5 Things I Didn't Learn From My Parents

Growing up there are so many things we learn from our parents/family that carry on when we become parents. While most of the lessons, in my case, were positive I can admit there were several things that I absolutely realize had to change. This isn't a rock being thrown at my parents because I had a great childhood. I was raised in a two parent home, both of my parents were college educated professionals, and their marriage gave me something to aspire to have. Once I became a mom, I realized there was a disconnect in my parental relationship that I didn't want to create in the relationship I was building with my children. Here's a few of the things that I've been implementing that never existed in my childhood home:

1. It’s okay to apologize to your children. This absolutely is new territory for me, but I refuse to allow my children to believe that only adults are right. Even when proven wrong, I remember just getting the response back of “Oh” or something to that effect but NEVER I’m sorry. Apologies are powerful and it can potentially open a door in relationships that may have been closed due to the offense. I have found that it is so important to recognize that my children have feelings and their feelings matter to them just as much as mine matter to me. I am responsible for aiding in the foundational establishment of their worth and apologizing puts me in position to make certain they recognize that they are seen and matter.

2. Transparency is not a bad thing. I possibly could have avoided so many pitfalls if my parents just told me the truth about what they had done, where they had been, and how they corrected their mistakes. One example that sticks out to me is the fact that my mother stressed abstinence. With that in mind, I always believed she was a virgin until she married my dad (Yes, I was naïve). It wasn’t until one of my closest friends got pregnant that she revealed that when she became sexually active she used condoms. (Push pause….Sis lied to me for 16 years of my life and then just threw that on me randomly) While some people could easily move past that and just use it as a warning for practicing safe sex, I struggled with trusting females for a LONG time after that. If my own mother would be dishonest, certainly some chick I just met couldn’t be trusted. It took me years to address the issues that stemmed from this, but now I see it as a learning opportunity to make certain that I’m steering my children around holes that I’ve found myself in. I’ll admit that sometimes I struggle with putting things in age appropriate terms, but we work with what we have and teach our children as much as we possibly can.

3. Quit using punishments as a form of manipulation. This is something I wish people could see happening, but they can’t. Children should receive rebuke immediately following inappropriate behaviors and it should correspond to age and severity of the behaviors. Once that punishment has been applied, MOVE ON!!!! I am in no way saying that correction isn’t necessary and that you may not need to provide gentle reminders to children about appropriateness but withholding love/affection, time, and/or attention from a child is psychological abuse in my opinion. I have learned that physical touch is a love language of all of my children and I have to be willing to make sure they know they are loved specifically by my willingness to provide physical contact with them on a consistent basis. Grooming is how pedophiles prey on unsuspecting children. They usually start off with providing love, affection, time, and gifts. Once they have the child’s trust, they start using taking things away or make threats as a form of manipulation to ensure that the child behaves in a manner they desire. Some people use this exact same tactic with children and their behaviors, but this isn’t successful. People behave in certain manners based on their logic of certain situations. One of the best ways to work towards children behaving appropriately is logically processing situations and addressing thinking errors versus attempting to just change the behavior based on punishments. If we don't do this we basically recreate the cycle of doing what's expected when certain people are around and changing it up once out of their sight. I can stay on this topic, but I’ll move on.

4. It’s okay for children to ask questions. Because I said so is not an answer. That’s what I was taught, but the more I learned the more I realized that I never learned anything by being provided that as a response. While there are definite things that aren’t optional like hygiene and bedtime, I allow my children the latitude to ask questions about why things are the way they are. Children shouldn’t be expected to know things they haven’t been taught and home is the first learning ground. Too often we place higher expectations on children than we need to and we must remember that it is our responsibility to introduce new concepts and ways of thinking.

5. Emotional Intelligence. I don’t blame them one bit for not learning this. Although it’s not new, most people have no idea what it is. Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and appropriately deal with your emotions. While happy, mad, and sad are emotions that most of us easily identify if you ask people to name 15 emotions they may not be able. Many people carry around emotional baggage due to this. Imagine being disappointed by someone when you’re 15 (depending on you as an individual), you may become upset or sad.  Typically we deal with being upset or sad, but forget the initial feeling of being disappointed. In the future, any situation that resembles that incident at 15 causes you to be guarded and potentially puts you in a position to transfer those unspoken emotions. The less you know the more limited you are. We as human beings are able to experience a wide range of emotions on a daily basis, but often times we don’t stop long enough to allow ourselves the opportunity to feel many of them. As long as they don’t disrupt us, we keep it moving. Take the time to start processing everything you feel and make sure that you’re dealing with those appropriately.

I probably will continue this thread later on because there's just so many things that I didn't include. What types of things are you doing differently in your household that you didn't see growing up?