As parents, we have to have a good awareness of what factors are playing into our kids. Like, what pressure is there at school? What critical elements are also happening at school? Are those things showing up in the home at all? So as a parent, we have to be really cautious about what you’re pushing your child towards and guiding them towards. And see those two key words right there? We can push our kids to something or guide them to something. “Am I pushing my kids somewhere, or am I guiding my kids somewhere?” If you’re pushing, you’re probably in a perfection world, and if you’re guiding, you’re probably in a progress world.
I always say my listeners know this because I say it almost on every show: that for the first 18 years of our kids lives, it’s a boot camp. We get to fill them with all the values and beliefs and guidance and rights and wrongs, because when they’re 18, they’re facing that world, and they’re going to face it through their model of the world, through what we were able to establish in them. So we can’t be so commanding and demanding. We have to be more of a guide, and we can even go back to school. I have twins and I have six kids, and out of my six kids, I look at how I parented my first two as a single mom for many of their lives, and it was constantly like, “No, you’re going to be grounded if you don’t make a C. You have to have at least a C, and you could do better. You could do better.”
And in my mind, I was telling my kids, “Hey, I believe in you.” But what they were hearing from me was, “I’m still not good enough for mom. I’m still not going to ever be good enough for mom.” So now with the twins, I ask them, and I’m like, “How does that grade make you feel? Is it a grade that you’re proud of?” Because if they’re struggling with comprehension and their history is falling behind because of comprehension and understanding, the dates and memorization are not in their wheelhouse, but they’re happy that they got to be. I’m going to celebrate that. Who am I to say that’s bad when I’ve watched them put the effort into it? And so my other child, the other twin, feels that grades are not a big deal, and she doesn’t put much concern into it. Again, I always say, “You have to start your habits now, and what are you finding important?” And I think also, whether off the field or on the field, it’s. What’s the outcome here? What is the outcome we’re striving for? If the outcome is perfection, you better have a good, clear idea of what perfection is, or your kids are always going to miss the mark on that, or is the outcome growth?
Listen to the full episode here:
“𝙋𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧 𝙤𝙛 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙜𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙫𝙨. 𝙋𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣” with Josh Newton
https://sites.libsyn.com/471660/-with-josh-newton
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