I have a friend who says this about parenting her strong-willed child, “She has a lot of great qualities. It’s just challenging to parent her.”
I love how she put that for two reasons:
1) She starts with stating the positive about her child and the great qualities she has.
2) She states that the challenge is the action of parenting her…the challenge is not her child.
I think there’s a lot to be said about how we think about and talk about someone. Sometimes the tiniest adjustments can make the biggest difference!
This is very true. My husband and I noticed that our oldest daughter around 3 1/2 4 yrs old, began verbally expressing her thoughts that she was a bad person and that’s why people didn’t like/love her. We reflected on how we and others in our extended family, as well as some friends, were beginning to shape a negative persona of Elizabeth – a very strong willed child. We were concerned that there was sort of a “label” that was getting attached to her and she was taking the negative connotations on as her personal identity. We began to speak differently about her to others, and it has taken a year or so, but I think we have broken that trend. I think she views herself differently and even friends and family members have changed their way of talking to or about her. It is challenging to know how to parent her and get through to her the way we need to so that she will know, love and obey God. And because we love her, we will HOPE ALL THINGS as love does and pray for the wisdom to be the kind of parents we need to be for her.
That’s so neat that you saw that and changed it, Korey!