Be Your Children's Best Friend - Part 2

Continued from Part 1:

Why many parents fail to be their children's best friend? Besides being busy and have no time for our children, there are three more reasons to widen the gap between our children and us. I am writing this through my experience and if you have more, please share with me.

1) We nag too much

“Don’t touch!”, “Don’t do this!”, “Don’t do that!”, “Why must you be so naughty?”, “Why can’t you just behave yourself?” ……

Sound familiar? I nag a lot too but this is definitely NOT an effective way to get an idea through our children. I observe and I notice that whenever I nag, my children tend to shut me off. They seem to be looking at me, but they don’t hear anything. Their hearts and their minds are somewhere else. When I ask them: “Do you understand what I am trying to say?” They would say: “Yes, mummy.” When I ask them: “What did I say?” Often, the answers are just something else that makes me ponder whether my approach is correct or not. That’s frustrating, isn’t it? Come to think of it, do you like it if your mother nags you everyday? I bet nobody does!

Friends would never nag our children. That's when our children will treat them like angels who would bring only happiness to them instead of suffering to the ears.

2) We yell / scold / spank

Yelling, scolding and spanking are very effective methods to immediately curb negative behaviors but they leave deep scars on our children and that is really bad in the long run. By deep scars, I mean FEAR, IMITATION and VIOLENCE.

With Karl as my first child, I was very patient with him, using only soft approach but someone very close to me told me that my approach was not correct and that I should discipline him by cane or I would lose him to his peer group later on. Being a new mother who has no experience, I followed that suggestion and used that on Karl when he was bigger and practice that approach a lot on Wayne, my second boy. Now, what do I have in return? Well behaved boy? NO! What I got at that time was two boys who stopped their negative behaviors out of fear, not understanding the consequences of each action; two boys who imitate anger, scolding and beating (violence) on their siblings whenever they wanted something but couldn’t get it or when they were disturbed.

Now, I understand that by showing anger myself and by scolding and spanking, I am actually teaching my children that they too could scold and beat their brother and sister when something does not sit right with them. So, Wayne becomes the most difficult child for me to discipline at that moment when I use the “Hard Approach” and I blame it on myself for Wayne’s violence and tantrum. I know I have to change and so I change. (Find more in Part 3) The result? Not bad!


3) We act like a dictator

Without realizing it, we as mothers always act like a dictator. We would choose our children’s clothes for the day, decide who they should befriend, and insist on the activities that they should engage in. We think that pre-planning everything for our children is for the sake of our children and we would get appreciation and gratitude. NO, we are all WRONG! Our concern and worries for them bring about resentment that they are always under our control, that they have no freedom and that they are actually puppets that have no say at all.

Put yourself in your children's shoes. What do you think of a mother who only allows you to walk left when she say left? This would only drive our children into the hands of their peer group!

Pulling our children out from a peer group that exhibits negative behaviors and influence seems to be the right way but think twice, it will only allow our children to think that we control their life and it will affect our relationship, bringing them further from us. We should only tackle the problem, not the people.

Off course, when our children are young, they wouldn’t be able to decide on their own but there's a way to decide for them partially yet giving them the choice to make them feel important (Look out for it in Part 3).