Master Parenting Part 6: Authenticity

On October 17, 2015 I was honored to be the Inspire Me Today Luminary my topic was on authentic living. Here is the link, if you read it please leave a comment. Parenting requires authentic living because children can spot quite easily who is not being real. Authenticity is all about aligning your beliefs, thoughts, words, and actions. Living life based solely on what you believe. This is not to say you can not change your mind about what you think and believe. It does mean it is one of the things you talk about doing.

Teaching authentic living requires three things:

1. Talking about what you believe and think
2. Explaining to your children about why you think and believe what you do
3. Living authentically yourself

If you read my blog on patents teaching value this is vey similar.(Here is the link.) Authenticity is a lifelong pursuit. It is challenging because in our world there is more and more pressure towards thinking as the group thinks. Authenticity require we believe and think on an individual level. There is no one who can live authentically on group think!

Master Parenting requires both parents to not only live authentically, but to respect their partners authenticity as well. Whether you are married to your co-parent or not respecting them is an important part of  your team effort to bring up a child who can live in an authentic life. Listening to your children and responding openly and honestly to their thoughts will help them to know what they think and why. 

Here is the hard part given all the same factors your child may come to a different conclusion. It is important you not take this as a rejection of you. Rather seek to understand their reasoning. It may be they have thought of something you missed. However, many times children mistakenly relate two things which do not relate. You need to understand their thought process in order to correct mistaken thinking. If in the end their thinking is sound and you just disagree, encouraging them to live authentically requires you too be accepting, encouraging, and loving though you disagree. This is one of the most difficult parts of parenting because it requires us to back off and let our children be their own person and not our carbon copies. We are raising children to become authentically living adults. This requires us to teach authenticity when they are children.

Believe in Parenting