How to Build Your Family’s Lifeboats to Ensure Harmony with Children

I was at a gathering of like-minded people last Sunday who focus on creating world peace.

You may be thinking, “What can I do? It’s such a mess right now.”

What I continue to return to is the belief that world peace begins in each of our homes—and that starts with family harmony with children.

How do you respond to this statement? Are you nodding in agreement? Would you agree that if we can’t get along with those whom we love, then how do we get along with those we are strangers with?

Let’s start with creating greater peace in each of our families because that is where we can make positive changes.

Building Family Harmony with Children at Home

This was my foundational value while successfully raising my daughter and I continue to use this approach in my long-time marriage. I realized on Sunday that I need to focus more on how to build your solid foundation of harmony in your home, too.

My past classes were designed primarily to teach you the effective skills to solve your challenges and thus reduce conflict. You learned how to transform your child’s visible negative behaviors through effective parenting strategies. You were learning how to avoid and transform the visible part of an iceberg.

Let’s look at why an iceberg is so dangerous. The massive ship Titanic sank because the hidden iceberg below the waterline tore open the hull between five of the adjacent watertight compartments. If the iceberg had damaged one or two of the compartments, then the boat would have stayed afloat and the people would have survived.

Understanding the Root of Family Harmony with Children

Let’s use this analogy to discuss your family harmony with children situation now. Would you say that only one or two compartments are damaged or four or five? Is your boat sinking because you don’t have enough lifeboats? The lack of lifeboats is why the passengers ended up dying in the 28-degree F freezing water in the North Atlantic Ocean. Brrrr..

Pardon me for being a bit dramatic! I’m passionate about creating greater harmony in your home so your children feel safe, comforted and have a solid base for handling life’s challenges. 

The Family Harmony Formula for Real Change

You might be feeling that your family is sinking and I want to help you create the lifeboats that you need. To permanently transform your challenges, it’s important to look below the exposed portion of the  “iceberg” and understand the thoughts, beliefs, and actions hidden underneath.

I believe that the world is in such turmoil now, that I must guide you to a deeper understanding of how to create peace and harmony in your home. I have developed this understanding, lilved it,  and taught it successfully for over 40 years. (Thus, the wisdom of being 70!) and put it together into my Family Harmony Formula.

I’m thinking about all of the challenges I hear about from you:

• Disrespectful behavior
• On social media or gaming too much
• Discouraged and anxious
• Not doing schoolwork
• Arguing with every request
• Won’t help out with chores
• Won’t share what’s going on.

Plus much more….

Going deeper to build a solid foundation for creating harmony in your home starts with understanding the causes of the struggles and how to approach them so that permanent change happens.

Rather than looking at the tip of the iceberg, I want to show you the entire iceberg so you understand the underlying causes and can create the lifeboats that will ensure that your family won’t sink under any challenge you encounter.

Key Skills to Improve Family Harmony with Children

Guiding your children so they develop confidence will give them the life jackets to keep them afloat. There are two main experiences they need from you.

1.  Experience clear and respectful directions from you.

When you know how to direct children of all ages in this manner, they are more likely to cooperate. When children cooperate you feel better about them and they feel better about themselves.

Children want to cooperate. They want you to know how to direct them to meet their goals positively. They want you to feel good about them and they want to feel good about themselves. When children “misbehave” and you get upset with them, they don’t want this negative response from you. They just can’t figure out how to respond positively.

When they learn how to cooperate, they gain confidence in themselves. The definition of confidence is: a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.

Building Confidence Through Structure and Action

Even when kids don’t want to clear the table, put away their clothes, or walk the dog, when you set up clear and respectful directions that they follow, they feel good about themselves. They feel good about having contributed to the family.

Giving in to please children when they argue isn’t good for them. They may feel powerful that they have won yet they won’t gain confidence that they can do things they don’t want to do. We aren’t here to please children. We are here to show them how to develop and wear their life jackets so they can survive any challenge they encounter.

Let’s continue with the second, and just as important, experience children need to develop their self-confidence.

2.  Many problem-solving opportunities

When children are very young, parents have to make all the decisions to keep them safe. This role of being the constant “safety monitor” is difficult to shift. Unless we do, however, parents won’t allow children the necessary opportunities to practice decision-making.

If children don’t practice decision-making in a safe environment with your loving support when they fail, several negative results can occur.

• Can become too timid to try new things for fear of failure.
• Won’t have practice in handling disappointment.
• Won’t know how to use struggle as an opportunity for growth.
• Won’t have an amazing boost in self-esteem when they make a difficult decision and feel good about themselves.
• Will feel weak and possibly anxious into adulthood because they don’t have confidence that they can handle whatever challenge comes up.

I hope from this short list, you realize how essential it is for children to develop their prefrontal cortex by having many opportunities to make little and big decisions.

Empowering Your Child’s Future Through Decision-Making

In my ongoing bonus workshop, 5 Steps to Family Harmony, I’m going to discuss The Confident Child Formula. You’ll learn the characteristics of the child in each quadrant based on whether they seldom or often receive Problem-Solving Opportunities and Respectful Directions.

How would you label each box based on your experience with your children?

Giving your children opportunities to experience life and make decisions without rescuing them, is one of the most important jobs of a parent. This is how you are giving them a lifejacket and a lifeboat, too. Your job isn’t to “keep them safe at all costs.” I believe it’s to guide them so they feel confident in their ability to keep themselves safe when you are not around and when they are launched into adulthood.

Here are the quadrants filled in. Is it close to what you thought? I invite you to go to my website to find out when the next 5 Steps to Family Harmony workshop is being presented. I’d love to have you attend.

Happy parenting!

Cynthia

Check out my new bonus parenting class, 5 Steps to Family Harmony for parents of children 9 to 15 years old.  To find the date and time of the next workshop, visit the classes page.

Cynthia is available for private coaching sessions, so you can quickly get the answers you need and make those much-needed changes right away. Click HERE for a complimentary 45-minute Fast-Track Clarity Session to learn what you can do now to create more harmony in your home.

Learn about how you can solve your parenting challenges at your own pace with the Win, Win, Win Parenting Program.