As a parent you long to be respected by your kids. And you want to be proud of their respectful behaviour when you are out and about. Right?
I know I do.
How do we raise respectful kids though?
Respect isn’t like some of the other things we teach our kids.
It’s not something we can tell our kids how to do. The only way to teach this virtue is to show.
When we parent respectfully, our kids will grow with a solid foundation of knowing what respect looks like, how important it is, and subsequently how to respect others (including us!).
As parents, we are the authority figure in the relationship – our role involves providing, nurturing, training and protecting our kids – it is a mammoth responsibility. Respecting our children doesn’t in any way mean handing over our position to our kids and giving them the lead in our home – in fact, that would be an unloving thing to do!
So what does parenting your child respectfully mean? What does it look like?
Let’s jump in and consider the following areas where we parents get the opportunity to model respect for our children. And together we’ll develop the healthy habit of respecting our kids on a daily basis in simple and practical ways, so they learn to be respectful towards us.