Being Intentional with Your Child’s Development: Life Lessons from Glenda the Good Witch
Growing up, I wanted to be a lawyer.
Do you know why I wanted to be a lawyer?
Because my mom and dad are lawyers!
I also wanted to have a pink and green house with pink and green children.
Do you know why I wanted such an absurd thing?
Because my mom is a very active member of the sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, whose colors are pink and green.
No matter how you slice it, kids model what they see!
Being a mom is part art, part science, and part instinct; while intentional parenting helps form a bridge between the three.
It’s all about being thoughtful and intentional about what you choose to expose your children to, how you foster an environment for growth, and how you nurture the development of the traits you feel are most important!
Create Your Child’s Petri Dish:
If you think back to your high school biology class, you may remember that a Petri dish is used to grow cells, but at its core, a Petri dish is nothing more than a place that fosters growth and development under controlled conditions.
Similar to the microorganisms from your high school biology class, our kids need to be immersed in an environment that promotes their optimal growth and development.
Below are some concrete ways to create your child’s ‘Petri dish’ and approach their growth and development with greater intentionality:
Define What Success Looks Like…What traits are most important?
Ask yourself “What kind of person do I want my child to be?”
Write down the values you want your child to embody as an adult?
Examples include things like being honest, having a strong work ethic, being creative, having ambition or faith.
Prioritize the values based on what you consider the most important to your child’s development.
Pick the top 2 to 3 values and consider what characteristics, routines or habits someone with that value might have?
For me, it’s extremely important that my daughter ends up being hard working and faithful. When I envision what hard-working looks like, it’s someone who is persistent and relentless in pursuing their passions, who isn’t a quitter, and who realizes that failure is nothing more than a learning experience on the road to success.
Continue to redefine what success looks like.
As your child grows and develops, you should go through this process again from time to time, making adjustments as needed.
Identify their Role Models…Who and what is your child seeing daily?
Start by evaluating their most prominent role model…YOU.
Consider the traits you identified as most important. Ask yourself ‘To what extent is my child actually seeing models of these values and behaviors?’. On a scale of “1 to 5” (with 1 being minimal (if any) and 5 being daily demonstration), rate how well you embody or demonstrate the top values.
Using your ratings, begin making small behavior changes.
You want to work on aligning your behaviors with the values you want your child to exhibit.Assess current role models.
Besides yourself, think about the 2 or 3 adults that your child is exposed to most. Rate them using the same scale of “1 to 5”, evaluating how each of them demonstrate the values defined. If, across the board, you have few, if any, “4s” or above, then you may have a problem.
Look for ways to expand your village and your reach.
Lean on your family, friends, and your broader community to find people that model the desired behaviors you’d like exposed to your child. Remember, your kids can’t be what they don’t see.
Give them room to grow…Do you Foster an Environment for your Child’s Optimal Growth?
Ask yourself ‘What rules, systems, and norms have I established to nurture the development of the desired traits and behaviors?’
For example, I want my daughter to be passionately curious about ideas and learning, so my husband and I have made it a point to only childproof what’s absolutely necessary. This helps nurture her curiosity by allowing her to explore as much of our house as possible.
Look for ways to foster an environment of growth outside of the home.
I approach every trip my daughter and I take as ‘an adventure’. From mundane trips to the grocery store to day trips to the museum or park, “it’s an adventure!” By consistently going on adventures, I want her to feel excited about seeking and experiencing the other adventures life has to offer. I also want her to learn that we can create our own adventures, even in mundane activities…It’s all about our frame of mind.
Give yourself and your child room to fail/learn from mistakes.
If you want your child to be responsible, you probably should give them the space to have obligations they personally own while allowing them to understand and feel the consequences if they do not. Also, be gentle with yourself on your quest to be a better mom. None of us are perfect, but a little progress each day adds up over time.
Thinking back to my time as a kindergarten teacher, I'm reminded that motherhood, like teaching, is really just an extended exercise of ‘Show and Tell’.
The 'Show' takes the form of our children watching and modeling the behaviors they see from the people they engage with most.
While the ‘Tell’ manifests in the things we say and enable through the rules and norms we set.
Together these create the environment or ‘petri dish’ that will nurture your child as they grow.
Over time they will watch, see and learn: how to treat other people, deal with emotions, handle stress, and countless other traits that they engrain into their future selves.
So be mindful of what you show; be mindful of what you tell/enable and realize that you play a critical role in raising not just a child, but an eventual adult.
Seem daunting?…
Well rest assured, you have the skills, knowledge, and instinct to do it! Just remember, like Glenda the Good Witch told Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz…
“You’ve always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.”
If you enjoyed this post and would like more information on being intentional with your motherhood, check out my posts on value and goal-based living, intentional self-care, childcare and development, and relationships.