Giving Our Kids Tools vs. Controlling the Outcome - Neuro Tip

As a parent/guardian there is nothing you can do to insure a certain outcome with your child. No perfect parenting, no fully present completely loving and perfect environment you can create, nothing you can do as a parent/guardian to insure your kid turns out a certain way. Just writing this is heavy as a parent, we cannot control our child's hearts and desires. We can pray and do the best we can, but ultimately we cannot control them. 

Seeking to control outcomes with your child often leads to undesired results. 

For example:

• Going to great lengths to protect a child from disappointment creates a scenario where they do not learn to handle disappointment in a healthy manner. Once they aren't living with you, how can they be protected them from all the disappointment the world can bring?
• Bailing a child out of consequences becuase you want to save their face can create a lasting result of disconnect between behavior and results. This breeds a lack of respect for responsibility and an unhealthy respect of consequences.
• Controlling a child's outward behavior and making them follow a strict guideline without proper focus on the heart and understanding their views can prompt a child to forsake the outward behavior being pressed upon them at the first chance of freedom they get.

These are just a few general ways that having a focus on controlling the outcomes versus supporting your child with tools and an atmosphere that cultivates the outcome you want to see can have negative results.

If we can't control the outcome in our children's lives, then what can we control as parents?

We can control the atmospheres we create and allow them to be part of AND we can control the tools we help them develop to encounter the challenges they will face (at an appropriate age).

Ways to give your kids tools to help cultivate in them skills that promote the outcomes you want to see:

• Teach them to be more concerned about the heart issue than the outward issue. Once the heart is aligned, outward resolution will become a natural result.

• Teach them to process their thoughts in a healthy manner.
• Teach them to be curious not critical of themself and their struggles.
• Teach them to understand how the brain works and how to use it for their benefit.