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As you’re working with your children, homeschooling and helping them get what they want in life, you’ll also get what you want in life. To accomplish this, mastering the art of communication is a top priority for the parent mentor. It’s also a valuable skill to pass on to your children. It’s not only about expressing yourself and what you think they need to know, but also includes them listening and understanding. There must be a flow between you so they get you and you get them. This also brings confidence and intimacy to the relationship where everyone feels heard and understood.
Everyone has a unique set of values and tends to attract people who have opposite values because this brings to the experience a balance to fulfill the gaps of what is missing. This helps us appreciate a greater perspective in all that we experience. Whether it’s your spouse or children, it’s likely you’ve noticed pairs of opposites:
Overachiever – Underachiever
Competitive- Non-competitive
Academic- Non-academic
Traveler On The Go- Homebody
Extrovert- Introvert
Organizer and Neat- Unorganized Messy
Do you ever wonder why your children sometimes seem so different from you? Maybe their oppositeness is stirring you up like your siblings did when you were growing up or maybe they still do to this day. Think more about your parents and siblings; see the differences? In fact, whatever you find lowest on your values or repress will be a focus and expression of your children. I like to keep in perspective that whatever I repress they will express. As they challenge me with their expressions of what I repress and I remain open, it causes me to be more balanced in my thinking, open minded and seek to see more than just one side. When we pay attention to this naturally occurring balance and the challenges it brings, then we are not so blindsided and emotional when they express our repressions.
Getting to the heart of these matters, the natural laws and balance of life, helps us create the family harmony and success we desire to experience on a daily and consistent basis. So, let’s look at what’s really happening. When we experience disagreements or arguments we are simply not communicating in each other’s values. Interest in what the other has to say dissolves when it appears to not be valuable –or not communicated in their values simply because we are always gathering information and making decisions according to our highest values. This is what gives us individuality and creates appreciable relationships as the values of all the people in our life create for us a more complete picture of the world.
Seeing our children’s highest values and communicating through them lets us experience unconditional love, feeling of being understood and appreciated. We don’t need to change them but rather celebrate them.
Careless, Careful, Caring
In your relating are you careless, careful or caring? Let’s look at each to check in with where you are to know where you want to place more attention or focus.
Careless
When we’re careless in a relationship it means we care less about the values of others. If we’re thinking our own values are right and good, that everyone should comply or be wrong it can fare up into self-righteousness or a belief “I’m right” and “they’re wrong.” When we’re in this state we find resistance when working with others because we’re trying to get people to do things that are not valuable to them.
How does it look in our homeschool?
- When we pile on a list of subjects to “do school” and fulfill a generalized education.
- When we expect our children to do all the work we assign without talking with them about how this will help empower them to their highest values i.e. math helps you become a better hockey player, lego builder, or scientist; and then show specific ways they can relate to immediately.
- When we don’t take time to truly consider the child as a whole person, expecting him to come along cheerfully with all we think he should do or be regardless of highest values.
Careful
When we’re being careful we’re walking on eggshells and being overly careful with all we do. This is a place of imbalance because we diminish our own highest values raising those of others around us. You know the feeling, when you realize you’re trying to be someone you’re not. This is all about pleasing someone else but the results always end with resentment.
Nothing really gets done from a place of being careful. In our homeschool it can look like:
- Entertaining the children to keep them happy all the time by always trying to be careful and choose what you think they will like.
- Changing curriculum often to satisfy their complaints.
- Not having structure by letting the child free range constantly, control the day and decide whether or not studies are done for the day and when. This is putting the child in charge, often at too young of an age in fear of a cry out or break down, being careful, which is inevitable because the child needs the safety of the structure.
- Having conversations of alternating monologues rather than true discussions. This is when you’re not in your values but rather someone else’s. Even to the point of trying to be someone else by copying another family projecting onto your own family expectations that are outside of your family members values.
Caring
This is where your relationships are alive. It’s when you honor your highest values and others in their highest values. Remember, our highest values represent our identity. This is when you care enough to communicate with others what you’d like as inspired by your highest values, in the language of their highest values that conveys a win-win for all involved.
When you are caring you are willing to embrace others for who they are –their highest values and individuality. In this place of caring you don’t expect others to change to be more like you. In your homeschool you show caring by:
- Being inspired in all you do.
- You have an attentive look about you.
- You listen carefully to what others say.
- You’re fully present and engaged, asking questions.
- You genuinely care about your children’s values.
- You also take time to know your children’s highest values and partner with them to fulfill their values. This includes linking academics, household services, and all they do to their highest values.
- In the process you’re also aligning with your highest values to better serve your family in their highest values. You see how everyone’s uniqueness compliments each other and creates equilibrium.
- When there’s something you want, you take time to see how it will benefit those around you and communicate in their values.
Become a master communicator through caring and honoring your children’s highest values. As you do this you’ll see how much of a reflection they are of you and just how connected and complete you are together.
Inspired to Action
- Take time to determine your child’s highest values and keep them in front of you as you work with your children, mentor and communicate.
- Next think of something you’d like them to do, either academics or a household service, perhaps a project together or a way you want them to help with something. Now think on your child’s two highest values and come up with two to ten ways how what you want links to their highest values. Once you’ve done this you can clearly see how what you’d love also helps fulfill their highest values.