The Best Parent for Your Child
The best parent for your child is without a shadow of a doubt, the best version of you.
If you ever question whether you are the best parent for your child. Stop. Right. Now. We all experience doubt in our parenting abilities at times and I know you are never sent more than you can handle in life and parenting. You’re dished up what you need to learn, grow and develop. And your child chooses you to learn, grown and develop in ways they need to. There are no mistakes. There are no coincidences.
Every parent excels at something in parenting. Every parent fails at something in parenting.
So how do you become the best version of yourself as a parent? Well the answer is to NOT be good at everything. Rather understand yourself and what makes you who you are. And learn where your child may be opposing to you and create strategies to bridge the gap.
In the long term, this allows you to be more of you and your child to be more of them.
I’ve just got back from a University Symposium, discussing the future skills needed of children and how parents can engage children to choose degrees and careers that align to who they are. In the break, one of the educators and I were chatting and she shared a story of her primary school daughter who got sent to the principal’s office because she and her friends soaked each other with water on a 40 degree day. When asked by the principal to justify her actions the daughter said, “well, I think all schools should have swimming pools. We all need to cool off on very hot days.”
When this lovely mum heard her daughter recount her version of events, she was flummoxed. She couldn’t believe her daughter had spoken back to the principal in this way.
The question is, was there anything wrong with the way the daughter or the mum reacted or were they simply experiencing two different perspectives?
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. ~Peter Drucker
The mum laughed as she shared how different her daughter’s perspectives are to her own and how much she is learning from her daughter.
How much of the angst in parenting is communicating with your child? How much of your lost sleep is down to not being able to understand what is going on for your child?
Being the best version of you, is the best parent for your child.
Trial and error, usually shapes your parenting on where to flex and where to be firm with your child. And often takes a long time to figure out. What if you could be more structured in your approach to better understanding your child? How would this help accelerate you being the best version of you now, by letting you know when to be firm and when to flex?
By understanding who you are, you learn to understand your child better.
There’s no better parent for your child than you.
