Living intentionally is a concept that can be jaded or masked. Although so many factors come into play as a person's history and personality play a major role in one's ability to live their life intentionally. It's important to know that as a parent, you can play a huge role in this both hindering and helping them achieve the ability to make strong decisions about how they want to live their life. when a baby is born, we do everything for them, right? We feed them, we change them, they depend on us 100% but as they get older, they start to develop a mind of their own. They choose things like I want the purple block and not the blue one or I like Spider Man, not Batman.
As a parent, though your influence plays a huge role in how they perceive things. For example, have you ever noticed that kids who have parents who love football, also love football? Now how much of that is nature and how much of that is nurture? take that same kid and move them to a different culture or give them different parents, and they might like rugby or baseball more. So my point is, is as they start to think about their own dreams and goals, it's important to nourish the things that they want to do and not push what you want to see them do. I know that's a lot easier said than done.
But it's important and I'll tell you why. I work with teens who deal with substance abuse and one of the things I hear over and over again, is how they felt their parents push them to do things they didn't want to do. They were afraid to speak up and they felt ashamed when they didn't succeed or intrinsically have the passion or drive that they felt they were expected to have. In turn, what happens, they rebel they go out with their friends, they look for validation elsewhere. So take a step back to really think about your kid and what they're doing now. Are they in ballet, the Because you think it's cute, or is it something they genuinely want to do?
What if your son told you he wanted to be a singer instead of a football player? What should you do? Don't stress, sign him up for singing lessons. Remember keeping them engaged and happy and the things that they love doing will help them stay out of trouble and in situations where they are looking for that external validation