Are You Raising Your Children To Be Leaders with Your Tennessee Parenting Time?

Are parents doing their best to teach important lessons during Tennessee parenting time? Do well-meaning adults behave in ways that interfere with youth leadership development? Are Tennesseans teaching their kids the skills they need to be leaders?

Not every child will seek elected office or run a Fortune 500 company. But most will find themselves in a leadership role at some point in their adult lives, whatever occupation or lifestyle they aspire to enter into (including child-rearing).

During Tennessee parenting time, are you raising your children to be leaders?

Parenting 101: On the Job Training

As all parents learn quickly with their first child, kids do not come with instructions. The demands of raising a family require on the job training. And as soon as spouses think they have a handle on family life with some semblance of control, something upsets the mix (a new baby, teenage hormones, an exceptional child presenting new challenges). The first day at Parenting 101 class should begin with “be flexible because things are going to change.”

But some of the things parents do, however well-intentioned, may be undermining their children’s futures as tomorrow’s leaders.

Damaging Parental Behaviors Stifle Child Leadership

Are parents coddling their kids so they never learn how to accept challenges and strive to overcome adversity?

In a recent Forbes article, contributor Kathy Caprino discussed the child leadership work of Dr. Tim Elmore and his views on several “damaging parenting behaviors that keep children from becoming leaders.”

How Parents Stifle Leadership in Our Next Generation

Here are three ways in which parenting behaviors might convey the wrong message to children:

1. Insulating the child from all risk of harm

Absolute risk avoidance may assuage parental nerves, but it prevents children from learning to manage important situations. Children need to learn cause and effect, that everything a person does has consequences. Insulating a child from every tumble, cut, and bruise can result in a skewed understanding of what can happen in life. And weaken the child’s coping ability when the heavier stuff comes along.

2. Mom and Dad to the rescue

No, we do not like to see our children suffer. But routinely, unnecessarily coming to the child’s rescue so that all suffering is avoided may teach the child to always expect a rescuer. Teaching passivity when action is required. Children learn from experience what actions or inactions may lead to undesirable or unpleasant consequences.

3. Everyone is a winner every time

Even the lottery tells us there can be no losers. (Have a losing ticket? Don’t feel bad, you are not a loser. You simply are “not a winner.”) But in truth, on any given day some people will win a competition and some people will lose. Regardless of whether the event is a school debate, a softball game, or a race to the ice cream truck, it is still a competition with many useful lessons to be learned.

Repeating the “everyone is a winner” mantra during parenting time, when reality begs to differ, steals the glory from the child or team who practiced more often, played better, studied harder, and struggled to achieve. The child who is prevented from suffering a lost competition may never learn the merit of losing gracefully, of giving credit where credit is due, of self-examination and introspection, and the value of strengthening one’s weaknesses.

What do you think?

Are parents so over-protective that they are inadvertently stifling their children’s opportunities for leadership roles in society? Will Tennessee’s children have the leadership skills necessary to raise their own families for the more distant future?

Child Custody and Parenting Time in Memphis TN

Memphis child custody and parenting time attorney, Miles Mason, Sr., practices family law exclusively and is founder of the Miles Mason Family Law Group, PLC. Check out The Tennessee Divorce Client’s Handbook: What Every Divorcing Spouse Needs to Know, available on Amazon and Kindle. To schedule your confidential consultation, call us today at (901) 683-1850.