I have written before about my challenges as a parent of trying NOT to lecture too much. It just seems to come naturally—we parents have so much we want to say and we expect that our children should want to hear it. The lecture, however, is a big turn-off! It is a surefire way to make sure that our children totally tune out what we are trying to say. Now that my kids are older, they have confessed that when a parent gets that “lecture” tone, they just go on auto-pilot and do not listen to what is being said. Instead of lecturing as parents, however, we can work on learning how to facilitate a dialogue and provide for true communication with our child or children.
What do I mean by facilitate? Well, facilitate means to actually smooth things out; it is a word that means making things easier and helping things along. Instead of standing over our children wagging our finger, we can try to be a bridge and help them understand the circumstance while trying to understand for ourselves what is going on for them. The best facilitating parents can help a child reach the conclusion or make the mental leap on their own—instead of trying to force our way of thinking onto our child, we can help them “get there” on their own. That way, they not only understand, but they take ownership since it is coming from their own brain!
For example, let’s say that your child comes home late and missed curfew. You are tempted to yell and threaten and lecture. Instead, is there a way you can facilitate more and lecture less? With my children, I found that they were finally able to understand why I needed to know where they were by putting it into their own experience: How did they feel when they were waiting for a friend to call who didn’t? I also made myself purposefully late a couple times without telling them where I was. They were able to experience the intensity of the situation without my lecturing. As a parent, you can look for ways to get your point across as a facilitator—by guiding your child to the realization instead of giving another ineffective lecture.