Parental Expectations
What Are Parental Expectations?
What I mean by this is when parents have an expectation that their children should just listen to them, just because they said so.
I want you to try to remember one thing that I’ve learned in my 20 plus years in the field. If a parent says, “I want my kids to do whatever I say, because I’m their parent, and they should listen to me”, the parent is likely to hold out for a very high expectation for their child.
Why Certain Parent Expectations Don’t Work
They won’t be happy getting smaller versions of that expectation, and will not find themselves in a position where they can reinforce the expectation making it more likely to continue.
Then they probably won’t offer their child positive benefits when they do see the behavior they want, because they feel the child should be doing it. Without benefit, there’s little reason for the child to continue meeting this expectation.
The Harm that Some Parental Expectations Cause
When parents don’t get what they want, they will likely begin to become upset. Maybe that means yelling, and nagging and or pushing their child for their lack of respect and cooperation. This sort of interaction is likely to lead to a widening relationship gap between parent and child, and is not likely to lead either to get what they want out of their relationship.
How to Change Your Parental Expectations
What if this parent can see the child choosing and wanting to listen to them as a long term goal instead of an immediate goal? And then they were to implement individual steps designed to get them to this goal, taking all the progress they can earn along the way and finding ways to show the child that this cooperation and engagement is worth doing by reinforcing it.
Then this parent wouldn’t be unhappy anymore, because they would be actually making progress on their goal. They wouldn’t need to yell or nag or to get cooperation, and they wouldn’t need to punish their child.
In fact, they would be spending a majority of their time building their relationship. Parents would be happily getting and reinforcing the best versions of the behavior they can get now, all with the knowledge that they have a path to progress that will lead them to their long term goal.
How to Make Progress Toward Your Goals with Your Child
This is what I want for you. I want you to see your goals as achievable. And I want you to see the path to get there. I want you to meet your child where they are currently. Begin to show them, you respect them for who they are currently. Then start to put into place the seven steps to instructional motivation, so that you can get more and more of what you need from them while gaining and maintaining their respect as well.
Revolutionize the Relationship You Have with Your Child
This is exactly what the Just 7 Steps program will do for you. If you’d like to get more information on how you can use the important parenting principles of the Just 7 Steps approach to completely revolutionize the relationship you have with your child, you can start by checking out my free workshop called, How to get your kids to listen without raising your voice or nagging. You can schedule to participate right now by clicking here. It’s absolutely free and filled with the important information that will help you meet your goals while building reasonable expectations that can grow with you as you learn how to benefit from Just 7 Steps.
