Consistency Works like Magic for Parenting

Consistency is the catchword in parenting. It is the only word that is consistently used for defining your conduct in speech and expression and in action in relation to you and your child plus you and your spouse.

Indeed, if you fail I this, you give ample opportunity to your children to manipulate you and play one parent off another. But how on earth do you achieve that? And what if the other parent has no interest in improving his/her parenting style?

Maybe these pointers will help:

First off, the key to both staying calm and maintaining consistency is to have a plan. Decide IN ADVANCE how you plan to deal with particular situations.

Having done that, when you find yourself in that situation you will be able to calmly do what you had pre-planned.

Without a plan, you will act out of habit, which is often a lot of yelling and threatening. With a plan, you will probably react differently.

Decide also which battles are worth fighting - and chill out about the others. The rule here is that if you have a rule you MUST enforce it - every time without fail. If you are not prepared to do that, then clearly the rule is not that important, in which case you should drop it.

If you don’t want your child to put his feet on the sofa, spell it out for him, and stick with it. Don't tell him to get his feet off one day, and then allow it the next time.

If you think through all the conflicts that give you the greatest stress, you will probably find that many of them are in these grey areas. You can't keep sitting on the fence. Once you decide which way you way to jump, you will find that much of that stress goes away.

The really difficult part about implementing a plan is getting your partner to participate in it.

No easy answers, of course, since this goes to the core of your relationship as a couple. Are you able to discuss the children calmly and rationally, or are they pawns in some kind of power struggle between you?

You don't even have to agree on everything - as long as you agree to disagree. But even when you disagree, you DO have to back each other up in front of the children. If your partner has said NO you must say NO too; and then discuss it between you privately. If you say NO, you would hope that (s)he would also back you up.

If you don’t do that, your children will play one parent against the other to get what they are looking for.

So, once again, the key to consistency between parents is the same as being consistent yourself - plan ahead. Spend time discussing your rules and expectations so that you can come up with a coherent plan. One way to do this is to read a parenting book together and then discuss it.

In the worst scenario where you cannot even agree on fundamental ways of handling situations, what can you do?

You can only be true to yourself. The same for your partner.

The outcome of this is that the children are quick to size up both the parents and manipulate them to their advantage. If one parent is strict and the other lenient, the children know whom to go to and get what they are looking for.

The wider the gap between you, the more problems this will cause in daily life. Often this results in one parent struggling with the child's behavior, while the other seems to have no problems! In that case, the most logical thing to do is for the parent who is struggling to see what he or she can learn from the other's style (and, yes, usually it will be that they are more consistent!)

Ultimately it can get so bad that one parent completely destroys any authority or credibility that the other parent might have. If that is happening to you, it is time for some serious thinking (and decisive action) about what is happening in your relationship and what you are going to do about it. If you don't then your children will learn to disrespect all types of authority, and you will gradually loose all respect for yourself too.

The trouble is that people become complacent in their familiar grooves. Habits are hard to break. But, for the sake of your children you need to work on yourself, if you want something to change. Change yourself; it’s easier than changing the other.

Article Source: http://publisherscloninghouse.com

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