When I first started having kids, I thought I knew a lot more than I really did about training them. Because I was a babysitter in my teenage years, I figured that I “had this thing down.”
Nothing could have been further from the truth!
In fact, I think I struggled more because I thought I was better equipped that I really was. It left me to wonder why on earth raising kids was so hard and what in the world I was doing wrong.
Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever felt at such a loss for how to handle certain behaviors from your own children that you just want to cry, or even give up? Trust me when I say that I’ve totally been there. And at one point, I’d even wondered if it was just going to always be hard, like I’d seen in other families.
Thankfully, through prayer and seeking for help, I learned some child training “secrets” that really work. And they’re not really secrets, but they were secrets to me because I was blind to them. And as I’ve continued to seek and study over the years, it’s become clearer and clearer to me what works and what doesn’t.
I desire to send well-trained adults into the world when it’s time for my kids to leave my home. I want them to have a solid foundation of the knowledge of God, have a relationship with Him, have well-honed relational skills, and possess many other skills essential to life. However, I know that I can’t force these things upon them, and neither can I be passive and leave teaching and training to chance. To successfully transfer these things to my children, I need to conduct myself in a particular way as I relate to them that will make these things transferable.
If you feel like you’re struggling with how to train your children, here are six essential components you need to maximize your desired outcome.
1. Positivity
When I first started trying to train my kids, I had the whole “you’re gonna learn to listen to me, kid” mentality. I kind of think of it now as bully-parenting. My child would refuse to do something, and I would get all up in arms because, you know, I’m the authority figure here.
I heard a lot about positive parenting, but deep inside I was hesitant about it because I felt that it was giving in to the selfish nature of the child. I didn’t understand how it worked, and I totally didn’t agree with trying to “coax” children into obedience. Children needed to learn to obey, period. Right?
However, after trying to “make” my own kids obey, I quickly realized that while I might succeed in gaining outward obedience, I will never actually get to their hearts. And that’s what I really wanted.
I was able to see that my overall approach toward my kids was a negative one. I was critical and sometimes even adversarial toward them, and I could tell it wasn’t working. So I finally tried the positive thing.
What I’ve discovered about positivity is that it comes from a perspective that you are for your kids, not against them. Kids are born with a nature that is not influenced by godliness, so it’s completely governed by selfish wants and needs. You have to understand that, accept that, and even as you’re training or disciplining them, your positivity helps them to see that it’s not the end of the world for them. You’re still in it with them, and you’ll never reject them. I personally also believe that it helps them to avoid growing up with condemning and guilty mentalities!
Tip: Take a moment to remind yourself that you’re for your kids and not against them. You are in their corner, even if they act crazy.
Read: Understand Your Child’s Nature (and Preserve Your Sanity)
Read: Why Do We Discipline Our Kids?
2. Encouragement
When you’re training your kids to do things, I’ve discovered that it’s extremely important to encourage the good that you see. To encourage literally means to give courage to someone and to increase their confidence of success (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary).
When your kids make even the smallest efforts toward doing right, encourage them! I believe we all thrive in an encouraging atmosphere. It’s a safe place to be vulnerable and be able to make mistakes in the growing process.
I encourage you to look for the good that your children are doing. It’s my personal theory that whatever you encourage will grow, and if you only look at the negative that your kids are doing, they will only see negative in themselves.
If you feel like you really struggle with this, I suggest you grab a copy of Grace-Based Parenting to develop a healthy perspective on child training. It’s one of my all-time favorite parenting books, and I have no doubt it will be one of yours as well!
Tip: Make an effort to see the good that your kids are doing. Smile and compliment them for it. Encouragement in any relationship strengthens relational bonds!
3. Consistency
I think consistency is probably the hardest aspect of training for us 21st-century parents. Consistency requires us to not be distracted. In order for our kids to be well trained, we need to make sure things are the same, every time.
I think it’s confusing to our kids if we correct them once for something and then the next time we let it go. If we are going to require first time obedience once, we need to require it every single time.
