How Your Parenting Evolves as Your Kids Grow Up

There are four stages of parenting your child as they mature:

• Caretaking
• Educating
• Coaching
• Mentoring

As our children develop, it’s important that, as a parent, you recognize when it is time to shift roles.

When children are infants and toddlers, they depend on us for everything. You clothe, clean, and feed them, and provide them with stimulation, learning, and love.

But if you stay in this phase for too long, your child will resist you.

I remember my daughter’s tantrums about brushing her own hair at 3. This was that.

Then, we need to shift to teaching our children the difference between right and wrong and safe and unsafe. They require boundaries and will have oh-so-many questions about WHY!!

They need logic and rationale to learn how the world works.

But if you stay here too long, they will think you don’t trust them.

I remember my son getting so angry for telling him how much food to give the dogs when he was around 7. “MOM! I already know that!!!)

So, we shift into the role of coach (and coaches operate from the sidelines). From there, you can give instructions, helpful tips, and loving encouragement. They need to be able to make decisions on their own.

But if you stay here as your child enters their late-teen years, they will reject you.

So, it’s time to step into mentorship. Good mentorship means we are available when we are needed. We give advice when we are asked for it. We allow them autonomy over their lives and sort through the implications of their choices and decisions.

This shows them we trust them.

I write this as I tend to my own complicated feelings about my youngest child heading to college, an airplane ride away in just a few days, in the hope that it serves you to realize that parenting well is a journey of transitions and change.

Because the more we can be at peace with the changing needs of our growing children, the more we can support them to find their wings and fly.

Put Down Your Phone

Take this next week and commit to putting down your phone for some time each day. How long can you go without looking? 20 minutes? 1 hour? 2 hours? Commit to something that feels reasonable.

Now, use that time instead to connect to your parenting. That could look like this:

• Spending time with your kids and family. Playing a game, reading a book, going for a walk, meeting your child on the rug, playing what they are playing, etc. 

• Checking in with your partner about how family life is going. How is parenting going for you guys? Are there any conflicts you need to work through to get your family leadership back on track?

• Journaling or thinking about things that are going well in your parenting and things that are challenging. Reflect on some small steps you can take to address these. Where can you put a family meeting on the calendar? Is there room for more curiosity in conversations with your kids? What is a commitment you can make to address something on the list?

• Asking your kids for some feedback. How are they feeling about family time? Is there anything that they need to express that you can create some space for?

Where we put our attention is a reflection of what is most important to us. What could be more important than connecting with our kids and helping them become the future?