Ennobling, Not Enabling –Bringing Forth the Best in Yourself & Your Children
by Penni Sparks
[This essay on parenting by Penni Sparks is from her monthly newsletter, which you can subscribe to by contacting Tracy@takeheartinc.com. It's a great way to learn where Penni will be speaking and how progress is going on "The Penni Sparks Show," a television pilot that promotes "our kind of insights" on parenting. Go Penni! Penni will be offering two "Preconference Workshops" at the fall conferences: in California, "Surviving and Thriving with your Adolescent and Preteen" for parents with children in grades 5-12; in Colorado, "Growing and Guiding your Young Child." For more information on the conferences and to register for a full afternoon with Penni, click on "Learn More" between the two conference brochures on the right.
Those of you who don't know Penni from our conferences will find that her clarity and humor come across in the four recordings we have of her keynote and workshop sessions: "Parenting and Teaching from the Heart;" "Constructive Parenting: Brick by Brick;" " Honoring the Lost Art of Mothering;" and "Loving Authority: Building Up, Not Tearing Down." --Rahima]
Despite your best parenting or teaching efforts, it sometimes happens: you find yourself in the midst of children who seem to be acting like barbarians or petty tyrants or just plain rude. Rather than turning into a raving despot yourself, you need effective tools and perspectives that can help you guide the children toward being the honorable human beings they've come forth to be. Indeed, they depend on you for it.
Although it's tempting to blame the behavior on an emerging generation of ill-mannered children, it's my belief that we, as adults, often breed entitlement in our children by enabling rather than ennobling them. We enable children when we allow them to slide out of responsibility and settle for less than their best work. We ennoble children when we give them generous opportunities for success and we expect excellence from them. For example, let's say your child wishes to go to the mall Saturday with friends. You make a clear agreement with your child that might sound something like this, "If you'd like to go to the mall with friends on Saturday, I'll need you to call me to check in at 3 and I'll need you to be home by 6 PM. If you fail to do either one of these things, you will not be able to see or talk with your friends this coming weekend. Are we in agreement? Is there anyway I can help you meet these two requirements?"
Your child doesn't call at 3 and gets home 20 minutes late with a reasonable explanation for the delay: he was talking with his friends and lost track of time. It is enabling to ignore the agreement you engaged him in, to let him slide this time, and to ask him to do better next time. Think about it, why should he do better next time? Why would you expect it to be different?
It is ennobling to expect impeccable integrity from him by reinforcing that excellence is the standard, every time, and reminding him that he just 'won' the consequence you both agreed on. In the short run, it may seem easier to 'let it go' and avoid the conflict. In the long run, you undercut trust and integrity, both for him and for you. As I heard it once said, "If you don't teach your children this lesson, someone else will have to, and they probably won't love your child as much as you do."
Children, especially adolescents, must rebel in order to grow into healthy adults. It's our job, as parents, teachers, and guides, to hold the vision of what it means to be impeccable and noble human beings, to give them something strong and clear to push against and strive for. They absolutely depend upon us to be steadfast and trustworthy in our follow-through, or their faith in the fabric of the future unravels, and we find we have barbarians on our hands once again.
The 'ghost voices' from your own past may be trying to keep you locked into unconscious patterns of allowing and enabling less than excellence from yourself and your child. As you uncover those voices in your own deep work, you become the benevolent ruler of your own home, fostering excellence and nobility in the kingdom around you.
Blessings on your noble work with yourself and the children. --Penni Sparks
