I once blogged about the importance of parental influence and mentioned five things that can increase it. In the previous four posts–and this one–I elaborate on what I call the Five Optimizers of Influence. While nothing guarantees that our kids will make wise choices, my 31 years of youth ministry taught me that parents who become proficient in these five areas will have maximum impact on their kids.
5. Emancipate strategically.
At first glance, the thought of “kicking the kids out of the home” might seem antithetical to parents having a positive influence on them, but I contend that this is one of the most important components of influence.
When we strategically parent our kids with their eventual independence as our goal they will be much better equipped to manage their own lives wisely. That, after all, is the goal of our influence. As I say quite often, our aim should be to raise adults, not kids. And let’s aim for well-prepared adults!
Much of what I blog about relates to this, so I’ll let those posts speak for themselves.
Strategically emancipating our kids can involve the following:
- Decreasing parental control
- Giving kids increasing levels of responsibility as they age, including chores, and managing their own homework, diet, and sleep
- Teaching them to manage their own money by giving them hefty allowances
- Making them purchase their own car
- Making them clean up their own messes
- Trusting their ability to solve their own problems
- Allowing them to fail (actually loving it when they fail!) so they learn from their failures
- Teaching them life skills so they can thrive without us and even surpass us!
- Working ourselves out of a job, accepting empty nester-hood
Thank for reading these five posts on Optimizing our Influence. I hope you found some of the concepts helpful.
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