Pick your battles wisely

Do you have a number of good children but feel like you’ve no energy left to enjoy them? You may be trying to win every fight instead of picking your battles. Learn to choose what’s really important to focus on and what to let go.

Trust your children as well as your instincts. Learn how to negotiate and be realistic to avoid power plays. Hey, you may even have some fun!

Child rearing should not be combative but it certainly can be a constant challenge. And there are battles to be won or lost, many on a single day. But the wise parent is one who picks the skirmishes carefully.

Will this particular behaviour make a difference in a week, month, or year? If not, perhaps it’s best to let it go and give the child the choice as to making the bed or not, wearing shorts or long pants or talking to members of the opposite sex on the telephone.

Consider whether the issue is worthy of confrontation - if you argue about everything, then the children will begin to tune you out. This is analogous to parents who frequently yell at their children.

Soon, the children don’t listen, as they don’t know when to take it seriously. If everything is a battle, perhaps you’re picking too many issues to get involved in.

What really matters? Take a good look at your children. Decide on the areas in which you can trust their judgment, and perhaps back off a notch or two.

On those issues where they still show impulsivity or poor judgment, then it’s best to stay involved and continue to call the shots.

If you don’t back off when it’s appropriate, not only will your children become resentful, but it’s incredibly wearing on the parent to be on red-alert status about the small, medium and big stuff.

Keep the latter

Focus on what really matters. The acid test, is if the children’s choice won’t really matter in a month or two, then consider letting her call the shot this time around. If it is a significant area of behaviour (such as completing homework or not), then of course you must put your foot down and stick with it.

But consider letting go of some of the responsibility and choose your battles more carefully - you just may be surprised at how well the children do, as well as how they listen when you do lay down the law on the big stuff!

What to do

Negotiate. Decide on which behaviours are negotiable and which are not. Negotiable issues can be curfews, television-watching time, or when to do homework (before or after dinner)).

Negotiable rules need to be the important ones that involve health, safety, homework completion, politeness. Other than these areas, try to be flexible and grow the rules with the child.

Be realistic

What may have been appropriate to focus on at a younger age may become negotiable and perhaps not nearly as important a few years later. Consider your individual child, her personality, friends, and environment.

Perhaps you, as a child, may not have been interested in wearing the latest styles, but if your daughter is surrounded by fashion model wannabes, then you may have to give her a break in this area. As long as her dress does not exceed the mores in your family’s code of values, it’s probably best to let her exert some independence in this area.

Figure out what really matters.

Put some thought into what’s really important to you as a parent and stick with the programme. Some parents value spending time with the children in play, attending a place of worship as a family unit, volunteering, getting household chores done, or pursuing lessons to reach the children’s specific skills or knowledge.

Whatever is important to healthy development of the family should be focused upon, and you should call the shots on those issues.

Avoid power plays

Although you are accustomed to being in control, please do so gracefully. Telling a child to ‘do it because I said so” is not nearly as effective as describing why it should be done.

Being curt or nasty usually leads to even greater child defiance, not the compliance that you’re striving to achieve.

It’s all in the presentation, and if you can present your argument concisely and politely, you’ll have a greater chance of being heard and perhaps avoiding a skirmish.