ARE YOU THE BEST PARENT

Parent as Leader. Parent Leadership. What does it really mean? Do you think that as a parent you are also a leader and if so, how do you go about that?
I have always found the words Parent and Parenting to be very emotive. For me, they bring up a feeling of exhaustion, frustration and a feeling of being stuck. I'm not sure if this is only me but I have never found these words at all inspiring. Let's face it, bringing a child into the word and caring for them, ensuring that they grow up to be a fine young adult is so much more than about parenting. I remember saying to someone ages ago that I am not a parent; I am a relationship builder and that felt much more freeing for me. I then went on to replace this with the word Leader; I am a leader for my child. To me that feels more like a task to take, a result to achieve, an inspiring outcome to work towards.
Our radio show last week was all about this topic and it really got me thinking of the similarities between parent coaching and corporate coaching. You see, they are not much different. In executive coaching a person comes to a coach to grow and improve their leadership style, perhaps they need to step into a leadership role they feel uncomfortable in, or perhaps they need to make uncomfortable decisions as a leader. Well, parent coaching is the same thing; without knowing it, clients come to me because an area in their parent leadership needs developing. There is a place as a parent that they need to step into and they know it. Despite how ever many books you read, you will not find the answer to this. You see, most of the parenting books tell you what you need to do and not who you need to become to do it. That, I guess, is where my book differs and is why parents who read it feel relief, because they realise that actually, to change things at home they just need to make little adjustments. When we see ourselves as a leader we can see hope where before we saw, well let's just say, our child not doing anything we say. When we see ourselves as a leader we make different choices. Like Benjamin Zander askes, "What am I doing that is not allowing this person to shine?" It puts everything in a different perspective.
A Parent Leader thinks differently and asks different questions of themselves and their child For example, instead of asking, "Why will my child not do anything I ask?" they will ask, "What do I need to do to teach my child responsibility?" Instead of, "What is wrong with my child and how can I fix this?" they will ask, "What do I need to change about my style to support my child in this result? Instead of "Why does my child always speak to me in this way?" they ask, "What am I doing that is allowing another person to treat me like this?" Instead of. "I don't think my child could handle that!" they ask, "If I believe my child could handle this, would I behave differently?"
As you can see, it is entirely a different mindset and as I am sure you can imagine, it produces different results than merely parenting, whatever that is anyway.
So how can you access your leadership and what is required of a good parent leader?
For this I want to turn to the great book, The Four Fold Way, which draws on ancient wisdom and I believe can show us the way forward. In ancient wisdom it was believed that to raise a well adjusted child, four types of leadership were required; the way of the Warrior, Teacher, Visionary and Healer. Now in ancient and past times, children would have gone to different people for these things and certainly within tribes, people would have been given these designated jobs. Think of your own childhood, who was the person you went to when you needed someone to be strong. What about when you needed to heal some pain or have someone gets excited about your future plans? Anyway, you see where I am going. Now in modern day society, this does not happen. Children don't have these different people to go to so as the Parent, we need to search inside ourselves and learn to become all of them when our child needs us to.