Most of us would like to have great relationships with our kids. We are familiar with the basic advice: love our kids unconditionally, put relationship first, spend time with them, empathize and be kind, believe in them and help them fulfill their potential. But putting this advice into practice can be challenging.
One reason is that some of these principles may conflict with each other. For example, balancing unconditional love with helping them reach their potential, or finding a balance between having fun and maintaining order. Should parents allow their kids to experiment with different projects, even if they create a mess at home (or just create a mess for fun)? This could foster creativity and provide an opportunity for everyone to have fun. But for parents who prefer order and cleanliness in their daily routine, and have limited time to supervise or assist with cleanup, this can affect their well-being.
Loving someone unconditionally is hard. Sometime it feels like we are having the same conversations a thousand times, and they continue with the same bad habits. Or what if they refuse to listen to feedback, even when deliver in a well-intentioned, calm manner? Can we love unconditionally when someone consistently behaves in ways we don’t like? For adults, we can choose to spend more time with people we like and avoid others. But with our kids, we don’t have that option. We want our kids to be people we like. Hence even if we know it’s often futile to try to change someone, we still try to shape our kids’ behavior.
Parents can get annoyed or angry by different triggers, such as slamming doors, poor hygiene, mistreating belongings, rudeness, complaining, lying, or engaging in bullying or physical aggression. Some of these character issues require serious attention. But often what we really care about is obedience and respect from our kids.
If having a good relationship is most important, the ideal approach seems to remind them calmly and kindly each time. Punishment usually doesn’t work. Sometime we punish our kids for trivial things, regret it later (as punishments usually benefit no one), but feel obligated to carry them out to maintain consistency and credibility. If our aim really is to help them improve, we should come up with punishments that aid their development.
An ideal parent can strike a balance, to be both loving and accepting, while guiding their kids to become their best selves. Fortunately, being a good enough parent is often good enough. Despite my weaknesses, my kids still seem to enjoy spending time with me. And I like the ideas that there’s room for me to improve and become a better dad.
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