![]() Understand that you are not responsible for the choices your child makes in his life. You are not responsible for your child’s choices How can you avoid ending up in these battles? Here are 7 tips that can really help. Learning how to make those choices is a necessary skill that develops self-motivation. Your child is living his life in reaction to you rather than making his own independent choices. Why are power struggles important to avoid? They inadvertently create just what you’ve feared. This is the first step in avoiding power struggles. One of the toughest things parents have to do is learn how to soothe their own difficult feelings rather than ask their children to do that for them. Here’s the truth: You have to be careful not to let these triggered feelings cause you to push your kids harder so that you can feel better. Or you might feel guilt about not doing a good enough job as a parent. You might be triggered by a feeling of anger because you feel ineffective or fear that your child will never amount to anything. Note that your child did not cause these feelings, but rather triggered feelings that already belong to you. When kids are not following through on their responsibilities, it can easily trigger a number of feelings in parents. Your child, in essence, is saying, “I own my own life-stay out!” Now the battle for autonomy is getting played out around homework and chores, and exactly what you feared and hoped to avoid gets created. What happens then? Your child will resist by pushing back. And unfortunately, the more anxious you are, the more you’ll hold on in an attempt to control him and push him toward the task at hand. But when you’re in your child’s head, there’s no room for him to think for himself. If you’re in the habit of threatening, lecturing, questioning your child, nagging or even screaming at them “do the work!” (and trust me, we’ve all been there), you probably feel like you’re doing whatever it takes to get your kids on track. Nagging, Lecturing and Yelling-But Nothing Changes? And when you believe you are ultimately responsible for the choices your child makes (and many of us do, consciously and unconsciously), the ante is upped and the tug of war begins. After all, doing homework and chores are your child’s prime responsibilities, right? Let’s face it, it’s easy to get anxious when your kids are not doing what they’re supposed to be doing-and when you know how important doing schoolwork is. Maybe you worry about your child’s future. Like most parents, you probably want your children to do well and be responsible. The underlying truth here is that you and your child might already be caught in a power struggle over this.
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