Who is Influencing Your Child? | Part 5
Aug 12
Choosing To Be Your Children’s Greatest Influence
We have mentioned this week, as well as many times previously, one of the places that is an easy place to build relationship with your children is at the dinner table. When we simply spend time together around the table sharing a meal it does wonders for our children. In fact the Miami Herald produced an article which combined research from several places, University of Minnesota, Harvard, and the American Pediatric Association to name a few. The results were astounding, it stated that children who at with their families just five times a week had a lower body mass and were physically more healthy. There was a strong association between these meal times and academic success, psychological adjustment and abstinence. The article went on to state that teens who ate with their families five times a week were 42% less likely to drink alcohol, 59% less likely to smoke cigarettes, 66% less likely to smoke marijuana . It also stated that teen girls we far less likely to have a propensity for an eating disorder.
Those are amazing statistics. It is not just the eating that does this for a family it is the relationship. The “group therapy” that can take place is great. Everyone can download and process their day with others, as well as feel like a priority to those around them. All this by simply taking the time to sit down to meals together, it definitely is worth the effort!!!
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Who is Influencing Your Child? | Part 4
Aug 11
Communicate
One way to watch who is influencing our child is to be in constant communication with them. We have talked about this a lot and even spent two weeks discussing this topic. First and foremost creating times for communication allows us to hear what other people are saying to our children. It also helps us to see how certain things are impacting them. There are media influences that we can discuss with our children, such as games, TV, movies and music. When we see something that we don’t agree with or is offensive in one of these arenas, we must get involved and open up a dialog about it.
The second thing that communication does is it continues to allow us to be a big influence in our children’s lives. Most teens still report that their parents are their greatest influence in decisions that they make. This means that we have to choose to be in that position by continuing to work on communication and relationship.
Check out our previous series on communication by clicking here.
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Who is Influencing Your Child? | Part 3
Aug 10
Setting Up an Electronic Mote
One thing we can do as parents to guard who is influencing our children is to guard our family time. Make time that is set-aside just for family. Most of us have times at work where it would be inappropriate to be answering cell phone calls or texting. Most of our bosses wouldn’t like it very much if we were in a meeting with them and our attention was on our cell. We need to set aside specific family time that is guarded like that.
How do we do that? We need to first and foremost set the example. Do we always answer our phones or text back or is their set aside family time that phones are put down. Dinner can be an easy place to start. If we are sitting down at the dinner table and expecting to have a conversation as a family then we need to make sure that there are no interruptions. If we are allowing other people to interrupt, via cell phone, we are communicating that those people are more important than our children. Another place that is easy for us to get wrapped up in phone conversation and miss time with our kids is drive time. Think about times where it may annoy you that your teen answers their cell phone and keep that in mind the next time your cell rings when you are with your child.
Take the time to set up boundaries where family time is guarded from the interference of technology.
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Who is Influencing Your Child? | Part 2
Aug 09
Guiding
One of my favorite times in art classes was pottery. It was so much fun to start with a lump of clay and work it into something. We would always start with simple “pinch pots” and then work into making coil pots. Eventually we would work towards the wheel. When you watch other people throw on a wheel it looks so easy. Then you get a blob of clay and the wheel begins to move. It can quickly turn to chaos with clay everywhere. If you don’t put enough guiding pressure with your hands the clay spins out of control and gets really floppy. Too much pressure with your hands and you can easily push a hole in your pot. Either way too much or too little you end up with a very misshapen pot.
This can be a valuable lesson for us as parents. The wheel can be used to illustrate the outside influences on our children’s lives, which we really don’t have control over. It is our job to guide them through this by placing protective boundaries to help process through these influences. Too little or no boundaries and we will have a mess on our hands. Interestingly enough too much pressure and we will have holes in our pot as well. Just like when we are over controlling, we have not taught our children how to process through situations. When this happens they will have no idea what to do when they are out on their own for the first time.
A final thing to take note of is early on in the process of the pot you do have to guide it more to make it look the way you want it to, where as by the end of the process it is a light touch to finish off.
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Who is Influencing Your Child? | Part 1
Aug 08
Safe Ears
It is very difficult in today’s day and age for parents to feel like their children are protected from everything out there. Some of us may be tempted to go overboard trying to control every situation that our child is involved in to keep them safe. One area that we can look at is who is influencing our child. There are many sources, peers, media, and teachers to name a few.
First and foremost we are to be our children’s filter. We need to be aware of things that are going into their head when they are younger such as movies and television. Secondly we need to be there to be a sounding board for our children as they get older. We need to realize that as they age they will be in environments where we will not be around. So we always need to have “safe ears” to listen to what has been going on. We want to be our children’s sounding board if something doesn’t sound quite right to them or if they have a question. We cannot over react and lecture them for something someone else said and did. We can calmly listen and explain the situation. That will keep them coming back to talk and process if they have questions or concerns.
Check back tomorrow for more on the topic of who is influencing your child.
Listen to today’s podcast for more wisdom on this topic.
