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PLEASE read - This is a message I believe to be of great importance, but it takes a few paragraphs to get to the point.
Parenting involves influencing your child in three key areas:
- Healthy socialization
- Maturing character
- Identification, development, and expression of strengths
Throwing away trash is an example of healthy socialization and not stealing of maturing character. Playing the cello might be an area of strength.
As our children grow older we should never stop seeking to influence their maturing characters. We should always encourage them to do what is right and virtuous (realizing that you and I will not agree completely on what behaviors fit within the categories right and virtuous).
As our children grow older we should never stop seeking to encourage the identification, development, and expression of their strengths. Because life should be more about the expression of strengths than about overcoming weaknesses - more about becoming who you are rather than trying to become who you are not.
Here's the challenge: As our children grow older we must release our behavioral preferences and allow them to express healthy socialization in ways that are consistent with who they are and with their preferences.
As parents it is always available to us to define any behavior as a matter of right and virtue rather than as just a matter of preference. We can turn a clean room into an issue of virtue - one way is to escalate this to an issue of obedience. Now if our child chooses not to keep a clean room (as defined by us) he is rebelling, disobeying, doing what is wrong.
When your child is five it may be important to you to teach your child to maintain a clean room and you may choose to make this an issue of obedience. But when your child is seventeen is this really the battle you want to wage? If she chooses to live as a slob (as defined by you) is this really an issue of character, of right and virtue, or is this an expression of your preference for how she should live?
As our children are in high school and college I am trying to refocus my attention and our limited engagements. I want to continue influencing what I believe to be true issues of character and I want to focus on helping them to identify, develop, and express their strengths. I want to quit trying to make them me, to quit trying to convince them that my preferences regarding healthy socialization should be theirs, to avoid fighting over preferences when that may shut them down on discussions of character and strengths.
Worse, if I continue focusing on issues of preference I will teach my child that I am focused on his "weaknesses" - the areas of socialization where his preferences do not align with mine - and he will leave home convinced that I see what is wrong with him rather than what is so wonderfully right. He may not even be able to see his own character or strengths because he is so distanced from me over the issue of picking up his clothes.
Let me summarize:- When your children are young, teach them your views on socialization, your commitments regarding character, and help them to see their strengths.
- As your children enter young adulthood turn your attention to opportunities to continue influencing character and their opportunities to express their strengths. Release the areas of socialization where you don't see eye-to-eye because you may never and these aren't the issues worth defining your relationship around.
Besides you may be surprised when you visit her apartment one day and see how neat she keeps everything now that she is on her own. Then again she may always be a slob - but that shouldn't negate her character and strengths nor should it ruin your relationship. |
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Thanks for reading and thanks for your comments!
You can understand each other - really!
Dr. Stephen Julian
Copyright © 2013 by Dr. Stephen Julian. All rights reserved. |
