Leadership Parenting

Parenting is all about leadership. Children idealize their parents thinking everything they do is “normal” and that what they do it’s how things should be done. What happens when parents don’t practice values?

Leadership and Values

Been a parent involves you in practicing values. The most important of them is respect. Once you practiced respect, you would practice love, tolerance, and the list goes on. Respect is something you win by respecting others. If you show respect to your partner, mother, friends, and extended family, you would never have to struggle telling your child how to behave. Using right words, communicating in a healthy way, and serving others it’s how you teach your child to be a leader.

Leaders vs. Despots

A leader is a person who takes people where they never thought they could ever get. How do you that? By listening and compromising with the ideals of each person in order to accomplish together the ideal of a group. Instead, a despot makes people do what she/he wants them to do by ordering and by using fear as a way to make people work.

I’ll take an example from modern history: Nelson Mandela is a man that still today people feel attracted to, respect his name, admire his life, and follow him. He moves masses because of his commitment to his people and his country, because of his values, because he served his nation by fighting for the rights of his people. At his age and with no governmental charge, he’s still a leader. For the contrary, despots’ tyranny lasts for a short time.  Their lack of values makes people unhappy. Having people against you is usually what makes despots fall.

Think about how you are parenting and what do you want for your child. Authoritarian parenting usually leads to rebellion or/and insecure children. Passive parenting leads to children that do not practice values. Parenting should be balanced and should start by trusting yourself and your partner as a parent.

Trust, the Secret of Leadership

Practicing values will lead you to trust. Trusting your child to take the lead but knowing you’re there for him is the way you form a leader. A leader doesn’t take charge; he delegates and trusts the people around him/her. Trusting others is part of commitment. If there’s trust, strong relationships follow. If people trust you they follow you.

The question is: Do your children trust you?

Trust begins with protection. When your child feels protected, he/she will trust you. He/she knows, even as a baby, that you are always there. That’s why the attachment parenting approach is basic to form leaders. Values of taking care of others, sharing, and trusting come from the moment a baby is born. Once you’ve created a strong bonding, your child’s will extrapolate this bonding with others. Reading feelings, practicing values, and leadership are part of the “Emotional Intelligence”. Been caregivers instead of trainers will provide your children with the tools they need in life to be able to succeed as adults.

This video explains exactly how important is to practice values as parents...

Your Kids Are What You Eat

As parents we are responsible of the well-being and health of our children. Healthy habits should be part of our life, since “we are what we eat”.

 Human beings, as mammals that we are, need learned skills to be able to survive, so usually our best way to learn is to “copy” what we see. This in the Behavioral Psychology  is called “modeling”.  Understanding this concept can help us think about our own eating habits in order to improve our lives and our children’s.

Eating Habits Before, During, and After Pregnancy

Eating balanced and regular exercise (prescribed since we all have different health conditions) should be part of our lives at all times. Before getting pregnant, women should be in a right weight and corporal mass. They should have a rich diet in B complex vitamins, folic acid, iron, and calcium that are found in most green vegetables, beans, nuts, and eggs. If you smoke or do any drug (alcohol included) and want to be a mommy, try to leave behind bad habits at least a year before. Cleansing your system is the right way to start the beautiful journey of bringing life into this world. In fact, it will help you get pregnant a little bit easier (if you or your partner have no conceiving problems).  

When pregnant, women need to listen to their bodies. Try always to eat as healthy as you can, but always paying attention to your body’s need. Your body is taking nutrients from your metabolism which will make you feel more tire and hungry. Eat when hungry, drink when thirsty. Again vitamin B and folic acid are two important elements in a pregnant women’s diet. In this stage, your baby takes the food directly from the blood torrent, which makes him vulnerable to anything you put into your body.

After baby is born, good eating habits don’t stop. Breastfeeding will not only help you lose all the “healthy” baby weight, but it will help you be conscious of what you put into that mouth of yours. Your baby is a constant reminder of how good you should eat. Knowing that your child eats directly from you makes you responsible for giving him high quality nutrition.

How to be a Healthy Model

Families can spend time together outdoors. Exercise can be difficult for the timing it involves, but to going out with your kids, running, and playing are types of exercise. Keep yourself active and kids will get active too.

Have fun making meals. Think how you as a child would like your meals to be presented to you. Veggie monsters, happy face fruits, crazy egg heads, and many other great ideas you can find online can make a meal into a fun eat for your kid. Make sure your child’s plate is full of color. Make sure your entire family’s plates (including yours) have bright colors.

It’s never too late to start a positive change in your lifestyle. Make sure to be a “healthy model” for your family to follow.

Listening to your Child

Communication involves more than just been part of a dialogue. It involves our senses to be alert to be able to have a feedback on what someone is trying to say. Today’s life has lots of distractions that tempt our senses to focus their attention on, living us with less perception. The lack of perception is what breaks that flowing communication with our friends, partners, and even our children.

Understanding Children's Language

Today’s way of life is quite stimulating for our senses. Noise pollution, air pollution, marketing pollution, smartphones, and technologies are some of the causes of the poor ability we have to “read” others. I will never forget what an old lady at a seminar I went said: “If we don’t listen to ourselves, how can we listen to our children?”

Listening to Yourself

As many self-esteem books say, first love yourself in order to love others; the first thing we need to do is to listen to our inner voice. Mother Nature provided women with instincts in order to provide protection to the next generation. Those instincts are usually suppressed from the beginning when people tell you not to hold your baby when crying. If you trust yourself then you’ll listen. Sometimes is hard to go against the world, but something marvelous happen when you become a mother; you can go against anything to protect your child.

Listening and trusting yourself will open the possibility to listen and read your child. There’s a constant communication mother-son/daughter that needs to flow naturally.

Listening to Baby’s Cues

The first month of life as a baby and a mother is quite hectic. You are going to get to know your child, and he will get to know the world he was brought in to. The only language he speaks is “cry”. Understanding those cries is an art that needs to be mastered by the mother. The only way to do that is to get in contact with your baby’s needs. Remember baby’s needs are food, protection, warmth, and hygiene. The more time you spend with your baby and attend his cries, the more you’ll understand his language. If you really pay attention you’re going to be able to decode what your baby wants. This ability appears only with practice and by listening to your inner voice.  

Understanding a Toddler

When babies grow, their language skills start to come out and little by little it’s easier for the child to say what he wants. But sometimes our child doesn’t have the language skills to communicate certain feelings and thoughts. As a parent we need to listen to those needs. The only way is to get to learn our child’s body language. Their posture, face expression, hands, every single part of the body screams what the child is feeling.

Listening Makes Discipline Easier

Understanding your child will give you tools on how to handle him. We all are born with personalities that are going to be molded by the social interaction that our children are going to have in the future. Knowing your child’s reactions to situations, people, or things can guide you on what to do or not to do with him.

Never let anyone interfere between the flowing connection between you and your child. Showing your child how you can “read” him is a fantastic tool you are teaching him. Today’s successful people are the ones with more social skills. Let your child be a future leader that listens to people. Be a listening model to your child by listening to him and to yourself.