I’ve personally seen that a lack of consistency applied when training kids will make for results that you don’t want. If you require first time obedience from your kids (which you should), then you’re gonna want to be consistent with that. To require it sometimes and not others does not produce the results you’re looking for. But if you are consistent, then after a while, your consistency pays off! Your child has been conditioned to do what you’ve trained him or her to do.
Tip: If this is something you feel like you’ve really struggled with, then I suggest choosing one thing you want to be consistent in and start training that. I highly suggest you start with training your kids to obey the first time, since this covers many other areas 🙂
4. Diligence
There’s nothing quite like having kids that reveals your own level of selfishness (amen?). Prior to my first daughter being born, I was used to going about my own life and pretty much thinking only about all the things I needed or wanted to do. However, when I had her, I was thrown into a new way of living, where I had to consider her needs at all times before my own.
As she got older, I realized that if I wasn’t diligent in training her, she would never fully learn anything. But to be honest, I would quite often find myself getting distracted or just not caring enough to see her training through.
The Bible says that “he who withholds the rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently” (Proverbs 13:24). To be diligent means to give a constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken. A diligent parent is attentive and aware of what needs to be done.
What does diligence look like in an everyday setting? To me, it’s similar to being consistent, but different enough to have its own category. Consistency is to train the same thing repeatedly, while diligence is to make sure it’s done thoroughly. So let me take first time obedience for instance. It’s good for me to catch every instance of disobedience everyday (consistency). But I also need to take the time to require that they thoroughly change their actions and attitudes (diligence) with demonstration and do-overs.
5. Demonstration and Do-Overs
I went ahead and put these two together because they’re very much related. Since I’m also a volleyball coach, I really understand the importance of demonstration and do-overs as it relates to training. When I’m running drills with my team and my athletes are struggling to complete a drill correctly, we do it over and over again until they get it.
So what it looks like is this: I’ll actually show my athletes the correct technique or way of doing something, and run the drill for a good while so that they can practice it. And with my kids, I will actually show them exactly what to do or say and then have them do the action over.
Scenario:
My children are fighting because one of them took the other one’s doll without asking. The child whom the doll belongs to is screaming and crying, and the other child is sitting there playing with it. So I’ll come in and say something like this:
Me: Anna, did you take her doll? (Child nods.)
Anna: But I wanted it!
Me: Ok, so here’s what you need to do: Say, “Elizabeth, can I please play with your doll?” And if she says yes, then you get to play with it. But if she says no, then you can ask her if you can play with it after she’s finished. Then find another toy you can play with until then. Now let’s try this again…(I then tell her to give the doll back and have them re-do the whole situation).
I’m not even going to pretend that this doesn’t take patience. But I’ve personally seen that when I demonstrate for my kids and have them do the action over, they actually have something to work with. And what’s really cool is that I’ll very often overhear them using these things when I’m not present!
6. Connectedness
Lastly, but most importantly, we can’t train from a distance. We have to be connected to our kids in order to successfully train them. Otherwise, we are just temporarily modifying their behavior while their hearts may be raging against us!
One of the biggest things that’s been obvious to me this year is that you can’t train a child from a distance. You must be connected and present in their everyday life. You must do what you can to build strong relational bridges with them, and this actually makes training easier.
Read: 3 Ways to Connect With Your Kids in the Morning
I’m actually going to be writing an entire post on connecting, so stay tuned for that!
Tip: If you feel like your relationship with your kids is strained, make it your focus to connect with your kids for as long as it takes to mend the relational bonds again. This might mean canceling personal commitments and putting personal limits on the time you spend on the internet and phone for the sake of connecting. It’s worth it, and successful training depends on it!
Related Posts:
12 Things to Train Your Toddler to Do Starting Today
Train Your Kids to Obey the First Time
Training vs. Controlling: How to Tell the Difference
Two Things Every Parent Needs to Know About Raising a Child