As a parent, it is common to feel we are responsible for our children and all that they do and feel in their lives, but that perspective usually gets us into trouble and doesn’t ultimately help our children. It is our job to help manage our children’s lives up until they are around ten years old. After this magical age our job shifts into becoming more of a consultant. We only have another eight years to teach them how to do their own thinking and problem solving so they’ll know what to do when they leave for the real world.

A better way of looking at it is that we are not responsible for our children; we are responsible to our children and to ourselves. Our responsibility to our children is to provide a teaching environment that reflects the real world in the comfort of a loving home. This enables them to experiment with what works and what doesn’t before the consequences of their actions become life threatening. By being responsible to ourselves, we have the base from which to model what it looks like to respect ourselves and keep our children accountable for their actions.

This is hard to remember when we see our children in any kind of pain. But, ironically, we end up creating unnecessary pain for our children by over-managing their lives. Our distorted idea about what actually helps children become capable, responsible people gets in the way of teaching them how to think.

For example, I have come across many parents getting overly involved in tasks that belong to the child, like filling out applications to college and managing the last years of high school that determine the options they will have. Our fears about where they might end up if we don’t help them, prevents them from  learning the skills that really would help them. So be responsible to your children and keep the focus on yourself. Learn how to manage your own fears instead of your child’s life.

Copywrite© 2006 by Leigh Scott. All rights reserved.

Here’s an example of how a parent successfully accomplished

her downtime while her children were around. She wanted to established a ‘silent hour’ so they would have the opportunity to learn how to just “be” with themselves as she was learning the same thing. She explained that she would be sitting/meditating in silence for an hour/half hour/ten minutes and if they wanted to join her they would have to be quiet. This gave Peggy’s children a choice to take part or not. Over time her children came to appreciate the quiet time and were given the gift of another valuable tool for tuning-in to themselves.

Whether it is a workout, a massage, time to sit quietly or just paying attention to our breathing, this focus on ourselves helps to replenish our reserves, and most importantly, to re-wire our brains, which was explained in Step Two. The parents who have taken my workshop have reported that by practicing the techniques in this Step they notice negative emotions and judgments dissolving and their parenting automatically improves. They have re-wired their brains.

Giving children the gift of self-care and the ability to know their own minds will provide them with an essential life skill. We pass on the ability to access our higher minds to our children by making it a priority. What better feeling is there than for a parent to know their children will be making life decisions with the help of their executive functioning brains?

It is also our job to let go of managing our children’s lives, step by step, so that by the time they are around ten or eleven years old we become a loving consultant. At that point, it is our job is to help them manage their own lives until they are self-reliant and fully prepared to thrive outside of our home. It is a win-win situation because at each step of the way our load gets lighter and their confidence and self-esteem get bigger. We create a lifestyle of respect and responsibility within a household that increases everyone’s ability to access higher brain functions.

Copywrite© 2006 by Leigh Scott. All rights reserved.