SUMMARY

• “Understanding how to optimize this relationship can mean so much for the level of fulfillment that you know and the level of happiness that's in the relationship between you and your children.”
• “Love your children and support them to become as self-reliant as possible - as soon as possible -  so they can be a functioning adult contributing to society, and so they don't require you to care for them”
• “It's so easy to go too far in a genuine desire to want to help and support your kids… sometimes you end up enabling them and disempowering them.”
• If you’re looking for tips on how to support children to become self-reliant, this episode is for you.
• Watch the video to get the full training.

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 Full Transcript:

[The following is the full transcript of this episode of Joey’s Performance Tune Up With Joey Klein. Please note that this episode, like all episodes, features Joey speaking unscripted and unedited. This video is captured in one take.]

Your relationship with your kids is obviously one of the most important relationships you're going to have in your life and they're going to be hopefully a part of your life for the rest of your life. And so understanding how to optimize that relationship can mean so much for the level of fulfillment that you know and the level of happiness that's in the relationship between you and your children, essentially.

And one of the major challenges that I see parents engage with their children is around essentially not understanding one's role with their children. And so if you do nothing more than define your role with your kids at the different stages in life, then it will tell you who to be with your kids.

And you'll be so surprised at how far that can go. And so what that means is, if we think about it and go, man, what is my job as a parent really? We've got two jobs. Number one, love your kids as unconditionally as you can, even though sometimes that's definitely going to go awry because they definitely know how to test and challenge you for sure.

But essentially, love your children and support them to become as self reliant as possible as soon as possible so that they can be a functioning adult contributing to society and so that they don't require you to care for them, because one day they're going to have to do that on their own without you, because they're probably going to outlive you, or at least we hope that your children outlive you.

And so if we can remember that, if you can go, wow, my job is to love my kids and to support them, to be self reliant and capable as soon as possible, then you're going to interact with your kids as you raise them very differently than if you get caught in the trap of trying to alleviate all of the pain on their behalf.

It's so hard to see your kids struggle and it's so hard to see them go through trial and tribulation and challenge. And the impulse there is to eliminate the challenge and eliminate the pain by way of making it easier for your kids, by way of paying for things for them, or helping them a little bit more with their homework than you should.

I've worked with people who literally did their children's college essays for them to get them to graduate. And like, that's probably not going to be great for that adult child when they have a job because their parents probably aren't going to be able to do their work for them as an example. Right?

And so it's so easy to go too far in a genuine desire to want to help and support your kids. And you go too far and you end up enabling them and disempowering them. And so instead of that, if you use that marker of oh, my job here is to love them and to support them to become self reliant as efficiently and quickly as possible, then you're going to realize that when they go through challenges and trials and tribulations and they make, you know, dumb mistakes and they make stupid choices in the same way you did when you were young, it's an opportunity to show them how to move through those situations and actually leverage that challenge or that difficulty to grow and become more self reliant, become more self, more resilient, which is going to set them up to thrive in their life.

And then when they become an adult, you've established that relationship where they're self reliant, they're not going to require you. But then in times when they may need support or advice, they're likely to reach out to you for your wisdom. And hopefully you can offer that wisdom for a lifetime.

And so remember your job, love your children and essentially support them to be self reliant as quickly as possible and take that role of showing them how as opposed to alleviating the challenge on their behalf.

And it sounds obvious, but if you sort of take this framework into engaging with your kids, you're going to notice it'll be so very helpful. And if you want to do a deeper dive into concepts, ideas, strategies like this, please grab my book, Relationship Alchemy and hopefully it supports you on your journey.