Love Extravagantly While Disciplining Children

In this season of love, I encourage you to love your children extravagantly. By that, I don’t just mean being generous in giving gifts, words, time, acts, or cuddles as you are able. I mean love extravagantly with your commitment to disciplining them. What does love have to do with disciplining children? Everything!

Discipline originally meant “instruction given to a disciple”. Its modern meanings include “training to act in accordance with rules,” and “activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill.” In the parenting context, discipline often means punishment, but it doesn't have to. The best discipline instructs a child to reflect on her behavior and decide for herself how to make an adjustment for more desirable result. It is teaching, not telling, prompting, not punishing, that leads a child to govern themselves.

Loving extravagantly while you discipline, teach, and empower your child makes you more successful as a parent. Here’s how:

1. Love Keeps You Calm Thomas Jefferson said, “Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.” When my child is having a meltdown, it does not help for me to have a meltdown right beside her. Your child is looking for ways to manage her emotions. Having a trusted adult demonstrating calm, compassionate, unshakable love and empathy is reassuring and gives them a safe center to come back to after the emotions are worked out. You can teach most effectively when you both are calm.

2. Love Keeps You Focused On Your Intention In the heat of the moment, you might react from fear of danger, fear of other people’s opinions, or fear of what your child’s future might be. Imagine your child is not coming when called, not eating their food, or hitting a sibling. You could react, but when your intention is to be a balanced, Present Parent, you can avoid the extremes of Authoritarian Parenting and Permissive Parenting. Love can remind you to be both kind and firm as you guide your child to a better outcome.

3. Love Attracts More Love When you are committed to loving extravagantly, you cannot help but attract more love and cooperation into your life. Could you use a little more love and cooperation? All day long, parents give love, but when your little one won’t get into the car seat, you become frustrated and stop giving love. You love again, but when she keeps kicking your seat with her muddy feet, you get angry and stop giving love. You make it to the store, but she starts wailing for candy, and you stop giving love because you feel ashamed.

Recognize when you stop giving love and immediately decide that you will love extravagantly, even in the face of irritation, anger, embarrassment, even physical pain. This is the essence of what I mean by loving extravagantly. Love your child. Love your life. Love every minute of being a parent. You will attract a more loving and wonderful life, and you will attract more cooperation and self-discipline from your child.

Here’s how to create the habit of loving extravagantly. You choose to. It’s that simple, so I’ll say it again. You choose to. You decide to love extravagantly. You decide to give love and loving treatment, even in the face of ill treatment. If you are easily triggered, it is important that you perk up your senses and start listening to your conscience. It is always speaking to you, but it whispers, so you might not easily hear it. It always alerts you with a moment of consciousness, of love, right before you blow up. You get to choose to ignore it or let it guide you. So let it guide you toward love.

As Jane Nelsen says in Positive Discipline, “People do better when they feel better.” Would you like to do better? Would you like your children to do better? Then discipline/teach your children from loving intention. By engaging with consistent boundaries rooted in extravagant love, you take Authoritative Parenting to its next iteration.

How will you love extravagantly today? Please comment below and share the love by passing this along to others.

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Peace, Practice, and Passion on the Playground

At the playground, my almost three year old toddler girl found an apparatus she had never encountered. It was a series of six poles, each with a small circular platform to step on, secured to the ground with a chain that gave it just enough sway to feel unstable.

On her first effort, she proceeded with caution. She made it to the second platform, but an older boy was coming the other way very quickly. He excitedly yelled, “get out of the way!” I wondered what my daughter would do. Without much thought, she lightly went back to the beginning. The boy passed and went onto something else, and my daughter got back on and continued on her way. It was easily resolved. My friend remarked how we would have peace in the world if everyone could work together that well.

I wondered what area my daughter would move on to next. She didn’t. She turned around and got back on again and again and again. She was going for mastery. I wondered how much more might we accomplish when we focus on mastering what we already know instead of quickly jumping to the next new method.

When it was time to go, she cried. She was having fun and was not ready to leave. When we are doing what we love, we won’t want to stop. We will be emotionally connected to what drives us to make a huge impact in the world. If some days you need to be physically removed from the good you are doing, you know you are on track.

Are you as peaceful, practiced, and passionate as your kids?

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Welcome The New Year By Clearing Out Clutter

Some families felt an economic pinch this year and are wondering if the New Year will be any better. I am so grateful that I experienced growth in 2012 in my business, closer relationships, fun adventures, all with surprising life balance. It was our most prosperous year yet.

While there are many ways to bring about a financial turnaround in your life, you want to start with the basics. One fundamental way you can bring more success into your life is to Clear Out Clutter. This is a very simple thing to do, so simple that you might even shrug it off. Don’t get taken out that easily. Welcome your prosperity, and play with this powerful practice.

How successful do you feel when your house or office is a mess? That mess is a reflection of what is going on inside your head. The cool thing is that it’s a two-way street. When you tidy up in your physical world, you create calm and confidence within. You also bring more harmony to your family life and relationships. Can clearing out clutter actually do that? Yes!

