How to Help Your Children

Finding where your child can be difficult at times, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are a few tips on how to locate, lift, and lead your child.

 

1. Care about your child. You may not know what to do, but if you don’t care about your child, it doesn’t matter what you do. Remember, people tend not to care about how much you know, until they know how much you care. Just like love, care will always find a way and will not stop until it does.

 

2. Communicate with your child. Establish simple but regular ways to keep in touch. It may be a call when you are going to be late, a text to indicate you arrived safely, a post to show that you are having a god time, a note on a post it in the refrigerators to remind each other of the game that day. It doesn’t have to be a dissertation, just regular and positive communication.

 

3. Converse with your child. Communication can often be one way. However, a conversation is by definition a two-way matter. In a conversation there talking and listening. There is explaining and understanding. There is give and take. Even having a conversation with your child which is not interrupted or distracted by the TV, the phone, or the game controller can go a long way to help you to know not only where they are , but who they are.

 

4. Check on your child. Check their homework to make sure it is done and done correctly. Check their report card to see how they are doing in school. Check their room for signs of strange habits and behaviors. Without turning into the CIA or the FBI, you can and must follow up on what they are expected to do and say they are going to do. Ronald Regan was right. Trust, but verify!  

 

5. Create boundaries for your child. The answer to every question your child asks should not be NO! Learn how to answer: “Yes, but…” Yes, you can go, but you have to be home by 12 PM. Yes, you can have a phone, but you have to block certain sites and use it within certain hours of the day. Yes, you can have an allowance, but you have to earn it by doing chores. Yes, I trust you, but these are the consequences when violate that trust. 

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6. Commend your child. Commending your child on their achievements, actions, choices, and overall character is not only in order, but it creates a foundation and relationship to also offer correction and criticism. No one loves to be criticized, but it is accepted much easier when he or she is sure that they are loved.

 

7. Cooperate with other stakeholders in the life of your child. It does indeed take a village. However, the members of the village will help the child grow and develop much better if they have a level of cooperation and communication between themselves. This includes: parents, grandparents, teachers, counselors, coaches, neighbors, pastors and friends. To the child it may feel like everyone is ganging up on them when what is actually happening is that everyone is taming up to support them.

 

8. Call for help for your child. There is no need to be embarrassed or ashamed to ask for help for your child or yourself. The sooner the better. Waiting can make a manageable matter out of control. There are many free resources within reach which exist for this very purpose. The hardest part for you just may be simply making the call.  

 

9. Connect to the world and culture of your child. Both you and your child may have the same address, but in many ways, you live in different worlds. One key way to know where your child is to learn who they listen to, who they watch, who they associate with, who they idolize who they talk to and more. It may feel like having to learn a foreign language because it is. However, learning their language and being fluent in their culture will help you better understand and communicate with them.

 

10. Celebrate your child. You commend, congratulate, and praise your child because of something they have done. You celebrate your child because of who they are. For who they are. You don’t need a special reason to let they know that you think they are special.