We can’t be there 24/7 to protect our children from every bad thing that can happen to them.  And even if we could, it would be bad for them because they wouldn’t learn how to protect themselves.  What we should strive for is giving kids the skills and confidence to avoid and extricate themselves from dangerous situations.

Good parenting skills includes not doing certain things for our kids that they can do for themselves.  For example, your three year old might take 15 minutes to dress themselves and it would only take you three minutes.  However, it’s generally better to let them figure it out themselves and gain self-confidence that they can do things themselves. This doesn’t mean never doing anything for your kids. However, you can evaluate which things you really should have your children do for themselves to teach them to be strong individuals.

Helping Kids Gain Confidence

I try to be aware of what parenting skills I’m using and what my son gains from them. Subsequently, when my son was nine, I would do things like send him inside the gas station to buy snacks while I pumped the gas.  I made sure he had enough money so there wouldn’t be a problem with the clerk if he was short on money.  Because of this, he gained experience doing things by himself and gained confidence interacting with adults. 

Recently, he did the same thing and came back to the car proudly telling me he initiated an interaction with the clerk, saying, “How are you today?”.  The clerk responded kindly and felt more competent in his skills with adults. As a result, later on, he felt confident enough to ask a store clerk where a certain item was located. This was something I probably wouldn’t have been confident to do at his age.

As we parent our children, we often tell our kids not to talk to strangers. If we make them afraid of strangers, they don’t learn to deal with strangers approaching them inappropriately.  What if the stranger is coercing them to do something unsafe?  Will they have enough comfort and confidence to say no and get themselves out of the situation? Or will they freeze? Will they have the confidence to defy a stranger if they’ve had no experience talking to adults?

For more information about parenting strategies, there are some great resources. One of my favorites is Love and Logic which you can find here. If you’d like to get more ideas on parenting strategies, you may want to try parent counseling. See my website for more information.

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The method is simple and is designed for the basic task of getting your child to follow a direction you’ve given them, either to do something or stop doing something. When your child learns to follow your directions without arguing, the rest comes pretty easy.

It’s a simple strategy. All you do is this: Tell your child to do something, or to stop doing something (i.e. stop playing catch with my expensive glass vase). If they comply within about 5 to 10 seconds–great. But if they don’t comply, then you look at them, say “that’s one” in a stern voice while holding up one finger (generally your index finger, not the driving finger). If they comply after this–great. If they don’t comply after about ten seconds, then you hold up two fingers and say, “that’s two”. Again, if they comply–great. If they don’t comply after about ten seconds, then you say, “that’s three; take five”.. This means you got to three and they need to take a five minute time out in their room, or in a quiet corner if you are out in public.

Where most parents fall flat is that they are hoping they won’t get to three so they don’t actually have to put their child in time out. This may be because they don’t want to cause a scene in public. Perhaps they are just too nice and don’t want to punish their kids. So for this to work, you have to have the mindset of wanting to get to three so you can put them in timeout. This helps avoid the common mistake of going, “that’s 1, that’s 2, that’s 2 1/2, 2 3/4…..” and never getting to 3.

If you falter, your child learns they don’t have to listen to you when you count to three. But if you make a point to do the counting, and nothing but counting until either the child complies, or you get to three, they learn quickly that you mean business.

There are a lot of parenting strategies that are easy to use and simple to understand. For the 1-2-3 Magic parenting strategy, there are some other nuances that are helpful to learn, such as what to do once your child is in time out. If you”re interested in learning more, give me a call.

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, counseling for teenagers, and adults.  He provides counseling for anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, and relationship problems.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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