Releasing clutter can be challenging, especially if you have had a significant loss in your life. People who have had a major loss, tend to hold on more tightly. This is a process of trust, in God and in yourself. Clutter is anything you do not love, use, or anything that does not honor who you are. While it might feel like you are in a better position because of all the stuff you have, think of all the extra mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical weight you are carrying because of it. It may have served a purpose before. Ask yourself does it serve a purpose now?

As you release clutter, it may make things easier to think of it as adding to another person’s prosperity. I recently went through my home and released another few bags of clothes, toys, and linens. I felt happy to give what I had to charity and then to experience the lightness and space and ease at home.

If you want to take things a step further, you can intentionally prepare your space to receive more blessings. If you want nice clothes, make sure there is space in your closet and drawers for them. If you want more clients, prepare your files. As you are doing so, imagine what it would feel like to already be that successful, and let that feeling linger.

The New Year is as good a time as any to get your affairs in order. I encourage you to do so, joyfully! Clear out the clutter, make room for everything you want in life, and have the best year ever!

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Authoritative Parenting – Success With Authoritative Parenting

Authoritative Parenting is one of three parenting styles identified by developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind from her 1960s research on preschool-age children and their families.

This parenting style has clear behavioral expectations and boundaries, considers a child’s emotional needs, and communicates in a rational way that teaches instead of threatens. Children who are raised by authoritative parents are more likely to be responsible, well-behaved, academically successful, and socially accepted.

Authoritative parenting is a great illustration of the success principle of choosing “both” instead of “either/or”, and opening up to abundance. You may be familiar with the other two parenting styles. On the strict side is authoritarian parenting, which tends to hold high expectations and demand blind obedience from their children. On the other end is permissive parenting which is very responsive to children yet places few demands or controls on them and neglects opportunities for guidance.

While Authoritative Parenting is often described as a middle ground between those extremes, it’s not. When it comes to parenting, the middle is not a place of advantage. It’s a vague, iffy place that could go either way depending on the circumstances.

I see Authoritative Parenting as incorporating the best of the other two styles and standing proudly with both. The authoritative parent is both warm and firm at the same time. She nurtures her child’s mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical development, but she’s no pushover. She holds the boundaries of safety, social norms, and family values with the strength and dignity that comes from loving intention, instead of reacting from anger, shame, or fear. She turns mistakes into teachable moments, even when she is exhausted, and it would be easier to ignore it or just do it herself. This is a balanced, grounded, proactive style that is willing to put time, energy, and attention into raising a responsible child. Authoritative Parenting is not for wimps.

This style reminds me of the Seal of the United States. If you are wondering what the Seal looks like, pull out your wallet. It’s on your money. You will find an eagle holding an olive branch in its right talon and arrows in its left. This symbolizes a desire for peace combined the ability to do whatever it takes to maintain its values and interests.

Not many of us were raised by an authoritative parent, so it may involve some growth and learning to apply this approach with your kids. I knew I had to consciously integrate this style since I tend toward authoritarian. I wanted to choose my parenting style instead of inherit it. I chose to be an Authoritative Present Parent. You have a choice too, and I hope you choose “both” to be successful in your parenting, in your relationships, and in your life.

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Permissive Parenting – Code For “Bad Parenting”?

Permissive Parenting is described as being emotionally connected to a child but not providing clear structure and boundaries. Boundaries are viewed as supportive, even essential, to a child’s development and self-regulation. On the continuum of parenting styles, it takes a democratic stance of equal voice for parent and child, opposite authoritarian parenting which demands blind obedience.

In my experience, Permissive Parenting is also used by non-research-based observers as a label, a criticism, or a verdict. Whenever I hear someone refer to parents as permissive, I can feel the judgment oozing from their lips. It is almost as if they were judging the kids and the parents as “bad”.

It reminds me of a story where a father boards a subway with seven children who are all acting out. When a person asks him to control his children, he apologizes and explains that they are on their way back from the hospital where their mother just died. Would you characterize this father as being a permissive parent?

Whoever is blameless, cast the first stone. Have you ever been too tired correct? Too discouraged to explain? Too angry to respond with empathy? Too sick to help? I have. Before you cast a stone at me, consider how you are in private as well as in public. Things can change very quickly when you don’t have prying eyes to impress.

Still, we as parents bear the responsibility of protection and guidance of our offspring. The boundaries we hold are in three arenas: safety, societal limits, and family values. We click them into their carseats, dress them a certain way, and feed them green smoothies out of love and the most honorable intentions. When we consistently maintain these supportive boundaries and explain why, we also teach our kids to do the same.

Permissive Parenting is a style. If you find that your parenting style is not giving you the results you want, for you or your child, notice where you can be more firm while remaining loving, connected, and kind. The style that incorporates both connection and boundaries is Authoritative Parenting. Being a Authoritative Present Parent means being loving and firm at the same time, as well as being willing to learn and grow to achieve the results you want.

Whatever your parenting style, remember that you have the power to change and create the experience you desire from your role as a parent. May you experience more joy and fulfillment in your parenting journey.

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