Parenting-on-purpose-7-influences-with-your-kids

Parenting on Purpose: 7 Influences with Your Kids

Think about the times in your life when you made a change.  When things were calm, you had time to reflect on an event or series of events in your life that produced change.  How did that come about?  Who were the influencers?  Were they powerful, impressive, dynamic, or were they just effective in the way they said something?  Was it said in such a way that influenced you to think further?

The bottom line in raising our kids is to get them to think clearly, to be able to see what is coming and to make good choices.  To have an understanding that rises above others around them.  In his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John Maxwell talks about influence, and I think we can apply it here to parenting.  He says the following,”

The leaders that have influenced my life have been people that had the following (7) characteristics:

1) The leaders cared about me and showed it.

2) The leaders took time to listen to me, get to know me, and offer confirmations as well as guidance.

3) These leaders were organized; they knew where we were going, what we were trying to do. They expressed it frequently, showed it in their conversations and body language.

4) The leaders had firm and well-defined boundaries within which they operated in terms of character, belief, and trust/certainty.

5)The leaders were fun to be around, always enjoyable, laughing, and ready to offer a positive comment.

6)The leaders had an energy about them. They showed a spark in them daily, even when they likely didn’t feel like it inside.

7)The leaders shared their vision for the present, just around the corner, further around the corner, and off-in-the-distance.

In future blogs, I will address each of these and talk about how to implement them with kids from influence rather than discipline.

I hope you will read this entire series and leave me a comment about your thoughts.

The link to Influence #1 is here, Parenting on Purpose: Influence #1 – Dr. Rich Patterson (pattersonphd.com)

Many factors influence your kids; here is a link that you need to read, Exploring Factors That Influence Child Development | NICHD – Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (nih.gov)

Yours for better parenting,

Rich