Long-Term Parenting: 7 Qualities To Focus On Raising Adults
I am barely over 5 years into parenting. My husband and I discussed parenting a lot before even deciding to have kids. We decided we wanted to use a long-term parenting style in conjunction with a short-term parenting style. I’ll discuss each style more in this post and why we chose a long-term parenting focus.
What is short-term vs. long-term parenting?
Short-term parenting
*There isn’t anything wrong with this approach. It’s about what mentality and style help you best parent your child. As a parent, you know what’s best for your child and what works.*
Short-term parents approach parenting as raising kids. This is a parenting style that is hyper-focused on the here and now. These parents react to a kid’s behavior at the moment to solve immediate problems. Once the behavior is corrected, everyone moves on with their day. There is no revisiting of the behavior later.
Short-term parents tend to do whatever they need to fix their kid’s behavior in the current circumstances. They work to stop a tantrum, they put their children in time out, they might give an immediate natural consequence. They are seeking to immediately stop the behavior. Again, it’s valid to parent in this way.
Long-term parenting
I focus my mind on long-term parenting in conjunction with short-term parenting. I see it as an extra step to work with my kids on characteristics I want to reinforce in the long run with them instead of ending teaching once the immediate behavior is resolved.
Long-term parenting decisions are with the mentality of raising adults. I look for every opportunity to reinforce a long-term parenting goal for my kids. Problems aren’t something solved based on a single behavior.
It’s less about looking to correct kids’ behavior in the moment. This kind of parenting is more focused on seeking to understand their underlying needs and giving them the proper tools to handle themselves on their own as they get older.
A small insight into my personal parenting
One of my parenting goals is for my kids to act with respect when they leave my house. This being said, I don’t discipline my kids with fear. I do not spank, and I try my best not to yell.
Instead, I try to empathize and model how to handle situations. I am parenting with the understanding that my kids will not be with me forever, and it’s important that I give them the skills they need when they aren’t living in my house anymore.
I don’t want my kids to need me for everything when they leave my house. If they can go on to make their own decisions and solve their own problems as they arise, I think I will have succeeded at my long-term parenting goal. My main parenting goal is to raise adults who add to and do not take away from their communities. My kids can decide whatever way they’d like to fulfill their dreams and aspirations.
How do you implement long-term parenting?
Now that you have an understanding of these parenting styles, you might be looking to begin a long-term parenting style as far as raising your kids to be good adults. I’ll help you to break down how to do this next. I’m also providing a worksheet you can print and fill out to keep handy.
List qualities you want your kids to have as adults
The first step of switching a parenting style is to sit down and ask a lot of questions. You should think about why you are changing your parenting so that you feel more confident going into it.
- Why do I want to change parenting styles?
- What do I want to get out of this?
- Will this be beneficial for my family in the long run?
Once you’re sure that this is a good fit for you and your family, it’s time to think up some characteristics that are important and that you value. Ask yourself (and your co-parent if there is one) questions to help identify which qualities are most important to foster as your kids are growing up.
- What kind of traits do I want my kids to have as they grow up?
- Do I want them to respect authority (with or without question)?
- Do I want them to be punctual?
- What traits do I NOT want my kids to have?
- If I had to rank these, which would be my top 3, 5, or 10?
Really spend time thinking about this. I wrote all the characteristics I’d like to build up in my kiddos before adulthood so that I can refer back to it often as a guide.
I’ve made this planning process easy for you with a free PDF for your long-term parenting plan. Just sign up to the newsletter and you’ll get access to an entire library of free resources.
Teach and parent with those characteristics in mind
I discipline my kids based on the underlying characteristics I am trying to help them understand and pick up on.
In any given situation, I assess what is motivating their behavior. Then I relate it back to a quality I am trying to build in them as a teaching and redirecting moment.
If I can make these characteristics solid and natural before they leave my house, I can only hope they’ll continue on when I’m not there to help them.
