Preparing Our Children to Face the World with Integrity and Confidence

As parents, we never set out to hurt our children intentionally. Unfortunately, even with our best intentions, sometimes we do give our children destructive messages which can lead to depression, bullying, acting out in school and other bad behaviors we’d rather avoid. Many of the negative messages we received in our own childhood came from our caregivers, whether they were our parents, grandparents or other adult figures who were responsible for us. It’s like that old saying; it takes a village. Most of us do the best we can but we all have times when we stumble or have areas in our parenting skills that may need tweaking.

If we intend to deliver healthy messages to our children we have to look at how we are communicating with them. As we look back at our own childhood, we are looking back with adult lenses. We can better understand why our parents may not have been able to show us compassion or love. But as children, we weren’t able to discern these things. As a child, we may interpret our parents’ behaviors as uncaring, or we may start to wonder if something is wrong with us. When I was a child my father battled alcoholism and I interpreted that as my not being lovable; I thought his problems were with me. I understand today as an adult that my father had his own battles he was dealing with that had nothing to do with his love for me.

Please enjoy this video from Joy In Our Town where I talked about bettering our parenting styles and techniques, setting consistent boundaries with our kids and how we can instill integrity and confidence in them so they can lead happy, healthy and fulfilling lives. Share it with someone you care about.