The Secret to Effective Parenting
By Laura Taggart, LMFT

We all want to raise great kids… kids who love God, respect others, and feel confident about who they are; kids who are able to handle the challenges of life. Yet the question we struggle with most often is how do I parent today, what do I do, what do I say, what limit do I set in order to produce a great kid.

One metaphor I use in our “Got Kids” parenting class is that parenting is a lot like fishing (if you’re not a seasoned angler you can still “catch” this!). The secret to fishing is that when you have a fish ‘on’ you don’t want to keep the line too loose, or else the fish may spit it out. You don’t want to keep the line too tight or else the fish snaps the line. The secret to fishing is to keep just enough tension on the line so the fish can feel your presence at the other end but still feel the weight of his own body against the line. This is also the secret of effective parenting.

Bearing with the fishing analogy, permissive parenting does not provide a child with sufficient limits. Limits are necessary for a child to feel secure and to aid him in learning to respect others. Although we may think otherwise when our three year old is having a tantrum in front of us, it is actually scary for a child to feel in charge. They need to know that their parents are strong enough and loving enough to be involved and enforce loving limits. When they feel secure, they feel more confident about experiencing their world and trying new experiences.

Another “loose-lined” approach to parenting is overindulgence. We love our kids. We want them to experience every opportunity. We want them to feel good about themselves and us so we give and give. Overindulgent parents want to support their kids. Unfortunately giving them everything they want creates kids who feel they’re entitled to have everything they want. Despite all their material blessings overindulged kids often grow up angry and resentful. We want them to feel “special” but they come to believe that they are the center of the world and entitled to more. Since they haven’t felt any lack, they don’t know what it is to work at something. They expect it to come to them.

Alternately, if we keep the line too tight we deprive our kids of the opportunity to feel their own weight against the line. When we overprotect, we deprive our kids of the ability to make choices and mistakes and learn from them. Our child forgets their lunch or their mitt for practice and we run it to them. We interfere with the consequences that could actually teach them responsibility. These kids often grow up to be unmotivated and underachieving.

Another way of keeping the line too taut is by over controlling. We often do this through anger or criticism or dictating. We tell our kids what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. We push our kids thinking we’re helping them develop into their potential, yet what the child feels is that they will never be good enough. Feeling badly about themselves they often look to peers or substances to make themselves feel better.

So what does it really look like to hold the line with enough tension that they feel us on the other end while at the same time feeling their own weight against the line?

This is being a parent who can set limits and lovingly enforce them while at the same time having a consistently affirming relationship with your child. If you have overindulged, overprotected, or over-controlled, you are not alone. All of us as parents have done these as we’ve struggled to find a way to express love and help our child grow. We do need to be proactively involved with our kid’s lives. We do need to offer choices, set limits, follow through with consequences while also listening to them, noticing and affirming their uniqueness and building them up. Some of us need to loosen our grip. We need to let our kids face life experiences, make mistakes, and pick themselves up, all the while communicating that we believe in them and their capacity to learn.

Isn’t this how God loves and nurtures us? He allows us to make choices and experience consequences, yet provides the guidance of His word and the blessing of his unmerited favor.

God bless you as you learn to fish.