Great Parenting Advice: Follow Through With What You Tell Your Child

Especially when your kids are toddlers, you must set rules and ensure that your kids follow them. Great parents make those rules absolutely clear, and their kids know that if they choose to stray, there will be consequences. Start when they are old enough to understand what you are saying, that’s about two years old. If you set the boundaries when they are young, it will be much easier on all of you when they get older and the consequences for their actions may be much harsher.

Don’t make idle threats and be sure to follow through on what you say to your children. “If you say you’re going to do something as a consequence, make sure you’re capable of doing it and then do it,” insists Marlene McDermott, Marriage and Family Therapist at Serenity Counseling in Palmyra, NJ..

When they are very young, start with something as simple as following through on a time-out if they misbehave. If you threaten your toddler that you will leave a store if she touches things, then when she touches something you must leave the store. As they get older, consequences may get more severe, but whatever you threaten you must follow through. For an older child, it may be that if your child comes home late, he will be grounded for two weeks. If that’s the expectation, make sure that his grounding really is a full two weeks.

“If you can’t do that, then don’t say it,” McDermott points out. “Having that follow through is so important. Parenting takes a lot of time, it’s a job. Come up with a basket of tricks beforehand so you’re not just saying something off the cuff that you can’t follow through with.”

The worst thing a parent can do is make idle threats because your child will figure that out very quickly. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and follow through. When your child knows you are serious, he will think carefully before disobeying a family rule.

Tips for Great Parenting: Present a United Front for your Children

We all want to be great parents who help our kids grow into respectable, kind, self-sufficient adults. If only there were a guide to teach us how! I asked leading experts for some parenting advice, and they insist that it’s easier than many parents think. Here's the first step: present a united front in front of your children.

It is essential that both parents, or whoever the caregivers are, are on the same page when dealing with their children about consequences, rules, and expectations. “Kids are manipulative and they’ll take advantage,” says Marlene McDermott, Marriage and Family Therapist at Serenity Counseling in Palmyra.

For example, if one parent gives the child a month-long grounding, but the other parent cuts it to two weeks, the child recognizes that there is “wiggle room,” explains Marlene. “Clearly they’re not on the same page and the kid knows where the loophole is.”

This rule is important always....from the tiniest problems to the largest issues. If you tell your three year old that he cannot have candy at the grocery store, but then your husband buys him a treat, he will learn at a very young age how to manipulate one or the other of you. You must establish the ground rules together so that he doesn't figure out how to "work" the system.

While a disagreement over something as small as a piece of candy seems trivial, it's the pattern of showing a united front that ultimately matters. When he's 16 he sneaks his first beer, he can't think that one parent will let him off the hook while the other has made the rules against drinking clear.

McDermott urges parents to agree on general rules of the house and make every member aware of them. If you don’t agree, work out differences behind closed doors, away from the child and then return with an answer. “Never let the kid see that and always present as a united front,” she says.