We’re all searching for home

Remember, at some point someone also looked at you in your childhood and thought, “Damn, is this what the future looks like for humanity?”

Our children have the best of us and the worst of us, and somewhere between those ends they form their own unique character.

If you hope to understand them, you need to begin by understanding yourself.

The same way that you didn’t raise yourself, neither did they.

Therefore, when looking for answers about their behaviour, there is no reason to look any further than the people who have the greatest influence in their lives, their parents, or those fulfilling such parental roles.

And if you’re a single parent, don’t assume that absent parents don’t hold such influence.

Often, they hold more influence than the one who stuck around.

Dealing with the influence of a problematic parent who is present is easier than figuring out the impact of the parent who is absent.

Either way, understanding is more important than judging.

Children behave badly when they struggle to find an emotionally safe space for themselves in this world.

Understanding how this manifests in their behaviour is the secret to raising an adult with a healthy self-esteem, or a troubled child in an adult’s body with adult privilege.

And don’t forget that you’re raising an adult, not a child.

So speak to the human behind that bad behaviour and don’t only focus on correcting, through discipline and consequence management, the bad behaviour.

If you only focus on discipline, you’ll lose the human and repeat the cycle of the problematic parent who themselves also continue to struggle for their place in this world.

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