This might be sounding all well and good to you so far. However, this is all just words so far. How does long-term parenting look in action?
A few examples to help you understand better:
Behavior: hitting
Short-term parenting: stop the hitting
Long-term parenting: teach about kindness, emotional regulation and respecting others’ bodies
If one of my kiddos hits their sibling, I talk to them about how we will be kind. We talk about how to handle frustration with our words. We talk about how our emotions are okay and normal, but our behavior has to respect ourselves and other peoples’ bodies.
Behavior: tantrum
Short-term parenting: tell the child to stop/time out
Long-term parenting: talk through appropriate ways to express frustration
If my child throws a tantrum about a movie I choose, I talk to them about how not every decision in life will be theirs to make. Sometimes other people get what they want, and sometimes you get what you want. That is perfectly okay.
There are a lot of concepts that we work with our kids on that I’m sure a lot of parents do as well. We focus on our children being kind, selfless, having manners, getting along with others, etc. I’d like to talk about a few characteristics that I work on with my kiddos that might not be as obvious.
7 qualities for long-term parenting to help you start
If you’re still a little lost on what kind of qualities to include in your parenting plan, let me help you out with some ideas. Here is a few characteristics I am doing my best to prepare my children for the future in my own household:
1. Conflict Resolution/Collaboration
Authority looks a little different for our family than some other households. We have more of a collaborative household than a hierarchical one. My husband and I are still the authority figures. We have the final word and the kids are learning to respect that.
Even so, our kids are welcome to petition and collaborate on any rule. They are allowed to pitch ideas for conflicts. My husband and I listen to these petitions and give them as much consideration as we can. If possible, we usually allow these compromises.
I refuse to let my kids grow up in an environment where their ideas and voices are not heard. I do not want my kids to feel unsafe or scared to give their opinions. My kids need to understand that their opinions and feelings are valid, even if they aren’t adults.
I want my kids to grow up as collaborators who can find a solution that makes both parties happy. That quality is more important to me than always deciding the rules for them, just for the sake of them obeying at all times.
Obedience is important. Sometimes they have to follow a rule no matter what, no compromise. In general though, this household collaborates.
2. Empathy
I think empathy is one of the most important skills to have. The ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and attempt to understand them is priceless. We talk through empathy a lot whenever an opportunity arises.
When we watch a movie, sometimes I’ll ask, “How do you think that character feels right now?”
We read a lot of books because peering into a character’s mind in a book can reinforce the idea of peering into someone else’s perspective and listening to how someone else might process a situation or make different decisions than they would.
We also talk a lot about empathy when disciplining. “How do you think it made your sibling feel when…”
3. Emotional Regulation
I’m making a huge effort to teach my kids as much as I can about their mental health. Part of that means recognizing when they’re feeling something, and dealing with it appropriately. There’s quite a few ways I have implemented this in my house.
Pinterst is an invaluable resource to me. There are so many amazing ideas to sort through for just about anything you want an answer to. There’s a few calming techniques I try with my kiddos that I have found through Pinterest.
The Calm Corner talks about 5 Finger Breathing
The Darling Steps has an amazing post breaking down everything about Calming Corners
I took from a lot of different calming corner posts on Pinterest and added a Calming Tent in our living room. It’s available for the kids to use whenever they’re having a big emotion. I want them to be able to recognize when they’re getting emotionally dysregulated. I want them to take an initiative to self-regulate when they recognize the signs of being overwhelmed. The Calming Tent helps them practice these skills.
I also use a lot of movement for my boys. It’s proven that hanging upside down or exercising and moving your body is an effective way to regulate emotions. We love Cosmic Kids Yoga. Our favorite Cosmic Kids videos are the Super Yoga series. The boys run in circles around the house. We crawl on pillows lined up on the floor. We throw stuffed animals into baskets or boxes.
