Page 45 - The Intentional Parent

The Intentions
Intentions give your parenting efforts focus and resolve. While it is natural to want to give your children privileges, it is important that they understand that privileges are earned by showing responsible behavior. Often parents tend to put the cart before the horse. For instance, they will give their kids a cell phone without truly examining whether the maturity level is sufficient to have that responsibility, then wonder why they receive a $1200 bill because the cell phone is used for text messaging eight hours a day.
An important (perhaps even the most important) goal of intentional parenting is to act towards your kids (i.e. lead them) in ways that help them become healthy, productive, autonomously functioning and loving human beings.
Let’s review this sentence because it summarizes the goals of this program. It also summarizes the thoughts and wishes of most parents, that is if you can get them to talk about their intentions. So to get you started, let’s look at some intentions, and use them as foundations for leadership behavior:
Our intention is for our children to be healthy, that is in their physical health as well as their emotional health.
Our intention is for our children to be productive. This gives them the ability to be self sufficient when they need to be, and to share what they earn with the people they love.
Our intention is for our children to be autonomous -- again so that they do not become dependent on people or things that
The Intentional Parent by Peter J. Favaro, Ph.D. 45