Dealing with unmet expectations, crossing of boundaries, and disobedience are some of the most challenging and least fun parts of parenting. In today’s episode we explore some ways to make that situation a lot better along with presenting a concept that might help more clearly communicate with your children.
When we don’t know what is expected of us or when people don’t meet our expectations, it can be extremely frustrating. One way we’ve found to alleviate that is to decide ahead of time what those boundaries, expectations, and consequences will be. One tool parents can use to achieve that is a family contract.
Here’s a link to a template for a family contract. Some of the key elements are:
- Parent agreements. Start with what kind of resources, support, and encouragements you are going to provide.
- Outline children’s agreements. Make sure these go all the way down to heart and character issues. You need to include some of the specific household mechanics, but also include things like respect and honesty.
- Define wins. We want to catch our children doing what is good, so make sure you let them know what meeting the expectation looks like.
- Lay out consequences and rewards. We want to both reward compliance and give appropriate consequences for different levels of noncompliance.
- Include special sections for different age groups and technology. We need to make sure that we take into account the needs and challenges of different stages of development.
So take a look at the contract. Look for other resources. We recommend Walker Moore’s book You Want to Pierce What? which also covers some of these matters. (We discussed this book in Episode 0008 – Drinking Coffee and Rites of Passage) Start brainstorming and craft a plan for how to best communicate your expectations and the appropriate consequences for not meeting them. Until next week, Be Abnormal.