Love, Limits, and Latitude

 
  I always had visions of being the perfect mom. I would never yell at the kids and they would always listen the first time to my “calm lecturing voice.” I then had my first child and realized that things would not exactly be how I envisioned them, my mom laughed because she said my first born was just like me, a free spirited, stubborn, happy, unique ball of sunshine! As mothers and fathers we have the challenge of raising children who are all different and require different parenting techniques at times. Our objectives our laid out as to what we should do, but the fine print as to how to do them are not as clear and gives us room to interpret them. How do we do this? How do we raise good children? I think one of the biggest ways we can be good parents is by using authoritative parenting skills.

     Authoritative parenting is done with much love and reasoning. These parents look for the positive in each child and try to bring those qualities out. These parents set limits and boundaries for each child, but yet allow each child flexibility within those bounds. There are three characteristics that further explain authoritative parenting, they include love, limits, and logic. 

      Love should always be given to each child. President Hinkley says, “Every child is entitled to grow up in a home where there is warm and secure companionship, where there is love in the family relationship, where appreciation one for another is taught and exemplified, and where God is acknowledged and His peace and blessings invoked before the family alter.” We need to know that each of our children constantly know that we love them. My oldest son is turning 12. He has reached the stage where at times he thinks hugging is not okay. As a mom this saddened me because I wanted him to feel my love, so I had to discover other ways to do this. Perhaps it is a rub on the top of the head, maybe it is lying on his bed with him for a few extra minutes, or something else similar, but I began to realize that all of these send the message of love to him at this stage in his life. As we show love to our children we take the time to really listen to them, their thoughts, their fears, their concerns, their hopes, and their dreams. We need to play with them and spend time with them as we do these things they will be less likely to push the envelope because they know they are a high priority in each of our lives. 

     Kids need limits, however we should be clear that these are not coercive limits imposed with harsh punishments and beatings. We should set clear and firm rules and expectations with our children. These should be pre established prior to them needing to be enforced. One thing I am terrible at is deciding that we need to start working on something such as less electronics. I usually set a rule that they get electronics for 1 hour a day. This works decently well for a few days and then I get busy and forget. A few weeks go by without this expectation enforced and now I decide it is a problem again and I lash out at them because I had told them that they only got 1 hour of electronics a day. I have set a limit, however who’s fault is it really that it is broken? Mine because I was not consistent in my expectations. Setting limits with our children allows them to know that we love them and respect them  enough to keep them safe. What would have happened to your children if you would never had established an expectation for them not to play in the street? Probably something we don’t want to think about! When rules and expectations are broken we need to have the punishments logically tied to the behavior that occurred. We need to explain why we did what we did so they can understand. Sometimes find out why your child did something is more important than the actual consequence. One day my oldest son got his Webelows badge. It was time to take a photo after afterwards, but my oldest son threw a fit because my husband (the scout leader) was in the picture with all the boy’s and their parents. After wards I was upset and went to punish him, but decided to dig deeper and I discovered their was a fear that he felt like we didn’t want his real dad in the picture and my husband was trying to take over. We allowed him to explain himself and we explain the whole picture and we came to a mutual understanding that solved a lot of miscommunication in the future.

     Once love is given and limits are set then we allow latitude to happen. Children have the most growth when latitude is given. They learn to make choices within the limits that parents find acceptable. We need to say yes to our kids whenever possible, therefore when we say no they know we really mean it. We need to allow them to have choices. Do you want Peanut Butter in your lunch today or turkey? As we do this it allow our children to regulate themselves by learning from their choices. 

     Parenting is a hard thing to do. There is no instruction manual that we receive, but we are blessed with a loving Father in Heaven that will guide us to make the right choices for our family. We need to love our children, we need to strengthen bonds with them, and love them through their mistakes. There is nothing more joyful in life than happy parenthood. Yes, it is hard, but in the end when we raise righteous children we will look back and be so grateful for our choices we made as parents.