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Your weekly pānui for tips, tricks, and strategies to deepen your connection with your tween, teen, or adolescent.

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A story that comes to me from my childhood is from my days of being a Girl Guide. We used to collect badges in return for completing requirements that pertained to that badge - all listed in a handbook and accompanied by a tick box and a space for the supervising/certifying adult to sign when you’d met the standard.

A requirement for one of the badges - I’m showing my age here when I say I think it was the ‘Homemaker’ badge - was to run the household for a day.

I remember my brother immediately interpreted this requirement as “Melanie is going to do everything” for the day. Which I did, in return for the badge.

The thing is, his interpretation was incorrect. Just because I was running the household, it didn’t mean I had to do everything.

I remember being exhausted at the end of that day. I’d spent the day cooking, cleaning and running around after everyone else.

At one point Mum did mention that running the household also meant telling other people what to do. But honestly, that seemed harder. Tell my brother what to do? Good girls didn’t do that! I actually had no clue even where to start. It felt easier to me to keep quiet and do the things I’d seen my Mum doing everyday.

Talk about sub conscious programming!

Once I became a parent the routine of ‘doing-everything-because-it-was-easier’ was one I could easily slip into. It took conscious work on my behalf to train myself to let others help, and to teach my kids how to do things.

Learning how to communicate effectively about routines, standards and expectations was hard. Thankfully I had loving kids who, while always not super happy with me, did work with me. Together we began becoming people who all took 100% responsibility for themselves. On reflection, I think I learned as much from teaching them or even more than what I taught them!

Interestingly, all three of my adolescents have thanked me for teaching them how to cook, clean and communicate. It turns out these were the skills that served them well during the time of leaving home and finding an independent way in the world.

Something to think about - where in your parenting could you use the idea of 100% responsibility?

There will always be somewhere! Reach out if you'd like to chat about it.

Kia pai tō wiki ... have a great week

Melanie

Melanie Medland is a communication coach, an author, and a course creator.​

More at www.beautifulconversations.co.nz​

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