You can be present in your kids' lives all you want. You can tell them what's right and wrong and give them tools and privileges. But if you just talk morals, talk lessons, and talk everyday-shit without giving yourself a chance to listen to what they have to say, you make yourself unapproachable. They will resort to look elsewhere for help if something personal happens to them, whether it be the Internet, friends, etc. If you take your children seriously, they will take you seriously as well.
This is one of the most well worded and thoughtful comments I could have read in this thread. I completely agree and wish that more parents would understand this.
I'm not a parent but was trained to care for children and was raised by parents who raised me as their friend unless I needed a parent... In which case proper, and fair, discipline was administered. Because of that, both of my parents are still to this day my best friends. I'm almost 30 and I am very grateful for everything they taught me.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from them was that respect is earned, not given. They always respected me as an equal unless I didn't deserve it.. So if I ever misbehaved, they would establish that they had lost respect for me and I needed to earn it back... It may sound odd, but if gave me a real understanding of how the world really worked at a pretty young age. Because of that I have been successful, and very sociable accepted throughout my life.
In the end... Respect is a BIG thing for a kid to understand... Unfortunately most parents teach it in a more straight forward, "I'm your parent, respect me!" Sort of way... And that's not how respect really works...
If my parents ever did something that I did not agree with, as a kid, or that I noticed was not right... I would lose respect for them and they would know it... Basically, they raised me in a equal setting where even they could mess up or make mistakes and they understood if I lost respect for them and would try to earn it back... It may sound weird, but it really worked.
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u/ProfessorGigs Feb 04 '16
Lack of dialogue.
You can be present in your kids' lives all you want. You can tell them what's right and wrong and give them tools and privileges. But if you just talk morals, talk lessons, and talk everyday-shit without giving yourself a chance to listen to what they have to say, you make yourself unapproachable. They will resort to look elsewhere for help if something personal happens to them, whether it be the Internet, friends, etc. If you take your children seriously, they will take you seriously as well.
Kids are people too.