So What Kind of Parent Are You?

In my last post we looked at four ways to lead others – push, drag, carry or inspire.  In the days since it’s occurred to me that these are also four ways parents can lead their children. But before moving to those ways let’s be clear on one idea about parenting.  I’m convinced after 24 years of being a parent that the key responsibility we have as parents, maybe the only responsibility, is to lead our children.  This may seem obvious but the truth is many parents don’t lead, either because they don’t know how to or simply don’t believe it’s their place.  But the truth is the very first social organizations in history were not businesses, non-profits, or governments but instead it were families.  And since healthy organizations require leadership, we shouldn’t be surprised that healthy families need leadership and that every child needs to be lead.

So what are the ways a parent can lead their child?

Parents have the same options available as a leader of any organization – they can push, drag, carry or they can inspire their children.  Maybe the only difference is that as parents, especially parents of young children and adolescents, it’s appropriate to use all four ways  more often than you do when leading/parenting adults.  As a result, the key to successful parenting is having the wisdom to know when to lead which way.

Unfortunately this is usually where we make mistakes as parents.  We push when we should carry, we carry when we should inspire, we drag when a gentle nudge is all that is needed.

And just like leading teams, parents (myself included) can fall into one way of leading because it worked so well at one particular moment or season in our child’s life.  The tricky part is to be able to recognize the need to move away from a specific way when the child’s ready to be led differently.  We’ve seen this in the parenting of our own children, who are now adults.  When they were children,  we often dragged them to piano practice, pushed them to eat right, carried them when life was beyond their capacity to handle.  But as adults our children don’t want nor appreciate being pushed, dragged, and most often not even carried.  They do love and want to be inspired. A new season in our children’s life requires a shift in the way we parent.

How do we know we’re parenting the best way?  Our children should be accomplishing both our short-term goals (eating their vegetables) and our long-term goals (becoming people who don’t need to be pushed, pulled or carried).

So this leaves us with the question we all face as parents – are we ready to give up our go-to parenting ways for the better way in this moment or season of your child’s life?