Guiding a Child's Behavior

At an event this past weekend, I watched a mother follow her probably-three-year-old son around the hall, making suggestions for the boy’s behavior that were totally ignored. Obvious to any onlooker was the fact that the child was in charge.

This is clearly not right. If you’d asked this mother – in a meeting over coffee, for instance, with her son nowhere in sight – if three-year-olds should be able to make all their own decisions and ignore their parents, I’m pretty certain she would say “no.” But many well-meaning moms and dads, who – quite rightly - are determined to permit their children to develop in their own ways, forget that development depends upon guidance. There is a fine line between control and guidance and too many parents are so terrified of being controlling that they ignore their responsibility to be a guide.

Imagine for a moment that you have been dropped into a strange land where you don’t know the customs and don’t know the laws. You don’t know if people eat with their fingers or with forks, if merchandise is sold for money or shared freely, and if objects that seem capable of being sat upon are actually okay to sit on. Imagine that you are followed around in this land by a guide who doesn’t tell you any of the customs or rules, but simply makes suggestions. If he knows what’s best to do, he’s not telling. You’re left to fend for yourself.

A guide has a responsibility for guidance. Parents have a responsibility for parenting. This means permitting exploration and development but it also means communicating the ground rules. Respect for a child begins with respecting yourself. If parents truly have a child’s best interests at heart – if they truly respect the child – they will expect the child to honor their own authority as parents. Mom and dad are the ones who know.

The mother I saw last weekend had set limits on her own behavior (apparently she could not permit herself to make a direct request to her son) but had not set any limits for her son’s behavior. Such a one-sided arrangement ensures that the child must figure everything out on his own and that is neither developmentally appropriate nor fair. It would have been more appropriate and more fair had she asked that he hold her hand as they walked around or stay in the main room where she could see him. More appropriate, more fair, and more respectful of both the parent’s wisdom and the child’s need for security and care.

Certainly control without respect for the child is not good for development. But no-control is not respectful either and forces the child to be responsible for himself and independent long before he’s capable of managing his own affairs.

Help your child out. Let him know the customs and the rules of the land he’s living in. Let him know you care enough to be his parent and his guide.

You can view all of my past posts, slide shows and parenting resources by visiting http://www.earlylearningcommunity.org/page/tips-from-dr-patricia-nan