Janet Krebs, Parent Coach
Today’s thought takes the focus off your kids and back onto you. I like to call these ‘man in the mirror’ moments. We’re often so busy looking at the kids, we’re talking about what they say, how they do, how they behave.
What about us? What are we saying and doing. How do we rate our own behavior?
For reference, let’s return to basics: the four styles of parenting. First there is the authoritative and authoritarian, (two very distinct and different), the permissive parent and the uninvolved parent.
Without going into too much detail on defining these different styles today, like many other things, can we agree that we have an innate, organic default style to our approach to parenting. This understanding makes it a little bit easier for us to have a little grace in knowing which direction we’re going or what a predicted behavior or outcome could be.
But why are there only four?
What if we have it all wrong?
Because my in my head, you know what’s missing?
The leadership parent, or the leader parent. Whatever you want to call it.
A parent who steps into leadership, which involves many of the same skills that leaders exhibit in the world of work. Here is a short list: creating a vision for the community, aka your family, exemplary communication skills, saying what you mean and meaning what you say, just to name my top two.
Let’s add a fifth style of parenting, which is what I’m declaring today, and let’s call it leadership parenting or parenting leadership. I am somewhat indifferent to the label. Either one gives you permission to learn some basic leadership skills and deploy those within your family.
This is the same approach you would use as the leader of your team or division at work. Maybe you are in leadership within your community or place of worship. Whatever that looks like for you. When we step into that leadership role, we’re not learning something else. We’re transferring tools, skills, behaviors, and a vocabulary that will help us in many aspects of our lives including our homes!
We can never have enough leaders. Don’t we want our kids to also be leaders?
When we model for our kids what being a leader looks like, they observe and learn.
And since they’re watching you, chances are they will at least adopt some behaviors of being a leader by watching.
As of today, let’s add a fifth style of parenting to the conversation. Leadership parenting or parenting leadership.
I think this is a place where we can change the focus ever so slightly and step into a role that empowers us to be the role models that our kids are begging us to be.