In preparing for "back to school", many parents do not even think about what is perhaps the most important preparation of all...
Many parents experience considerable pressure and stress as they prepare for the start of a new school year. There are the financial ramifications as new clothes are bought, tuition is paid, etc. There is the aspect of making sure everything is set up to accommodate changing schedules. There is the chore of acquiring all of their children's checklist of supplies...and you get the point.
However, in all of this preparing, many parents do not even think about what is perhaps the most important preparation of all...
Preparing their children to integrate back into a new "social pecking order"!
Like it or not, there IS a "class hierarchy" that young people must integrate within and without help from their parents, many young people will fail to integrate in a way that serves them and their future. In other words, without assistance from their parents, many young people will integrate with the wrong people, they will integrate in such a way that their focus is upon anything and everything except learning, and so on.
As young people return to school, they deal with considerable anxiety over questions such as:
- How do I compare to others?
- What do they have that I do not have?
- Where did they go that I have not been?
- Are my clothes and supplies as nice as others?
- How do others look now...and how do I look now?
- How have others matured compared to me?
- Am I in style enough to fit in?
- Will I be able to learn as well as others?
- Will I be able to perform as well as others?
- Will other people like me?
- How do I deal with the awkward, uncomfortable process of meeting new people?
- Who will be sitting next to me and how will that make me look?
- Will my teachers like me...and will I like them?
- Etc.
As a parent, if you will but just go back into your own personal history, you will REMEMBER having these same kinds of thoughts, concerns, and fears...and wouldn't it have been nice if your parents would have taken the time to coach and counsel you?
Well, what is done is done in your past...but you can do it differently for your children!
Here is the bottom line: EVERY DAY, parents MUST find the time to build up and encourage their children. EVERY DAY, parents must help their children develop the people skills to integrate and interact successfully with others. While you drive your kids to school, or while your children are waiting on the school bus, BLESS them by teaching them to think and operate in a positive, optimistic, confident, self-empowering kind of way.
Take the time to prepare your children with ways to successfully handle the stresses and pressures they face...and make a REAL and LASTING difference in their lives.
Copyright © 2011 by Calle Zorro of MarriedAndHappy.com
Calle Zorro helps men create and maintain the happy, affectionate, and intimate marriage relationship with their wife that they really want...he helps men expose the attractive MAN that's hidden away inside of them...the kind of man their wife DREAMS of being intimate with...the kind of man their wife WANTS to be close to. http://www.MarriedAndHappy.com