Unison Parenting #7: How to Proactively Parent

Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be (1 Peter 5:2).

The first step in my concept of Unison Parenting is called Proactive Parenting. Parents come together to create a framework with core values, rules, and consequences and rewards regarding those rules.

Parents initially create a strong family narrative. Children need to understand what their family holds dear and represents in the world. Researchers call this process “sense-making,” and it has been proven to boost your children to be more resilient when faced with difficulties.

Parents should then agree on a set of core values. Core values define ideals, goals, outputs, and the high-level approach to family processes. In the ideal parenting style, parenting partners balance love expressions with boundary enforcement.

The core values translate into policies and processes—how the family will operate on a daily basis. Parents set expectations and then regularly inspect adherence to those expectations; rewards and consequences are assigned after inspection. Note the difference between expecting and inspecting: there should be a clear inspecting methodology, as expecting alone may cause the child to have murky perceptions of compliance.

As a system of choices (I use the term “Choices Chart”) takes shape, parents might first be the decision-makers regarding the consequences of bad choices. For example, talking back might have one consequence, while refusal to do chores has another. Over time, as the family gets used to the choices system, allowing the children to have a say in defining consequences is quite powerful, as the only argument is whether a violation occurred, not what the resulting consequence is.

Rewards should be assigned for adherence to desired behaviors and even for exceeding them. I recommend rewarding the family as a whole for an individual’s behavior, as the family excels when the individual excels, and jealousy and imbalance can largely be skirted.

That is proactive parenting in a nutshell. My book, Unison Parenting, provides many more details. In my next column, I want to discuss one of the messes that can happen when parents have good intentions, but their subconscious preferences disrupt their policies and processes.