Your Committed Audience

I was thinking about what my next blog would be and wanted to write about something that I feel is important to share with my fellow parents.

If you are one of those parents, like me, who struggle with negative behaviors with your children, let me be the one to tell you this is not because your children are bad kids.

CHILDREN DO NOT INTENTIONALLY CHOOSE TO BE “BAD” KIDS.

This simple sentence will lead to three or four blog topics because there is so much to say about it.

I will discuss the first one here which I named Your Committed Audience.

Our children have come through us because we were the perfect parents for them. Whatever their purpose, they have come through us to learn as well as to teach. However, truthfully many of us are not equipped to teach that much on the basis that we have not taught ourselves first.

A teacher, to be good, must have sufficient knowledge of a topic in order to be proficient enough to teach another. And the moment we are blessed with the job of parenting, we must begin to prepare the prerequisites and gain sufficient knowledge in whatever topics we are embarking to teach our children. For example, if we choose to teach our children to be respectful people but have not yet learned how to respect them or others, how can we expect to be taken seriously?

Your child is your committed audience from the time they are born till they begin their teenage years. However, many of us loose that audience much sooner, to influence rs and teachers outside our home because they come across more open and authentic than us. Think about this. Those children that pull away from the family unit early on, have done so because they feel that the people that they associate themselves with, see and accept them for who they are. They can talk to these friends without being judged and whether positive or negative, those friends become their teachers now, because that child has stopped trusting or has become uninterested in the parent who do not practice what they preach. If we expect them to be something that we are not, why would they follow our words? And if we over parent to be the “boss” they will look elsewhere.

Therefore, if as a parent you want your committed audience to remain committed, you must captivate their attention by learning to become as authentic as your words, and parent them in a way that makes them feel as good as they do with the friends that you lost or may lose them to!

Stay tuned for a continuation on this week’s blog…