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Have you ever sat across the table from one or more of your children and wondered where they came from.
Of course, you are not thinking of the literal sense, but as you are gazing at this precious child who is doing and/or saying things you just didn’t picture your child capable of, you realize that you don’t even know what they are thinking or why? You question what you missed because they seem to be so different than you or your other children.
I had an acquaintance start to tell me about her son. “He always seems to want more and more. I wouldn’t say he is spoiled because we don’t give into his wants, but it concerns me that he is never satisfied. My daughter is nothing like that.”
My passion is to help parents see the potential in their children and to teach them how to make their child be all they were designed to be so I decided to ask her a few questions to see if there was more to this than she was seeing. I asked her if she felt like her son was more ‘like’ herself or her husband. After thinking for a couple of minutes she said: “probably more like her husband”. I asked if her husband was still in the landscaping business. Shaking her head yes, I continued to probe further with questions regarding his school work, his hobbies, and his friends. I concluded at the end of all the questions, that this was not a behavioral issue.
It is true as parents sometimes we just don’t see what is right in front of our faces, either because we are too close to the situation, or because it is nothing we have ever thought of before. The truth is it is hard to look at a situation differently than the way we have always looked at it. Having a child who always ‘wants things‘ does seem like a behavioral issue and in this case, she needed an objective eye to see that it probably wasn’t what she thought.
Wanting her to see another possible reason for her son behavior I asked, “Is it possible your son, being more like your husband just wants more because he was born with a drive that makes him entrepreneurial? Maybe this need to have more is not a selfish thing at all but an internal push to do more, try harder, to have more, but in the business sense. Without the ‘want for more’ he wouldn’t be able to push himself enough to do what he would need to do to ‘achieve more‘.”
The smile on her face was priceless. I love it when a parent says, “I haven’t thought of it that way before”, which then usually leads them to say, “Well now I know how to work with him”. Guiding a parent to think differently about a situation then gives them a chance to at least see it from a different point of view. In time, after this mom goes home and starts to work with her son, she will determine in herself if this really is what drives him or if it is indeed a behavioral issue.
Let’s realize our children are not carbon copies of us.
They are unique and as individual as the stars. All bright and beautiful but with each having their own style and shine which visibly sets them apart from one another, even hundreds of miles away.
Your job as their parent is to find out what they like, what gives them joy and help them fulfill what their destiny is. Don’t assume that if they think or act differently than you that they are wrong in what they are doing, but instead try and look at it from what their personality might be dictating them to be.
Not all the things you see will be something unique that makes them stand out from the norm in your family. Some of their traits might be harmful, so take the time to watch, learn and help develop who they are and see if this trait you spotted can be used to help develop them into the shining star they are meant to be or if it is a behavioral issue you need to address.
Chances are you won’t have the answer right away so be patient in your pursuit of discovering who they are and help them learn to be all they can be.
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