Written by Willie Nicholson, Business Consultant
Willie Nicholson has held numerous leadership roles, building and empowering successful teams while enabling employees to grow and achieve career success. His go-to phrase is, "It's not who's right. It's what's right."
If you’ve experienced emotions such as joy, pride, love, worry, fear, frustration, guilt, disappointment, amusement, irritation, and anger, you’ve plodded through life. But you are also, more than likely, a parent.
At all times, children of all ages and in all places require guidance. Yet what they require and what they receive often differ significantly.
The percentage of children living with two parents has reached its highest level in decades. However, the number of children living with only their mothers has doubled in the past 50 years.
While I find statistics useful, they often fail to tell the story behind the story.
Doing your part
A parent can be an exceptional parent, and their child may still end up doing disheartening things. Conversely, an otherwise wonderful child can also do demoralizing things.
When working with kids, you are also working with their parents. I’ve had parents lament that they’ve done everything for their children and are distraught because their children are still struggling, clueless about what they were taught, or failing to do what they should. My response is always the same: “All you can do is your part. At some point, the child must do their part.”
We learn from our parents. However, not all parents were present, shared much, or had the insights needed to help guide us.
All parents are not created equal
What makes a good parent? When you look up the traits of a good parent, the list is exhausting. Can anyone, let alone a parent, meet all those requirements?
Parents are people with life problems that spill over into parenting. Some parents are simply not meant to be parents.
All children are not created equal
There are difficult children, not to mention the changes they go through, dragging their parents along with them through their growing pains.
There is a storm brewing
As a parent, I remember arguing with my 2-year-old about going to bed. I had to stop and ask myself, “Why am I arguing with a 2-year-old?”
Little did I know, this was a preview of things to come.
Conflict
When possible, most people tend to approach conflict by avoiding it. As a parent, you know you have authority and, thus, the final say. You control the outcome.
Until a child reaches a certain age, that works great. We don’t need conflict training.
The problem
As children get older, parenting requires skills that many people learn or acquire, but many don’t have. If we are emotionally immature parents, things become extremely challenging for the child and the parent.
This is when the lights go dim and relationships become hard to see through.
In this article let’s consider something most of us can aspire to. Perspective.
Perspective
I recently read a blog from the Gottman Institute describing the importance of perspective.
“One of the most important lessons that I learned as a psychologist and parent is that a child’s positive or negative behavior is simply a form of communication. They are data and information about your child’s internal experiences. They are simply ways for your children to show or tell you that something is wrong, and they need help moving through the problem.
However, as parents, the ability to see their communication as data relies on one’s ability to manage one’s own triggers and emotions. When you’re exhausted, stressed, or overwhelmed, your ability to observe your child’s anger as data becomes diminished. That’s why it is the parent’s responsibility to calm their emotional activation and respond versus react.“
Let’s face it raising kids is emotional
I used to “jokingly” say to my daughter, who is now an adult, “I used to like you when you were a baby before you became a teen.”
Rearing children can be beautiful and nightmarish. Sometimes on the same day.
Despite the emotional rollercoasters of children, most parents are inclined to do what is right.
Parenting as a thought leader
What can have the most disastrous consequence? Doing what is right or doing what is wrong? It’s a rhetorical question.
We were taught to be thought leaders. Emphasizing over and over what not to do is something we subconsciously use to guide us. We learned from metaphors our parents or others told us.
“It’s always darkest before dawn.”
“Would you jump off a bridge because everyone else is jumping off a bridge?”
“It’s not who is right. It’s what’s right.”
I maintain a parent doesn’t have to be educated, wealthy, a conflict expert, or perfect to be impactful as a parent. I don’t know how you can prepare for the vast unknowns of parenting.
As a parent, you are forced to develop deep expertise about something important to you. Your child. You must communicate, adapt, engage, empathize, be consistent, impactful, and collaborate. These are all qualities of a thought leader.
Make the old the new
The organization Bright, whose goal is child development, uses the following metaphor to build public support for child development. “Depending on the quality of a child’s experiences and relationships in the early years, their brains will establish either a sturdy or a fragile foundation, which impacts all the development and behavior that follows.”
Parenting doesn’t always require you to do all the right things. But it does require you to be in the moment. To be fully present and engaged.
Finding your capability is a waste of time
The power to do something and the extent of our abilities have limits.
There are pertinent reasons why emphasizing what not to do using metaphors regardless of parental abilities can be so effective.
Parent IQ: You don’t have to fret over being perfect.
Wisdom: it allows the child to integrate knowledge, experience, and understanding to navigate situations instead of constantly telling the child what to do. They own it and tell themselves what to do or not to do.
Bigger picture: it allows the child, not you, to see the bigger picture and consider the outcome before making a judgment.
Adaptability: the child can readily adapt to changing circumstances, becoming more flexible and resilient.
Emotional intelligence: the child learns to understand and manage their own emotions and your emotions.
Responsibility: it shifts the responsibility to where it belongs with the child.
When our guiding light goes dim, so do the hopes and chances of our children. Do not allow that to happen. Be a thoughtful leader to our children.
“We can lose tolerance with our children as long as we maintain our love for them.”
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Willie Nicholson, Business Consultant
Willie Nicholson, a thought leader and business adviser, helps others improve their knowledge of the business world. Because he didn’t have early mentors in his life, Bill entered the corporate world uninformed and inexperienced. Bill didn't appreciate the value of advice until he had the opportunity to work with two separate female leaders who helped him develop his early business understanding and aptitude. From then, he began to take an early interest in helping others understand the intricacies of business.
