The Parenting Pyramid

 The Parenting Pyramid

What if I were to tell you there were five building blocks to the mysteries of parenting? 

Where have they been hiding?! Right? 

https://latterdaysaintmag.com/article-1-935/

Well, kind of right in front of you. We talked a little about the base of the pyramid in my last post actually- at the bottom of the pyramid is our Personal Way of Being. This is who we are including how we are caring for ourselves, the thoughts we are having, the decisions we are making. Who we are influences everything in our lives including our parenting. It also influences our relationships with others, such as our spouse. 

Did you know that "the marital relationship is the central relationship in the family; in significant ways it colors all the others." ( https://content.byui.edu/file/91e7c911-20c5-4b9f-b8fc-9e4b1b37b6fc/1/Parenting_Pyramid_article.pdf )My husband is a marriage and family therapist who sees time and time again children who are directly and strongly impacted by the parents' marriage. For bad or for good the marriage relationship molds the home environment. 

Above the marriage relationship is the Parent/Child Relationship. Can you think of someone you don't have a great relationship with? How about if they tried to teach you how to live your life? I don't know about you, but I feel like that wouldn't go so great. The people you learn the most effectively from are those that you have a good relationship with. You hear stories of great school teachers- and if you take a look at them, it isn't that they have created some drastic or new curriculum. The difference is in the way that they connect and care for the students. It is the same for parenting. When the child feels loved, respected, and cared for then they will be much more open to giving you those things in return (because THEIR buckets have been filled). If you want to teach someone, build a good relationship first.

The next tier in the pyramid is Teaching. I feel like this one is the most obvious of the tiers on the pyramid. Little did you know there was so much hiding underneath it! We want to teach our children so that they can grow up to be functional human beings who can go out into the world and do good things. Teaching could be a whole other subject on it's own. It often takes creativity, simplicity, and close attention so that we can see when is the best time to expound on a certain subject or not. I really appreciated the idea in this article:

 https://content.byui.edu/file/91e7c911-20c5-4b9f-b8fc-9e4b1b37b6fc/1/Parenting_Pyramid_article.pdf 

It talks about how it is most helpful to focus on the question " How can we help things go right?" instead of "What should I do now that something has gone wrong?". 

The top tier on the pyramid is Correction. Our correction is based on our teaching- we can't scold a child for something that they haven't been taught. We can take the opportunity to teach them in that moment but we can't scold them. What kinds of corrections would be most helpful to the child? What were the child's intentions in the situation? If we look closely we can see that mistakes happen more because of inadequate teaching rather than some innate evil in the child. So the question would then be, how can I help the child learn this principle? Pondering on this question really puts corrections in a much better light I think: rather than some punishment that satisfies our dissatisfaction, there can be actual learning and teaching and growing.

The neat thing with this pyramid is that the key to each level is the tier below it. So the key to a good marriage relationship is a good way of being, the key to a good parent/child relationship is a good marriage relationship etc. It really helps to get to the source of parenting problems. So if there is ever an issue you can look at the pyramid to help you out!

I hope that this pyramid can give you a clearer view of parenting as it has for me. What a help!

Until next time, 

Rachelle