May 16, 2020 | Tagged Parenting,
How to Improve Your Parenting Strategy
NBC Basketball wants to help you be a great parent. Just like a great basketball program has an overall basketball strategy, great parents need a game plan. If you want to be a quality and effective parent, having a great strategy is the foundation. This is your roadmap for parenting success.
Most of the negative issues we have with parenting happen because we don’t have a strategy and we end up parenting from a defensive, reactionary posture rather than a proactive plan.
Here is a good parenting self-check:
What is your current level of frustration with your children and how often is frustration apparent in your parenting of your children?
Frustration is your barometer to indicate that you aren’t operating from a plan but from the reaction.
Richard P. Rumelt, a research expert on strategy gives us these three tools for better strategy and it works great with parenting.
A. The ability to premediate and problem solve issues before they occur
B. The ability to anticipate the behavior of others
C. The ability to design purposeful coordinated actions
Strategy requires premeditation.
Let's take the first skill. Can you become skilled at having wisdom for possible or likely scenarios that may arise?
How will you handle each of the following that may or most likely will happen as a parent?
- Your child doesn’t get a good grade.
- Your child talks back to you.
- Your child is rude to his or her sibling.
- Your child doesn’t tell you the truth.
- Your child is not listening to you.
This ability to imagine a scenario and have the best-educated plan for navigating this challenge will help you to parent without frustration when the situation arises.
Strategy requires anticipation of other’s behaviors.
Parenting can catch us off guard when we haven’t worked to learn and study the personality and unique beauty of our children. Danger happens when we see our children as extensions of ourselves and our own ways of viewing the world.
Here are some key questions to answer.
- What frustrates your child about how you parent?
- How does your child navigate conflict and how can you help him or her handle this with self-discipline and wisdom?
- What have you learned about your child and how you both interact together?
Strategy requires a purposeful design of coordinated actions.
Probably the most amazing team on earth is a loving family. When everyone serves and loves one another deeply, there is no stronger unit on earth. This strategic coordination of love and service is observed in the way parents love each other, siblings look to serve and love each other, which results in a home where love is real and tangible. It isn’t a fake, “leave it to Beaver” type of love but the real family love is in the tone, the look, the touch, the thoughts, the words, the heart, mind, and spirit of every family member. This committed strategy to love and serve happens because the home has an intentional committed plan of how to love and serve each other that is executed by every family member with excellence.
Key questions to answer:
Is the parenting team in unity and working to execute action plans according to the same playbook?
If they are not in agreement, how confusing, disunified, or frustrating is their lack of unity to the parenting plan?
Where do the actions of parenting break down-- what are the common errors and pitfalls?
What design do I need to implement to ensure the follow-through of great parenting actions?
Parenting is an amazing journey and deserves our very best effort and wisdom.
About NBC Basketball
NBC Basketball is a holistic program based on helping educate parents, coaches, and athletes to become their best on and off the court. Parenting is a skill that can be improved and NBC Basketball works to encourage parents in one of the greatest jobs on earth-- raising great kids. For more information about NBC Basketball visit www.nbcccamps.com.