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Consultant Parenting

After unraveling parenting style pitfalls, Erin Sherard encourages families to embrace the Consultant Parenting Style. The carefully curated strategies motivate families to adjust communication methods to regain a healthy relationship with their students.

Tips On Talking to Your Kids… And They Actually Listen!

by Erin Sherard

“Let the wise hear and increase learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance.” - Proverbs 1:5

As a parent, you have profound wisdom to share with your children - but does it always stick? How do we get them to follow our guidance? What is going to give us the best odds that they will make good decisions when we aren’t around? Here are 3 tools that will likely increase the odds that your children will retain the wisdom you impart.

  1. Empathize. From a Love & Logic perspective, nothing works without empathy. Demands, anger, passive aggression, and frustration automatically increase resistance and devastatingly damage relationships. Empathy keeps the heart and the mind open to learning. As parents, we have valuable things to say to our children. Say them with empathy so that they are heard.
  2. Ask questions. A recent study was performed here in the US that looked at the most effective educators that produced engaged students with the highest test scores. There was one quality that every single one of these educators possessed: they turned almost everything into a question! Questions send an unstated message to our children that we value their input, that we have a desire to hear their voice. Questions also send a very powerful message that says, “you are capable of making wise decisions and I trust that you will”. Asking your children as many questions as possible increases the odds that they will hear, process, and retain your conversations.
  3. Avoid “you should” and “if I were you” statements. Anytime we say “you should” or “you could”, we automatically increase resistance. One of our basic human emotional needs is the need for control. When we make statements like these, we invite power struggles and trigger a neurochemical response that instinctually makes our children want to exercise their desire to gain control. An effective alternative to “you should” or “you could” statements is “some people decide to…”. When we say “some people”, we automatically decrease the likelihood of a power struggle. The road to wisdom is paved with mistakes and in the midst of struggle is where character is built. It is during trials that we learn to lean in to The Word. Using “some people decide to” rather than “you should” dramatically increases the odds that your children will listen.

It can often feel so counterintuitive to not jump in and fix, answer, solve, and demand. As parents of college bound kids, we are going through our own grieving process and experiencing our own feelings of losing control. Knowing that these feelings are typical, being aware of why they are surfacing, talking about them, and praying through it is essential. In addition, leading conversations with your children with empathy, questions, and “some people” statements will likely lead to trust, healing, and healthy foundational relationships with your children.