In the spirit of September as Self-Improvement month, we set a couple of challenges for our readers to follow. First we had the love challenge, where we asked you to find one nice thing to say about your partner every day. Then, last week, we challenged our parent readers to choose one thing that was a source of tension between parent and child to let go of. I myself took part in the challenge, and after discussion with my child chose to let go of nagging him to do his homework every day.
After a week, I’m here to report on my findings from the challenge. It was truly a revelation! Not once during the whole week did I even come close to asking my child about his homework, because he did it all himself without being told! He would come home from school, go into his room and be quiet for almost 20 minutes, then emerge with his completed homework and ask if he could play video games.
Now, it wasn’t as if he suddenly turned into an angel – the homework wasn’t always done to the best of his ability, and you could tell that he was rushing through some of it just to get it done, but the fact was that he had motivated himself to do it, without being cajoled, nagged, or lectured. The time and energy that that saved me did wonders for our relationship, not to mention how good it was to watch him grow in his independence.
We talked about it over the weekend and I asked him what made him so good at getting his homework done by himself when I previously had to nag him so hard to do it. He replied, and I quote verbatim, “Because doing something on your own without someone else telling you to do it makes you have pride in your work!” Cue the tears of parenting pride.
Even though the challenge has technically ended, we are just beginning to adopt this self-motivation strategy to inculcate good habits. The next thing we are tackling is the issue of his taking vitamins every morning.
What about you? Did you manage to try the challenge and let something go between you and your child? Let us know how it went for you in the comments below!
KEEP READING: Bedwetting Was One of My Biggest Parenting Challenges
Images: Pexels