When the weather is nice, we go out to the park (pre-covid). Our backyard is a great size to run and play in. We have bikes and chalk, balls, and a teeter-totter. Movement is extremely important for brain development, and for emotional regulation.
Edutopia has a great article talking about movement and brain development/learning.
4. Patience
I probably spend at least 30% of my day saying: “Be patient;” “Patience please;” “You’ll need to wait for this to happen, before we can do that;” etc. I find patience to be one of the hardest concepts for toddlers to understand.
I find talking through things that I have to wait for can model the concept well. Kids are fantastic at picking up behavior that is modeled in front of them. Especially the worst behaviors. I’m sure I’m not the only parent that discovered every short coming of mine as the result of watching my kids act out in the way I do sometimes. How’s that for self awareness?
5. Respecting Boundaries
Boundaries are something that not many people are taught explicitly. You grow up with these unwritten rules that you’re supposed to just pick up and understand. I want my kids to learn things that are their responsibility and under their own control. On the other hand, I want them to understand what is not in their control and their responsibility.
I teach my kids that they are responsible for their own actions. They are responsible for how they react to a situation or another person. My kids are NOT responsible for someone else’s actions. I will teach them they are also NOT responsible for how someone responds to their actions or boundaries. They are NOT responsible for other people’s emotions.
6. Respecting household objects
We work a lot with “do-overs.” My kids will throw objects. I’ll then have them get the object and put it in its home nicely. A child might shut a door hard. I’ll ask them to shut it nicely 10 times before we can move on and do anything else to practice how to treat a door.
We have to constantly remind the kids that some things will stay broken forever if you mistreat them. Therefore, it is really important to respect household objects. We need to take care of the things that we own.
7. Decision-making
Once my friends and I became adults, I noticed that decision-making is not innate. It’s a learned behavior. Some people I knew were incapable of making a decision because it had always been made for them. I want my kids to grow up understanding that it’s okay to be decisive.
The way life works, there are a lot of decisions you need to make all the time. Most of the decisions you make day to day have many acceptable possibilities. This stresses people out because there’s this stigma that you have to always make the “right” decisions.
I disagree with this because you have to make some mistakes to learn certain lessons. If you freeze up so scared of making the wrong decisions, you’ll never actually make any progress toward anything.
My kids practice making decisions whenever I can possibly let them. I try to give them choices even when I need them to do something more specific.
For example, whenever I need them to do something quietly, I give them two options that I am okay with. I might ask if they’d like to pick quiet toys in the playroom or choose a puzzle to do. That way they still can make a decision, but it’s also guaranteed that I’m okay with the decision.
Decision-making is also shown through our child-led unschool preschool. Read here if you’re curious how child-led learning looks in our house.
Parenting is a marathon, not a sprint
I hope you have some ideas now about the kinds of qualities you can strive to instill in your kids as they grow up. If you are long-term parenting, or if you want to start and have questions, reach out! I do not claim to be an expert, but I will absolutely do what I can to support you.
Remember parenting a long and hard journey. Give yourself a participation trophy for showing up for your kids and even taking some time to think about parenting strategies today. There isn’t always external evidence to show that your kids are learning and becoming who they are. Make sure you are modeling along the way. Modeling behavior is one of the biggest ways kiddos learn.
Refer back to your parenting goals often
Take that parenting worksheet you filled out and place it somewhere you can look back on it often. Life gets hectic and busy. It’s easy to lose sight of the goals you set. Referring back to the characteristics you’ve picked to focus on with your children will help you reorient yourself.
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Good luck, I know you got this
If you’re struggling as a stay-at-home parent with a chronic illness, I have some tips for you here.
Reach out to me anywhere if you have questions. We can support each other on this journey. Parenting is difficult and rewarding at the same time. It helps to talk to others who are going through it.
Am I missing any major characteristics that are important to you and your family? What does your style of parenting look like? If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I love talking about all things parenting all the time. Let’s have a collaborative and constructive discussion.
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