingly, these are all of the qualities we are asking our children to develop as well. There lie the challenges, and the rewards, of parenting with courage. The experience of parenting is precisely where we get the chance to love the most, to learn the most, and to grow the most. Becoming a more courageous parent often requires the adults to grow themselves a bit better, in order to help their children grow better.

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