DON’T JUST TALK – TAKE ACTIONS!

“Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners” –  Anonymous

During the process of consulting customers who are parents, I often refer to the idea above whenever I hear anyone complain about their child not listening to them when it comes to teaching them the right behaviours.

After many times listening to those conversations and coming up with solutions, I was finally able to conclude three types of parental influence on children:

First, if parents have a messy lifestyle, their child will never be able to become well-organised.

You can test this theory by paying attention to your house or a friend’s house and observing how the furniture is arranged there. As a choice, if you are living with a roommate, you can also observe the general habits and lifestyles of that person’s family through the way they live and arrange everything around the place.

One more interesting fact is that if you pay attention, you can also notice how in some families, if there is messy furniture being stacked on top of each other, there will often be lots of scolding from the parents for their children. The parents will always criticise, and ironically, always force their children to be neat, to be clean, and be able to organise things in suitable places. However, they are the ones who throw things randomly around the house, having shoes piled up at the entrance, and different stacks of clothes can be spotted everywhere. And that cycle of scolding, complaining, and nagging will often be repeated every morning and every evening when all family members are at home together.

Second, parents who know how to balance their lives will be able to teach their child to live by discipline.

The family of a friend that I know often encounters a situation like this: every day that goes by, the mother always asks her son to go to bed at 9 pm and wake up at 6 am the next morning with the whole family. This habit was built up by his mother ever since he was in middle school until he entered high school. The son did not like his sleep being controlled by his mother because, during those years, he could not watch any of his favourite movies, and could not even sleep in a bit more on weekend mornings. It was during his puberty, the stage where people are developing physically and mentally, that his mother put him in the “military” discipline, making him feel very frustrated and upset about his life.

However, when the boy went to college, it was only when seeing his friends begin having their timelines messed up, have unbalanced diets, stay up late, and use drugs or stimulants until the point where they would enter the lecture hall with dark circles under their eyes, that he truly understood the true meaning of why he had to go to bed early with his parents before. He still occasionally participates in extracurricular events with friends, but not too much to the point of letting them affect his academic performance or efficiency when participating in joint activities. Later after, he graduated with excellent results and was invited by an employer to work at their company before he had even left the lecture hall.

It is the result of discipline, it is the limited timing rules in daily activities that his mother established many years ago, that created a “warrior” who appreciates himself, his health, and his future at that moment and so on. 

Third, a happy child grows up in families that are always filled with love and laughter, and vice versa.

A while ago, I read an excellent quote from the psychiatrist Alfred Adler: “A happy child will use their childhood to heal all the wounds in life. An unhappy child will spend a lifetime trying to heal their childhoods”. This means that when you give birth and raise a child with unconditional love, always counsel, guide, and provide everything for your child with tolerance, gentleness, and closeness, surely when growing up, your children will live more joyful and delighted lives. Thus they will also use the perspective of a mentally fulfilled person to treat and sympathise with those around them.

Whereas, if the child is born and raised by beatings, waves of anger, scoldings, and continuous complaints every day from the parents, when growing up, the child also tends to follow in their parents’ footsteps of being verbally or physically violent. Another situation is that these kids can also become shy, fearful, or even apprehensive and insecure about the world around them. In those two situations, no matter which one it is, the child will be miserable due to the difficulty of being able to fully feel happiness in life because the wounds are still plugged deeply inside the child’s soul.

Every child is born as a blank sheet of paper in the first place. Anything you want to “write” on it, those “instructions” will follow these kids for the rest of their life, whether the ink is pink or grey, it does not matter anymore. Therefore, the things that you do, the words you say, the eye gestures you make along with your behaviour with your child, with the surrounding people every day can also be an image of your child’s life’s quality in the future. Please remember this clearly, my friend.

As parents, we may not be outstanding, may not be geniuses, but at least our child still has chances to become better versions of themselves that you would be proud of whenever you think about them.

However, for your child to turn out like that, you should set yourself as a disciplined and standard example.

You also do not need to apply your authority to your behaviours.

Just be you with all the gentleness, understanding, calmness and love, and soon your child will have a wonderful life.

Please, show – don’t tell.

Much love,
Truly Inspired